Abstraction in Action Graciela Hasper, Fernanda Laguna, José Luis Landet, Adriana Minoliti, Mariela Scafati, Pablo Siquier & Eduardo Stupía: My Buenos Aires https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/graciela-hasper-fernanda-laguna-jose-luis-landet-adriana-minoliti-mariela-scafati-pablo-siquier-eduardo-stupia-buenos-aires/

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Artists: Roberto Aizenberg, Nicanor Araoz, Marcela Astorga, Hugo Aveta, Nicolás Bacal, Ernesto Ballesteros, Eduardo Tomás Basualdo, Diego Bianchi, Joaquín Boz, Marcelo Brodsky, Eugenia Calvo, Gabriel Chaile, Nicola Costantino, Ariel Cusnir, Julián D’Angiolillo, Flavia Da Rin, Marina De Caro, Andrés Denegri, Mirtha Dermisache, Sebastián Diaz Morales, Matías Duville, Leandro Erlich, Tomás Espina & Martin Cordiano, León Ferrari, Ana Gallardo, Alberto Goldenstein, Gabriela Golder, Max Gómez Canle, Sebastián Gordin, Jorge Gumier Maier, Luján Fúnes, Graciela Hasper, Carlos Herrera, Carlos Huffmann, Roberto Jacoby, Magdalena Jitrik, Fabio Kacero, Guillermo Kuitca, Fernanda Laguna, Luciana Lamothe, José Luis Landet, Martín Legón, Catalina León, Donjo León, Marcos López, Jorge Macchi, Adriana Minoliti, Marta Minujín with Mark Brusse, Guillermina Mongan, Margarita Paksa, Esteban Pastorino, Marcelo Pombo, Santiago Porter, “Middle School Liliana Maresca Project” (Lorena Bossi, Ariel Cusnir, Sebastián Friedman, Leandro Tartaglia, Dani Zelko) with the students of highschool n°44 of La Cava de Fiorito, Pablo Reinoso, Marisa Rubio, Mariela Scafati, Pablo Siquier, Elisa Strada, Eduardo Stupía, Pablo Suárez, Luis Terán, Valeria Vilar, and Adrián Villar Rojas.

My Buenos Aires
June 20 – September 20, 2015
Maison Rouge
Buenos Aires, Argentina

My Buenos Aires at la maison rouge continues a series of exhibitions that showcases the art scene in cities worldwide. The series was launched in summer 2011 with Winnipeg, Canada, followed in 2013 by Johannesburg, South Africa. Some regret what they see as a “standardized” art world, laying the blame at globalization’s door, and so this seemed the opportune moment to look at centres of creativity which, though out of the spotlight, enjoy a thriving art scene of works infused with the city, its territory, history and myths.

Buenos Aires, a mystery reinvented

A mirror city, established twice (in 1536 and then again in 1580), “Our Lady of the Fair Winds” stands on Río de la Plata, the “silver river” that gave the country its name. Buenos Aires extends over two hundred square kilometres and is home to three million porteños (“port-dwellers” in Spanish). The Greater Buenos Aires conurbation has a population of fifteen and a half million, making it Latin America’s third most-populated agglomeration after Mexico City and São Paulo.

Described by Malraux as “the capital of an empire that never existed”, Buenos Aires fuels many fantasies. The mere mention of tango or beef, of Borges or Maradona, of Argentinean beauties will plunge anyone, even someone who has never set foot in the city, into dreamy nostalgia.

The visual and cultural familiarity that greets a European visitor can disappoint those in search of instant exoticism and pre-packaged emotions. Yet this is precisely where its power of seduction lies; in the (un)acquaintance of what we find when we peel away the masks of this tentacular city, which in 1914 was home to as many immigrants as Argentineans and where still today 40% of its residents were born elsewhere.

Buenos Aires is a child of immigration, whether voluntary or forced; a city haunted by absence. To live there is to accept estrangement and to overcome loss. Hardly surprisingly then, Buenos Aires shares New York’s love of psychoanalysis, and has one therapist for 120 inhabitants.

