Monochrome Undone
SPACE Collection

Curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
October 24, 2015 – April 1, 2016
SPACE, Irvine, CA

Artists: Ricardo Alcaide, Alejandra Barreda, Andrés Bedoya*, Emilio Chapela, Eduardo Costa, Danilo Dueñas, Magdalena Fernández, Valentina Liernur, Marco Maggi, Manuel Mérida, Gabriel de la Mora, Miguel Angel Ríos, Lester Rodríguez, Eduardo Santiere, Emilia Azcárate, Marta Chilindrón, Bruno Dubner, Rubén Ortíz-Torres, Fidel Sclavo, Renata Tassinari, Georgina Bringas, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Thomas Glassford, José Luis Landet, Jorge de León, Bernardo Ortiz, Martin Pelenur, Teresa Pereda, Pablo Rasgado, Ricardo Rendón, Santiago Reyes Villaveces, Mariela Scafati, Gabriel Sierra, Jaime Tarazona, Adán Vallecillo, Horacio Zabala.

The monochrome as a focus in the SPACE Collection began in a spontaneous form and soon became a systematic field of research. This exhibition is about the contemporary monochrome in Latin America. The monochrome is one of the most elusive and complex art forms of modern and contemporary art. If we think about its origins or meaning, we find that the monochrome is many contradictory things. The monochrome is neither a movement nor a category; it is not an “ism” or a thing. It may be painting as object, the material surface of the work itself, the denial of perspective or narrative, or anything representational. The monochrome may be a readymade, a found object, or an environment—anything in which a single color dominates. The monochrome can be critical and unstable, especially when it dialogues critically or in tension with modernism. This exhibition is organized into four different themes: The Everyday Monochrome, The White Monochrome, The Elusive Monochrome and The Transparent Monochrome. These themes have been conceived to create context and suggest interpretations that otherwise might be illegible.  These may overlap at times, pointing to the multiplicity of content in many of the works. The unclassifiable and variable nature of the monochrome in Latin America today is borne of self-criticality and from unique Latin contexts, to exist within its own specificity and conceptual urgency.

To purchase the catalogue click here.

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El monocromo, como enfoque de SPACE Collection, comenzó de forma espontánea y a poco se convirtió en un campo de investigación sistemático. Esta exposición trata sobre el monocromo contemporáneo en América latina. El monocromo es una de las formas de arte más elusivas y complejas del arte moderno y contemporáneo. Si reflexionamos acerca de sus orígenes o su significado, nos encontramos con que puede albergar muchas cosas contradictorias. El monocromo no es un movimiento ni una categoría; no es un “ismo” ni una cosa. Puede ser la pintura como objeto, la superficie material de la obra, la negación de la perspectiva o de todo lo representativo o narrativo. El monocromo puede ser un readymade, un objeto encontrado, un cuadro o un ambiente: cualquier cosa definida como una superficie cromáticamente uniforme donde un solo color predomina. El monocromo puede ser crítico e inestable, especialmente cuando se dialoga críticamente o en tensión con el modernismo. Esta exposición está organizada en cuatro temas: el monocromo cotidiano, el monocromo blanco, el monocromo elusivo y el monocromo transparente. Estos temas han sido concebidos a fin de crear un contexto y sugerir interpretaciones que de otra manera podrían ser ilegibles. Éstos pueden superponerse a veces, apuntando a la multiplicidad de contenidos en muchas de las obras. La naturaleza indeterminada, inclasificable y variable del monocromo en Latinoamérica hoy en día es producto de la autocrítica y de los contextos propios, para existir dentro de su propia especificidad y urgencia conceptual.

• Projects

Artists: Regina Aprijaskis, Emilia Azcárate, Valerie Brathwaite, Feliza Bursztyn, Marta Chilindrón, Mirtha Dermisache, Diana de Solares, Noemí Escandell, María Freire, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt), Anna Bella Geiger, Mercedes Elena González, Ana Mercedes Hoyos, Elizabeth Jobim, Judith Lauand, Ana Maria Maiolino, Marta Minujín, Mercedes Pardo, Liliana Porter, Margot Römer, Lotty Rosenfeld, Ana Sacerdote, Fanny Sanín, Adriana Santiago, Mariela Scafati, Antonieta Sosa, and Yeni & Nan.

Folding: Line, Space & Body / Latin American Women Artists Working Around Abstracion
Curated by Aimé Iglesias Lukin
July 9 – August 21, 2015
Henrique Faria Fine Art
NY, NY, USA

Folding is the action through which a line turns into a figure, a plane becomes tridimensional, and a painting becomes an object. And beyond all these actions, we see how representation becomes presentation.

