Artists: Omar Barquet, José Bedia, Jorge Méndez Blake, Carlos Cárdenas, Los Carpinteros, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Eugenio Dittborn, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, Carlos Garaicoa, Guillermo Kuitca, Gilda Mantilla, Moris, Vik Muniz, Oscar Muñoz, Damián Ortega, Liliana Porter, Sandra Ramos, Pablo Rasgado, Camilo Restrepo, Graciela Sacco, Ana Tiscornia, José  A. Vincench, Ishmael Randall Weeks, and many others.

A Sense of Place – Selections from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection
Curated by Patricia Hanna and Anelys Alvarez
December 3-6, 2015
Mana Contemporary
Miami, FL, USA

Despite the fact that these artists are working in a globalized society, where technology and communication transcend physical boundaries, many continue to construct personal and cultural identities by exploring ideas that are specific to their own experiences and places of origin. The show will examine the idea of building such an identity; how artists use abstraction, architecture, politics and memory to carve out a sense of place; and how these concerns are reflected in Pérez as a collector and in Miami as a developing city. Artists in the show include a mix of well-known and emerging art stars from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay, including: Omar Barquet, José Bedia, Jorge Méndez Blake, Carlos Cárdenas, Los Carpinteros, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Eugenio Dittborn, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, Carlos Garaicoa, Guillermo Kuitca, Gilda Mantilla, Moris, Vik Muniz, Oscar Muñoz, Damián Ortega, Liliana Porter, Sandra Ramos, Pablo Rasgado, Camilo Restrepo, Graciela Sacco, Ana Tiscornia, José  A. Vincench, Ishmael Randall Weeks, and many others.

Jorge M. Pérez was named one of the most influential Hispanics in the U.S. by TIME magazine, and is considered a visionary for his contributions to South Florida’s cultural and artistic landscape, as well as his integration of world-class art into each of his real estate developments.

A Sense of Place is being held at Mana Wynwood Convention Center, 318 NW 23rd Street, Miami, Florida.

• Happenings

Artists: Miguel Andrade Valdez, Julieta Aranda, Kader Attia, Elena Bajo, Otto Berchem, Monika Bravo, Fernando Bryce, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Heman Chong, Elena Damiani, Marlon de Azambuja, Milagros de la Torre, Aleksandar Duravcevic, Nicole Franchy, Richard Garet, Kendell Geers, Pedro Gomez-Egaña, Radamés Juni Figueroa, Lucia Koch, Annette Lemieux, Jose Carlos Martinat, Jo Ractliffe, Rivka Rinn, Santiago Roose, Susan Siegel, DM Simons, Antonio Vega Macotela, Sergio Vega, and Zoé T. Vizcaíno.

THEOREM. You Simply Destroy the Image. I Always Had of Myself
Curated by Octavio Zaya
May 3 – August 1, 2015
Mana Contemporary
Miami, FL, USA

Several artists from far-flung locations such as Peru, Brazil, and Norway, are traveling to Mana to create their installations on-site. The artists address the hypothetical question ‘what if?’ – as inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1968 film Teorema – contemplating a world turned upside-down, where social tensions can be amplified to the point of poetic subversion, achieving possible transcendence.

Image: Miguel Andrade Valdez, Encofrado Construção III, 2015.

• Happenings

Artists: Emilia Azcárate, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck, Cecilia Biagini, Sigfredo Chacón, Emilio Chapela, Eduardo Costa, Willys de Castro, Diana de Solares, Marcolina Dipierro, Eugenio Espinoza, Jaime Gili, Mathias Goeritz, Juan Iribarren, Bárbara Kaplan, Ramsés Larzábal, Raúl Lozza, Beatriz Olano, César Paternosto, Alejandro Puente, Luis Roldán, Osvaldo Romberg, Joaquín Torres García, and Horacio Zabala.

Dirty Geometry
December 2 -7, 2014
Curated by Osvaldo Romberg
Mana Contemporary
Miami, FL, USA

Dirty geometry has existed throughout 20th century art although not in a manifest way; it implies a subversion of the laws of logical rigor, systemism and utopian modernism that have pervaded geometry since Kandinsky. In his milestone book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky argues against geometry as decoration; instead, he promotes geometrical painting as a spiritual tool. The quest of the spiritual, of a balance between the mind and intellectual order constituted the fundamental idea behind geometric art. Geometrical abstraction was used in different times, as we see for instance in Kandinsky’s compositions, in the rigorous nihilism of Malevich’s “Black on Black”, and in the concrete iconography of Max Bill.

Through my concept of “Dirty Geometry,” I want to undermine the rigid, global imposition of geometry that has dominated from the beginning of the 20th century. Of course, other artists have already played with this approach more or less consciously: Rothko when he broke the grid, Frank Stella with his Cone and Pillars series from the eighties.

However I came to realize that Latin-America offers the most prominent examples of “Dirty Geometry.” First, this might be explained by the often rudimentary absorption of the center by the periphery, as peripheral access to major art trends has long been mediated by art reproductions, and perceived through local cultural prisms. This is even truer in Latin-America where most countries lacked a radical and contemporary art scene. Secondly, in Latin America one always finds forms of political and existential resistance against the values of neo-liberalism embodied by the center.

“Dirty Geometry” will question different aspects of American, Russian and European abstract art such as the imposition of polished finish on paintings, the compositions and the purity of its lines, classical applications of colors inherited from the Bauhaus, Concrete Art, etc.

In the forties for instance, the Latin-American group MADI challenged the format of the canvas, the relation between two and three dimensions, etc. In the sixties the Latin-America group of Kinetic Art in Paris challenged the static geometry produced by artists such as Vasarely and Herbin, and introduced movement, light and shadow to abstract art.

I would therefore suggest that Latin-America has proceeded to elaborate a kind of creolization of the dominant geometrical art; this is a recurrent phenomenon in other fields of Latin-American culture, and we encounter it in religion, education, food, inventions, etc.

The more figuration moves away from reality and representation, the more it needs to resort to theory in order to retain legitimacy. Geometry as we traditionally conceive it can only be legitimized by a tight, rigid theoretical framework. “Dirty Geometry” is therefore a rebellious attempt to break from all theoretical frameworks and thus invent a geometry that would be free from theory. This is a dirty war, one that we could define as “below the belt”.  George Bataille believed that “divine filth” brings about true eroticism; likewise, I would suggest that it is possible to bring about an eroticism of geometry through dirt.

• Happenings