Seductive, Buenos Aires is no less sombre. It bears the stigmata of violence endured, of uprooting, dictatorship and the mourning of the many disappearances including, since the financial and economic crisis of 2001, that of its own image as a “major European power” that would inexplicably have alighted on the American continent.

The public protests that arose following the 2001 crisis have shown a capacity for counterpower that has no equivalent in the history of modern nations. Even in the throes of crisis, strikes and the pillaging of recent decades, Argentineans continue to wield sarcasm, dark humour and irony as a remedy against resignation.

A chameleon city, Buenos Aires comes with all the accoutrements of a modern conurbation – urban violence, air and noise pollution – yet behind the jacarandas that line its avenues it conserves the extraordinary capacity to reinvent itself and to reveal, unabashedly and sometimes even brutally, the pressing need to live better.

An artistic community that stand together

Authors and actors from all disciplines have in them this extraordinary and also determined capacity for reinvention. In the visual arts, decades of crisis and “getting by” have at least forged a community of artists who, irrespective of rivalries and conflicting views, face adversity as one.

Artists have responded to the lack of infrastructures and learning opportunities by throwing open their studios, hosting charlas (group discussions) where ideas can be brought out into the open. Those who do manage to enter the global art market willingly put their own money into supporting local creation. The grant endowed by painter Guillermo Kuitca, for example, gave an entire generation of artists between 1991 and 2011 access to a studio, and to critical and technical support with which to develop their work. Bola de nieve (“snowball”), a free website set up in 2005 by Ramona magazine, is a database of images where each artist invites another, thereby forming an endless chain. 1,135 artists now show their work there. In a similar spirit, an artist might often recommend visiting another artist’s studio, even when this means putting off visits to his or her own studio to another day.

A compelling movement

In the space of a few years, the map of Buenos Aires contemporary art has undergone substantial transformation to become more evenly spread between the city’s various neighbourhoods. Little by little, the art scene is moving away from the centre. Ruth Benzacar’s gallery, now in its fiftieth year, is leaving the historic Calle Florida for new premises west of the Palermo neighbourhood. New venues are opening in the north, such as Hotel de Inmigrantes. Further north still, the Haroldo Conti Memorial Cultural Centre includes a sculpture park that pays tribute to the men and women who disappeared during the dictatorship, and a cultural centre showing contemporary art. Di Tella, a private university with a famous past, launched an experimental research programme in 2010 under the directorship of the historian and curator Inés Katzenstein. To the south of the city, new director Victoria Noorthoorn is revolutionising the Buenos Aires Modern Art Museum (MAMBA).

The microcentro remains the city’s nerve centre at the heart of its history, and is still the site of numerous art venues, including the Fundación Osde, and galleries. The disgruntled still march on Plaza de Mayo while artists have begun to install works under the obelisk. This reconfiguration of Buenos Aires’ art venues symbolises a city that is gaining momentum, spreading its wings ready to fly. The direction it will take remains to be seen.

Cultural Policy

The city’s Culture Department is behind a number of initiatives which support this quality cultural provision.

The Patronage Law has forged stronger ties between business and the worlds of art and culture by encouraging the private sector to become involved with projects of cultural significance for the city. In a similar vein, thanks to the creation and development of the city’s southern zone (Polo Sur), artists have been able to revive parts of Buenos Aires which for decades languished outside the main exhibition circuits. Initiatives such as the arts district (Distrito de las Artes), the art factory (Usina del Arte), and numerous theatres, cultural centres and exhibition spaces have breathed new life into the south of the city whose industrial landscape now offers something new.

For several years, the successful Tandem programme has enabled art and culture taking place in Buenos Aires to resonate with comparable projects in other capital cities around the world, including Madrid, Amsterdam, Medellín and Paris.

Taking art into public spaces, installing sculptures in the city’s squares, organising open-air performances, launching new circuits such as in Calle Florida or the Borges Xul Solar walking tour… these and other initiatives illustrate the fusion between tradition and modernity, and show how new generations are embracing the city and its mythology.