Since the historical avant-garde, the quest for an art that transcended the representation of reality has led artists to create abstract art and to focus on the material objecthood of a painting or sculpture. This exhibition presents the work of Latin American women artists from the 1950s through the present day, showing the different ways in which they worked with abstraction and geometry to explore the space of the artwork and that of the spectator, as mediated by the body.

Latin American abstraction has gained recognition worldwide in the last decade. Exhibitions like “Inverted Utopias,” curated by Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea in 2004 and “The Geometry of Hope,” curated by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro in 2007, presented the diverse abstract movements that developed in the Post War Latin American metropolis, from Joaquín Torres García and Escuela del Sur in Montevideo, to Arte Concreto Invención and Madí in Buenos Aires, the Ruptura group in São Paulo and the work of Alejandro Otero and Jesús Rafael Soto in Caracas.

In all of these avant-garde scenes, women artists gained—not without struggle—a place of recognition and a social circle in which they could develop their profession with relative tolerance. Still, except a few exceptions like Gego, Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape, it is mostly male artists we see represented in museums and art history books. This exhibition does not intend to resolve that problem, which is of a much larger scale, but aims to present some of their production and to explore the formal and creative connections among this diverse group of artists from the continent. This show also chooses to escape the historical understanding of abstraction, which is referred to here not as the Post-war movement but more broadly as a creative strategy that has continued through the decades. In this way, Judith Lauand’s planimetric work of 1960 can be seen alongside the contemporary pyramidal sculptures of Marta Chilindrón, and the use of the grid in 1950s and 1960s abstraction can be observed in Anna Bella Geiger’s video Passagens II from 1974 or in Emilia Azcarate’s Sudoku series from 2009.

The earliest-made piece in the show is that of Uruguayan artist María Freire, who co-founded in 1952 the group Arte No-Figurativo along with her husband José Pedro Costigliolo, Antonio Llorens and other artists. Works like Composición vertical (1956), show her interest in orthogonal compositions and planar superimpositions, which along with her use of line demonstrate her interest not simply in abstraction and space but more specifically in dynamism. In a similar spirit, but resulting in a very different work, Judith Lauand’s Concrete 178 (1960) presents a flat geometric composition, in monochrome grays, that through a careful use of lines and planes suggests a volumetric and angular surface. Known as the “Dama do concretismo,” Lauand was the only female member of Brazil’s Grupo Ruptura, and created unique works through a very personal use of geometry, mathematics and space.

In contrast, Mercedes Pardo’s acrylic painting Untitled (c. 1975) explores space recession not through line but using color fields. The Venezuelan artist, who was a pioneer of abstract art in Venezuela along with her husband Alejandro Otero, focused on a sensorial use of color in abstract compositions to achieve the autonomy of painting. Along with Pardo, the other representative of geometric abstraction from Venezuela in this exhibition is Margot Römer, whose triptych from the series Plomos Despojados (1995) uses the panel subdivisions to present three variations of a rectangular structure by alternating the color distribution. A similar emphasis in color is seen in Acrylic No. 7, painted in 1978 by Colombian artist Fanny Sanín, who creates a complex arrangement of intersecting rectangles of different purple hues. This simple alteration of tone in one color still allows Sanín to create a rich composition of receding planes that suggests rhythmic movement and dynamism. Indeed, movement is directly incorporated in Essai de Couleur Animée, a film made by Ana Sacerdote in between 1959 and 1965 in which she interposes geometric chromatic compositions, animating their shapes.

The case of Regina Aprijaskis exemplifies the difficulties of being a woman artist and of combining work and personal life. The Peruvian artist was developing a fruitful career and became interested in abstraction in the 1950s and 1960s after two trips to New York, but abandoned painting in 1970 following the coup d’état in Peru two years earlier, to work alongside her husband in his factory. Her 1996 acrylic painting Negro, rojo y blanco demonstrates how her interest in geometric abstraction stayed intact after a 26-year hiatus, at the same time the choice of the Peruvian flag’s colors seems to speak directly about her country’s political and social struggles.