My Buenos Aires, the exhibition

My Buenos Aires runs counter to the romantic vision of Buenos Aires. Paula Aisemberg and Albertine de Galbert seek to offer visitors to la maison rouge neither a portrait of the city nor a “who’s who” of Argentinean artists, but rather a sensation, an experience of the dynamics at work in the Argentine capital.

The exhibition moves back and forth between political and private, public space, the domestic and the unconscious, exploring themes such as instability, tension and explosion, masks, encryption and the strange.

Along their way, visitors will encounter remnants of facades, mutant scaffoldings, car bonnets, motorway junctions, burned-out houses and headless statues. They will decipher coded languages to the gentle sway of the music rising from the city and the whir of fans. When night falls, they can settle onto an old sofa and listen to a raspy tango, pick their way through the patched-up ruins of a kitchen that’s acting as though nothing was wrong, or study their reflection in the black ink of a white marble basin. They will sink into a waking dream inhabited by strangely unnerving doubles and faceless people falling from the sky, only to wake in the muffled folds of a stucco wedding cake.

With more than sixty artists working in all media, from installation to painting, sculpture, video and photography, four generations are represented. Established names such as León Ferrari, Guillermo Kuitca or Jorge Macchi will join others to be discovered. More than 15 of them will travel to Paris to work on in situ installations.

My Buenos Aires is an invitation to plunge into the mystery of Buenos Aires without attempting to resolve it, and to experience the unsettling strangeness of its multiple personalities.

June 23, 2015 Marcolina Dipierro, Silvia Gurfein, Graciela Hasper, Fernanda Laguna, Adriana Minoliti & Mariela Scafati: El teatro de la pintura https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcolina-dipierro-silvia-gurfein-graciela-hasper-fernanda-laguna-adriana-minoliti-mariela-scafati-el-teatro-de-la-pintura/

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Artists: Sergio Avello, Chiachio & Gianonne, Flavia Da Rin, Tulio de Sagastizabal, Juan del Prete, Marcolina Dipierro, Jorge Gumier Maier, Silvia Gurfein, Graciela Hasper, Magdalena Jitrik, Fabio Kacero, Fernanda Laguna, Alfredo Londaibere, Adriana Minoliti, Guillermina Mongan, Inés Raiteri, Mariela Scafati, Cristina Schiavi, Leila Tschopp, Paola Vega and Yente (Eugenia Crenovich).

El teatro de la pintura. Artistas argentinos en diálogo con Sonia Delaunay
November 8, 2014 – February 22, 2015
MAMBA
Buenos Aires, Argentina

La exposición, con curaduría de Jimena Ferreiro, toma como punto de partida las obras de Sonia Delaunay (Gradzihsk, Ucrania, 1885 – París, 1979) pertenecientes al patrimonio del Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires para contar una nueva historia, en tiempo presente, que la hace convivir con artistas argentinos modernos y contemporáneos. Una propuesta que sitúa a Delaunay fuera del relato habitual –aquel que la confina a ser la única mujer en un mundo europeo, moderno y profundamente masculino– para ensayar otra historia que despliega secuencias temporales distantes entre sí, las cuales permiten establecer correspondencias entre artistas y contextos diversos.

Las obras de Sergio Avello, Chiachio & Gianonne, Flavia Da Rin, Tulio de Sagastizabal, Juan del Prete, Marcolina Dipierro, Jorge Gumier Maier, Silvia Gurfein, Graciela Hasper, Magdalena Jitrik, Fabio Kacero, Fernanda Laguna, Alfredo Londaibere, Adriana Minoliti, Guillermina Mongan, Inés Raiteri, Mariela Scafati, Cristina Schiavi, Leila Tschopp, Paola Vega y Yente (Eugenia Crenovich), en diálogo con Sonia Delaunayprovocan la activación de otros sentidos de lo moderno, que permiten comprender las maneras en que estos artistas abordan la pintura y sus tradiciones. De este modo, más que una colección de imágenes que se aproximan por forma y color según el relato moderno tradicional, esta exposición convierte a Sonia Delaunay en un modo de hacer cuya fuerza irradiadora despliega una genealogía del arte local en clave abstracta, pero desobediente y sensual.