Other works in the show leave color aside and refer to the white monochrome also with the means of exploring geometry and space.  That is the case of Ana Mercedes Hoyos’ 1970s series Atmósferas, where subtle variations of white hues suggest surfaces on the canvas. Similarly, Anna Maria Maiolino’s Light Image (1971) depends on a simple square embossing on paper to invoke the tradition of the monochrome. The square is also the theme of Gego’s Dibujo sin papel 79/14, made in 1979. Famous for her Reticuláreas, or net sculptures, in this work the Venezuelan artist uses wire and metal to frame a piece of the wall, allowing the shadow to become part of the work, continuing the integration of work and exhibition space that allowed her work to spatially affect the spectator.

The relationship between the gallery space and the visitor’s body became a main topic of interest for artists in the late 1960s, notably within Minimalism and among Western artists, but similar creative inquiries were being made in Latin America. Argentinean artist Noemí Escandell created sculptural projects such as Rectangles and Squares and Volumes, Bodies and Displacements, both from 1966, in which basic geometric shapes are combined in odd dispositions to affect the tridimensional perception of the object. In Venezuela, Antonieta Sosa was doing similar work with pieces like Stable-Unstable (1967/2014), which put into question geometry and the laws of gravity while simultaneously presenting organically aesthetic objects.

The body would later be presented directly, rather than invoked, in the work of artists such as Liliana Porter and Yeni & Nan. The Argentine is represented with her 1973 work Untitled (Line), in which her finger is photographed as interrupting a line, one that transcends the frame of the work onto the real space of the wall. In the Polaroid series Cuerpo y línea (1977), the Venezuelan duo Yeni & Nan position their bodies along the geometric designs of a tennis court, evolving the linear and geometric tradition of their home country to include performance and body art.

The urban space is also the canvas chosen by Brazilian conceptual artist Anna Bella Geiger, whose video Passagens II (1974) shows her body creating diagonal trajectories in the grid-like formation of the steps of a stairway. In a similar approach, Lotty Rosenfeld’s ongoing series Geometría de la línea, begun in 1979, intervenes the infinite number of broken white lines that divide a road with intersecting, transversal lines, in a formal but also powerfully political performance associated to her participation in the CADA group protesting the dictatorship in Chile. The relationship between geometry and power is explicit in Marta Minujín’s The Obelisk Lying Down (1978). The work, created for the first Latin American Biennial in São Pablo, presents the geometrical structure of the famous monumental form lying down, allowing spectators to walk through it in a democratizing and desacralizing gesture.

In the exhibition we also encounter more expressive uses of abstraction, where experimentation with materials led to more free-flowing forms. This is the case of Mirtha Dermisache’s graphisms from the 1970s, where the lines drawn by the Argentine artist sinuously move to create abstract texts. The abstract sculpture Untitled (1981) by Colombian artist Feliza Brusztyn, who in 1967 created the famous series of motorized sculptures Las histéricas, also combines dissonant materials into visually striking, amorphous objects. Trinidanian artist Valerie Brathwaite opts for anti-geometric shapes in her Soft Bodies, a series initiated in 2011, where the hanging and floor fabric sculptures play fluidly between the borders of figuration and abstraction.

After all these decades, geometry is still very much present in the work of younger artists. Sometimes the continuity takes place by claiming geometric abstraction directly, like Mercedes Elena González’s series September 1955 (2014), which re-conceptualizes the cover of the inaugural issue of the art and architecture magazine Integral to reevaluate the legacy of modernism in Venezuela. Others adapt geometric abstraction into new formats, like the wood piece Untitled (Free Construction No. 1) (2005) by Diana de Solares. In the case of Elizabeth Jobim’s Wall (2015), geometric shapes invade the wall and floor, overlapping each other and creating optical layers. Emilia Azcárate’s Untitled (Sudoku), from 2009 takes the grid of that game as influence and codifies numbers into colors, allowing her to create a meditative abstraction that juxtaposes the game’s problem with its solution. Formally opposite to this grid but equally colorful is Adriana Santiago’s Untitled from the series Maracaibo (2015), which combines pompoms into a frame in a playful and appealing tactile composition. The work of Marta Chilindrón retakes the tradition of dynamic planes and shapes of Gego and Lygia Clark but includes color as a key part of her manipulable works such as 27 Triangles (2011). Finally, Mariela Scafati goes back to the original questions of abstract painting in her works Tu nombre completo and Nueve minutos exactos, both from 2015, which literally –through bondage ropes— and conceptually –by transforming them into objects— tense the possibilities of what a painting can be: not a representation but an object, a body itself.

These interactions between the artwork, its surrounding spaces and the bodies that interact with it are present through the sixty years in which these artworks were created. The formal explorations initiated by the historical avant-gardes have not, as proven by the younger generation, exhausted themselves. This group of women artists from Latin America offer a wide range of answers to these questions, all personal but also collective. The line and the plane not only folded but became the body, expanding the shape of art above and beyond.