Imagen: Marcolina Dipierro, CME0002 – Instalación. Sin título. 7 círculos. Medidas variables sujetas a disposición -Madera, espejo, hierro y pintura acrílica – Año 2014
December 16, 2014 Graciela Hasper: Tramando https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/graciela-hasper-tramando/

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Artist: Graciela Hasper

Graciela Hasper
October 9 – November 6, 2014
Tramando Espacio Vidriera
Buenos Aires, Argentina

 

October 24, 2014 Graciela Hasper, Alexis Minkiewicz, Ramiro Oller: Variaciones sobre el círculo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/graciela-hasper-alexis-minkiewicz-ramiro-oller-variaciones-sobre-el-circulo/

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Artists: Graciela Hasper, Alexis Minkiewicz, Ramiro Oller, Juan Pablo Inzirillo, Paula Rivas, and Sebastián Mejía.

Variaciones sobre el círculo
October 3 -5, 2014
Centro Cultural Estación Mapocho
Santiago, Chile

El análisis de la formas geométricas ha sido un tópico tematizado y problematizado por las diferentes manifestaciones artísticas a lo largo de la historia de la arte. Haciéndose eco de esta reflexión y mostrando distintos exponentes del arte contemporáneo local e internacional que desarrollan sus trabajos en diferentes disciplinas, la galería Aldo de Sousa se complace en pre- sentar un eje curatorial que gira en torno a las variaciones sobre el círculo generadas a partir del disloque rítmico de la repetición. Constantes interrumpidas por la irrupción de la variación sobre lo circular, desde lo otro, también, artístico.

Cada uno de los artistas, desde su identidad, aporta al criterio riqueza plástica y teórica. Las variaciones están sujetas a diferentes enfoques que colocan el énfasis en distintos procesos creativos y estéticos. El círculo se encuentra rodeado y atravesado por aspectos que lo confor- man: desde (1) lo morfológico, en los trabajos de Alexis Minkiewicz (Argentina, b. 1988), donde el grafito sobre papel deconstruye en el espacio una secuencia circular que vira hacia líneas explosivas que se expanden y se contraen en sutiles monocromías; (2) desde lo cromático en la pintura de Graciela Hasper (Argentina, b. 1966) que, a partir de la combinación de elementos esféricos superpuestos, lleva al ojo hacia juegos ópticos y cinéticos de quirúrgico trazo. Desde (3) el material que utiliza Juan Pablo Inzirillo (Argentina, b. 1986) dotando de pureza al color y la imagen, arrojando el pigmento en polvo al vacío de transparencias plásticas en espacios de silencios metafísicos. También trabajando sobre la materia, Ramiro Oller (Argentina, b. 1982) combina el uso de elementos industriales al servicio del brillo y su reflejo y las texturas de sus superficies descubren una geometría (4) sensible al tacto.

Paula Rivas (Argentina, b. 1976) se sirve del movimiento para recrear (5) estructuras molecula- res mediante piedras minerales y dispositivos cinéticos que utilizan el círculo como módulo compositivo. Y siguiendo en esa línea reflexiva, Sebastián Mejía (Colombia, b. 1982) ubica lo esférico en (6) lo real ahí donde el ojo común tiende a subestimarlo y obviarlo, exponiendo el dominio de la geometría en la naturaleza, obligándonos a creer en una física que opera por encima de nuestro entendimiento y tentándonos a poner las sensaciones por encima del pensamiento: el círculo como origen.

Sobre un rico y variado abanico de soportes y herramientas compositivas se erige este conjun- to de artistas (dibujo, pintura, escultura, fotografía, nuevos soportes, materiales industriales) para problematizar sobre la abstracción, la geometría y las variaciones sobre el círculo a partir de su repetición en el arte contemporáneo.

October 17, 2014 Adriana Minoliti, Graciela Hasper & Silvia Gurfein: PintorAs https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/adriana-minoliti-graciela-hasper-silvia-gurfein-pintoras/

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Artists: Adriana Minoliti, Carla Bertone, Catalina León, Claudia del Ríó, Deborah Pruden, Diana Aisenberg, Florencia Bohtlingk, Graciela Hasper, Ines Raiteri, Leila Tschopp, Maria Guerrieri, Mariana Lopez, María Ibañez Lagos, Paola Vega, Silvia Gurfein, Valeria Maculan, and Veronica Di Toro.