Aimé Iglesias Lukin

• Happenings

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.

• Happenings

Artists: Ananké Asseff, Juan Becú, Joaquín Boz, Sofía Bohtlingk, Dino Bruzzone, Elena Dahn, Bruno Dubner, Matías Duville, Julieta Escardó, Raúl Flores, Margarita García Faure, Lisa Giménez, Alberto Goldenstein, Max Gómez Canle, Sebastiám Gordín, Diego Gravinese, Silvia Gurfein, Silvana Lacarra, Estefanía Landesmann, Marcos López, Eduardo Médici, Emiliano Miliyo, Jorge Miño, Andrea Ostera, Esteban Pastorino, Oscar Pintor, Santiago Porter, Dalila Puzzovio, Res, Jorge Roiger, Rosa Chancho, Mariela Scafati, Pablo Suárez, Rosana Schoijett, Paula Senderowicz, Rosana Simonassi, Cecilia Szalkowicz, Mariano Vilela, Martín Weber, Pablo Ziccarello.

In Fraganti
Curated by Valeria González
April 11 – July 18, 2015
ArtexArte
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Proyecto que investiga la “y” que une y separa, de manera fluctuante, a la pintura y la fotografía, no tanto como disciplinas estables sino los espacios intermedios, dialógicos o conflictivos, en que los lenguajes se cruzan y engendran nuevas prácticas y pensamientos.

Se trata sobre todo de cruces de dispositivos, algunos de los cuales advienen en la desembocadura de largos procesos históricos.

• Happenings

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

• Happenings

Artists: Juan Becú, Sofía Bohtlingk, Rosa Chancho, Silvia Gurfein, Guido Ignatti, Fernanda Laguna, Ramiro Oller, Tiziana Pierri, Marisa Rubio, Mariela Scafati and Juan Tessi.

Pintura Buenos Aires 2014
November 15 – December 31, 2014
Nora Fisch
Buenos Aires, Argentina

En Argentina se pinta.  La tradición pictórica es fuerte, y a pesar de la energía con que se despliegan otras prácticas artísticas a nivel local –ya sean relacionadas a la imagen en movimiento, lo conceptual o la performance– la pintura permanece viva, empujando sus propios límites, reconsiderándose, en el centro del foco de artistas de generaciones jóvenes e intermedias.  Esta muestra, que inaugura el nuevo espacio de la galería, aspira a ser un recorrido por algunas de estas obras, que empujan, fuerzan, tuercen, reconsideran lo pictórico, ya sea desde su lenguaje mismo (Pierri, Becú, Gurfein),  contaminándolo desde otros medios y materiales (Scaffatti, Oller, Bothlingk, Ignatti) o desde una mirada desde afuera, desde prácticas performáticas o esencialmente conceptuales (Rosa Chancho, Marisa Rubio).

Image: Guido Ignatti, Collage para cajones, collage, papel enmarcado en cajones, 60 x 44 cm, 2014

• Happenings

Artist: Mariela Scafati

Las palabras vienen después
May 11, 2014
María Casado Home Gallery
Buenos Aires, Argentina

• Happenings

Mariela Scafati
Paintings Where I Am (1998-2013)

Centro Cultural Recoleta, EGGO, Argentina

Mariela Scafati’s paintings comprise a record on personal experiences, displayed over a very wide diapason of artistic aspirations and abilities—the language of geometric abstraction, modern design and applied art, the activation of communication with the viewer and of spaces for artistic participation in the city, political propaganda and direct action, are some of the applications Scafati found for her painting in a time span encompassing her work in Buenos Aires since the late 90s, after having studied Fine Arts in Bahía Blanca. Painting, in these conditions, is not only the outlet for biography, but also a language contiguous with more experiences and practices: a language, in the end, which can be spoken in the street, at the gallery, in artists’ spaces like Belleza y Felicidad (where Scafati produced some of her main exhibitions) in political demonstrations, or in a home radio station. To find Scafati’s whereabouts in these and other spaces and environments during the last fifteen years would be analogous to measure the recent artistic history of Buenos Aires, to discover its places, its obsessions and ambitions. Color and geometric patterns are the elements through which Scafati’s works settle their time and environment. “Being,” within Scafati’s vocabulary, is a verb stronger than its common definitions; it means involvement with the spirit of an era, and a strange sense of belonging.

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La pintura de Mariela Scafati forma un registro de experiencias personales, desplegado sobre un diapasón muy amplio de anhelos y capacidades artísticas: el lenguaje de la abstracción geométrica, el diseño moderno y el arte aplicado, la activación de mecanismos de comunicación con el espectador y de espacios de participación artística en la ciudad, la propaganda y la acción directa son algunas de las aplicaciones que Scafati encontró para la pintura en un arco temporal que la encuentra trabajando en Buenos Aires desde fines de los años noventa del siglo pasado, luego de haber estudiado Bellas Artes en la ciudad de Bahía Blanca. La pintura, en estas condiciones, no sólo resulta el canal de una biografía, sino también un lenguaje contiguo con otras experiencias y prácticas: un lenguaje que puede hablarse en la calle, en la galería, en espacios de artistas como Belleza y Felicidad (donde Scafati realizó algunas de sus principales exhibiciones), en una manifestación política o desde una estación de radio casera. Averiguar el paradero de Scafati en estos y otros espacios y ambientes a lo largo de los últimos quince años equivaldría a realizar una medición de la historia reciente de la escena artística de Buenos Aires, descubrir sus lugares, sus manías y sus ambiciones. El color y los patrones geométricos son los elementos mediante los cuales la obra de Scafati deja sedimentado su ambiente y su tiempo. “Estar”, en el vocabulario de Scafati, es un verbo mucho más fuerte que cualquiera de sus acepciones corriente: significa involucramiento con el ánimo de una época, y un extraño sentido de pertenencia.

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• Projects

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

• 1992-1997: Profesorado de Artes Visuales. Escuela Superior de Artes Visuales “Lino Enea Spilimbergo, Bahía Blanca, Argentina.
• 1992-1995: Diseño Gráfico. Escuela Superior de Artes Visuales “Lino Enea Spilimbergo”, Bahía Blanca, Argentina.

Prizes / Fellowships

• 2012: Premio Petrobras, ArteBA 2012,  con el proyecto “La Multisectorial Invisible”, junto a Guillermina Mongan, Ana Gallardo, Elisa Strada, Gustavo Doliner  y Lola Granillo http://lamultisectorialinvisible.tumblr.com/
• 2012: Premio Institucional Fondo Nacional de las Artes,  LXVI Salón Nacional de Rosario, Argentina.
• 2010/2011: Beca Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2006: Beca Nacional, Artes Plásticas, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Argentina.
• 2003: Workshop Bogo-día, Centre du Soleil d’Afrique, coordinado por Trama y RAIN (red de iniciativa de artistas) Bienal Nacional de Fotografía, Bamako, Mali, África.
• 2003: Residencia, Centre de Art Contemporain 19, Montbeliard, Francia.
• 1998-1999: Mención Especial y Premio de Pintura “Banco Provincia”, ArteBA , Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1997/1999: Programa de becas para artistas jóvenes Guillermo Kuitca, Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1996: Premio Adquisición Bienal Reg. de Bahía Blanca, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Argentina.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2013: “Pinturas donde estoy(1998-2013)”, curated by Claudio Iglesias, feria Eggo, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Argentina.
• 2013: “Ni verdaderas ni falsas”, Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2011: “Windows”, galería Daniel Abate, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2009: “Sos un sueño”, galería Daniel Abate, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2009: “¡Teléfono!”, ciclo en diálogo con Lidy Prati, curated by Ana Gallardo, Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2005: “Scafati, un cuadro”, Belleza y felicidad, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2004: “Mariam Traoré”, Escuelita Belleza y felicidad de Villa Fiorito, provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2002: “Óleo”, Espacio Lelé de Troya, curated by Ana Gallardo, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2001: “Pintura gustosa,curada por Marcelo de la Fuente”, Casona de los Olivera, Parque Avellaneda, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2001: “SHOW ME YOUR PINK”, galería Bis, Rosario, Santa Fé, Argentina.
• 2001: “He venido para decirte que me voy”, galería Belleza y felicidad, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2000: “Pinturas y pared”, galería Belleza y felicidad, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Publications

• Pinturas donde estoy (1998-2013), Sayago & Pardon.
• Revista Otra parte Nº 29, 2013, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Revista CIA Nº1, 2012, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Collections

• Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bahía Blanca (MACBA), Argentina.
• Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Salta (MACSA), Argentina.
• Colección Sayago & Pardon, California, USA.
• Colección de Gustavo Bruzonne, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Colección  de Alejandro Ikonicof, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Colección de Alec Oxenford, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Colección Banco Supervielle.
• Colección Banco Provincia.

• Artists