PintorAs
July 31 – August 31, 2014
Sala Rivadavia
Diputación de Cádiz, Spain

PintorAs es la reunión de artistas contemporáneas que centran la creación de su obra en la pintura y son un recorte posible de la producción pictórica en la Argentina de los últimos 20 años. Convocadas por Paola Vega y Adriana Minoliti en 2009, cada artista seleccionó distintas obras de su acervo y PintorAs realiza la primera exposición en el MACRO (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario) en marzo del 2010, con la participación de Roberto Echen. Después de esa experiencia inicial Carla Bertone propone el proyecto PintorAs a la Fundación Andreani para el Premio Itinerancia por el país. Una nueva versión de PintorAs se exhibe en el MAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo) de Salta; el Museo Vidal de Corrientes y el Museo de Casilda de Santa Fe. Posteriormente, por invitación del curador, Benjamín Aitala, PintorAs se exhibe en el Centro Cultural Hogar San José de Olavarría. Por iniciativa de Claudia del Río la muestra se instala en el Auditorio de Mar del Plata recibida por Daniel Besoytaorube. Verónica Di Toro logra aterrizar una nueva versión en el Centro Cultural Borges de Buenos Aires, gracias a Lía Cristal. Estas muestras son asistidas por PintorAs que curan el montaje y realizan talleres, visitas guiadas y charlas, en relación a la pintura como dispositivo. El grupo toma decisiones expositivas en reuniones reales y virtuales intentando el consenso y se propone como continuación producir nuevas reflexiones teóricas acerca de su trabajo para publicarlas en este blog y eventualmente en formato papel.

 

August 26, 2014 Marta Chilindrón & Graciela Hasper: Dialogues https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marta-chilindron-graciela-hasper-dialogues/

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Artists: Marta Chilindrón and Graciela Hasper.

Dialogues
July 10, 2014
Sicardi Gallery
Houston, TX, USA

In Dialogues, both artists explore geometry and transparency within their respective practices. Chilindron’s brightly-colored acrylic sculptures range from 12-inch cubes to almost 6-foot high movable trapezoids and spirals. Hinged together, these works can be reconfigured into variations on each shape, creating an interactive conversation with the viewer. Hasper’s untitled acrylic paintings on canvas also take geometry as their starting point. Overlapping and repeated shapes in a palette of bold colors are layered to allow for surprising juxtapositions and vibrant relationships between forms. Hasper’s paintings, like Chilindron’s sculptures, are not fixed in space; they can be installed vertically or horizontally, or changed over the course of the exhibition.

Dialogues places these exquisite constructions and paintings in counterpoint with one another, pointing out their conceptual and aesthetic points of intersection.

July 18, 2014 MACBA: Geometría al límite https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alejandra-barreda-fabian-burgos-silvia-gurfein-graciela-hasper-karina-peisajovich-pablo-siquier-carola-zech-geometria-al-limite/

Invitación

Geometría al límite
December 14, 2013 – March 14, 2014
MACBA
Buenos Aires, Argentina

MACBA aims to generate new approaches to current geometric abstraction with works from its permanent collection. The exhibition invites us to observe and reflect on the production of twenty-five artists who have developed their lines of researches with intensity from the 90s to present day in Argentina.

In this exhibition some of the artists use industrial materials to investigate on their technical possibilities. They use leds, car paint, adhesive scotch tapes, magnets and tarpaulin as a medium, coexisting with works made with traditional techniques such as oil painting, acrylic and silkscreen, revisited from a contemporary perspective.

On the other hand, some artists reflect on architecture and urban life, and link the experience of “inhabiting” a city with the abstract language through large format works. In the works we find explicit references to speed, spatial representational systems and the experience of living in the cities.

Many of these artists are turning to technology as subject and also as a tool in their production, both present in the process and final result of their artworks. They are torn between the digital and the analog world, reflecting the importance of information in contemporary society.

Some of these artists investigate on the pure form of art, revealing the properties of color. Among these, we find the kinetic qualities, tonal contrasts, the intensity of pigments and vibration, and even their emotional and psychological connotations.

Geometría al límite shows clearly the multiple visual and conceptual possibilities offered by this language. Far from exhausted, continues to renew itself unlimitedly under the direct imprint of each artist in dialogue with the present.

Alejandra Barreda, Carla Bertone, Cecilia Biagini, Gabriela Böer, Fabián Burgos, Juan José Cambre, Natalia Cacchiarelli, Valeria Calvo, Beto de Volder, Verónica Di Toro, Lucio Dorr, Mariano Ferrante, Jimena Fuertes, Silvia GurfeinGraciela Hasper, Guillermo Kuitca, Julia Masvernat, Karina Peisajovich, Inés Raiteri, Roberto Scafidi, Pablo Siquier, Andrés Sobrino, Leila Tchopp, Mariano Vilela and Carola Zech.

December 10, 2013 Graciela Hasper https://abstractioninaction.com/artists/graciela-hasper/

Translated from Spanish

My work literally expands since I use large formats and city-scale, as well as photography, video, cement floors and iron in three dimensions, always departing from small drawings and watercolors on paper. It could be seen as a pastiche that is saturated by an enormous quantity of meanings, derived from quotes to historical modernisms and avant-gardes in Latin America. I systematize painting itself and more precisely on the history of geometric and abstract painting.

The concepts that represent on the one hand visual perspective and on the other work as a learning and action tool are fundamental to me. Most of my work is based on color as the support of content. Colors stimulate optic movement and color has also been devalued since the time of the neoplatonic, and is treated as a lesser element. Congruent with my painting, video is (or tries to be) a question about the shape of space, vibration of color and light.

I always wanted to work with architecture. I realized that precisely under the project is linked to the aim of coherence, the expanded sense of three-dimensionality, and also the idea of collaboration appears. I believe that it is possible for art and architecture to work interactively. Even though the discourse of architecture is not the same as that of art for different reasons, meanings and mediums, the affinities are clear: space, work and observer; architecture, artistic proposal and landscape.

Sculpture and digital work in variable measure lacks a horizon or an up and down, and it is possible to install it in any potential position.

 

Mi trabajo se expande literalmente por trabajar la pintura en grandes tamaños y en escala de ciudad y también por usar otros soportes como la fotografía, el video, pisos de cemento y el hierro en tres dimensiones siempre partiendo del pequeño dibujo y acuarela sobre papel. Podrá ser visto como un pastiche saturado por una gran cantidad de significados, derivados de citas a los modernismos históricos latinoamericanos y las vanguardias. Se ejerce una sistematización sobre la pintura misma, y más precisamente sobre la historia de la pintura abstracta y geométrica.

Son fundamentales los conceptos que representan por un lado la perspectiva visual y por otro lado sirven como herramienta de aprendizaje y acción. Mucho de mi trabajo se basa en el color como soporte del contenido. Los colores estimulan el movimiento ocular y además el color está bastante desvalorizado desde los neoplatónicos para aca y asociado como algo menor. Coincidentemente con mi pintura, el video también es [o son o tratan de ser] una pregunta sobre la forma del espacio, la vibración del color y la luz.

Siempre quise trabajar con la arquitectura. Me di cuenta que justamente bajo la palabra proyecto se une la aspiración de coherencia, del sentido expandido de tridimensionalidad y también surge la idea de principio de colaboración. Creo que es posible para el arte y la arquitectura trabajar interactivamente. Aunque el discurso de la arquitectura no sea el mismo que el del arte por diferentes motivos, significados y medios; las afinidades son claras: espacio, obra y observador; arquitectura, propuesta artística y paisaje.

La obra escultórica y digital siempre en medida variable como en el caso de mi pintura carece de horizonte o arriba y abajo y fuese posible ubicarla en cualquier potencial posición.

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

Prizes / Fellowships

Solo Exhibitions

Group Exhibitions

Collections

 

October 5, 2013