Artists: Elena Asins (Spain), Kader Attia (France), Robert Barry (U.S), Pavel Büchler (U.K), Paulo Bruscky (Brazil), Waltercio Caldas (Brazil), Luis Camnitzer (Uruguay), Arturo Cuenca (Cuba), Sandu Darie Romania (Cuba), Antonio Dias (Brazil),  Iran do Espírito Santo (Brazil), Juan Downey (Chile, U.S),  Marcel Duchamp (France),  Juan Francisco Elso (Cuba), Eugenio Espinoza (Venezuela), León Ferrari (Argentina),  Marcius Galan (Brazil) , Flavio Garciandía (Cuba), José Antonio Hernández-Diez (Venezuela), Karlo Andrei Ibarra (Puerto Rico), Joseph Kosuth (U.S), Barbara Kruger (U.S), David Lamelas (Argentina), Judith Lauand (Brazil), Glenda León (Cuba), Carlos Leppe (Chile), Anna Maria Maiolino (Brazil), Antonio Manuel (Brazil), Carlos Martiel (Cuba), Cildo Meireles (Brazil), Marta Minujín (Argentina), Priscilla Monge (Costa Rica), Hélio Oiticica (Brazil) | Lygia Pape (Brazil), Michelangelo Pistoletto (Italy), Liliana Porter (Argentina), Carlos Rodríguez Cárdenas (Cuba), Lázaro Saavedra  (Cuba), Mira Schendel (Brazil), Franz Erhard Walther (Germany), Horacio Zabala (Argentina)

Toda percepción es una interpretación: YOU ARE PART OF IT
November 30, 2016 – March 12, 2017
CIFO Art Space
Miami, Florida

The exhibition Toda percepción es una interpretación: You are part of it is a retrospective look from the viewpoint of contemporary issues of art, culture, politics and economics. It seeks to reflect on the successive reconfigurations of the art map in the last few decades, on the displacements and relocations of its primary centers, from Paris to New York, from Venice to São Paulo, from Basel to Miami. It speaks of areas that have succeeded in alternating centripetal or centrifugal forces, where art has relocated its meeting points and its observation points. We also pay attention to the effects of redrawing the financial or political map, with the repercussion it has on how one makes and proceeds in art.

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Artists: Olga de Amaral, Emilio Chapela, Jaime Davidovich, Wilson Díaz, Monir Farmanfarmaian, José Gabriel Fernández, Rafael Ferrer, Mathias Goeritz, Fernanda Gomes, José Antonio Hernández-Diez, Ana Mercedes Hoyos, Jesús (Bubu) Negrón, Karina Peisajovich, Horacio Zabala.

Illuminations II
December 3, 2016 – February 10, 2017
Henrique Faria and Miami Biennale
The Historic Dorissa of Miami Building
Miami, Florida

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Artist: Magdalena Fernández

CLIMAS
Opening November 17, 2016
Saludarte Foundation / Ideobox Artspace
Miami, Florida

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Artists: Miguel Acosta, Alfredo Alvarez Plagaro, Ana Isabel Diez, Florencio Gelabert, Sonia Falcone, Mabel Poblet, Martin Pelenur, Viviana Zargon.

Fragmentations and other Parables
June 16, 2016 – August 6, 2016
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Curated by: Aluna Curatorial Collective
Miami, Florida

Fragmentation and other parables, curated by Aluna Curatorial Collective (Adriana Herrera and Willy Castellanos) at Alejandra von Hartz Gallery is an approximation to the recurrence, meaning, and the logic of fragmentation in contemporary artistic practices: Is it true that it disrupts the threads of connection with history or could it suggest other types of relations to the past and the present? What are the contemporary parables that suggest fragmentation in art?

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Artist: Emilia Azcárate

Full Emptiness / El vacío lleno
May 27, 2016 – July 30, 2016
Miami Biennale
Miami, Florida

Azcárate’s works on paper, canvas and board, present unique forms of conceptualizing and synthesizing her spirituality and artistic practice. The installations shown in the gallery space highlight color, concentric compositions and forms of calligraphy and serve as a visual counterpoint to the permanent installation of James Turrell’s Coconino (2007). The disciplines of Azcárate’s meditation practice carry her through her art making, providing a structure that allows for the blurring between internal reflection and participation in the frenetic activity of contemporary society.

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Artist: Karina Peisajovich

Background
April 14, 2016 – June 4, 2016
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, Florida

Peisajovich explores the material constitution of the image more than that of representation. Whether through her environmental lighting projects as in her drawings, she alters the sensory experience of the viewer and at the same time, prompting him/her to wonder about the construction of his/her own perceptual process. In her own words “I think of visuality as an unnatural and imaginary phenomenon, fragile, contingent and constructed at the same time. From all of this are made the images in which we live”.

With their absolute formal nudity, the drawings titled “Gradient” can be seen as time encrypted in color. The palette of these works is organized based on the tension produced by chromatic relations, manifesting the unstable parameters of the eye.

“All that sinks into light is the resonance of what the night submerges” *, it is an intervention of the Gallery’s illumination system.  Peisajovich alters the existing electrical system and the disposition of the space’s lighting fixtures, changing their role and orientation.

In relation to this work, Peisajovich says: “In the latest Light Works I was more focused on using the already existing illumination systems of the premises where I was invited to show. In art spaces, especially in museums, lighting is used to impart a certain theatricality to the works. There is something of overacting in this operation. In this sense, these works disarm and absorb this setting.”

In both, the drawings and the intervention of light, appear the idea of the pictorial background, not as an inert support, but as an active space which realizes imaginary expectations. As produced by the fluctuations of the natural light in an environment, backgrounds are planes where latent forms that have not found their place are projected.

*The title of this work is taken from the film “Passion” of Jean Luc Godard.

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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.

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Artists: Iván Argote, Arocha + Schraenen, Lothar Baumgarten, Matthew Buckingham, Elena Damiani, Adler Guerrier, Jorge Pedro Núñez, Edgar Orlaineta, Laercio Redondo, Matheus Rocha Pitta, Sergio Vega.

The Devil is in the details
Curated by Jesus Fuenmayor
September 17 – November 20, 2015
KaBe Contemporary
Miami, FL, USA

The title of the exhibition “The Devil is in the details” pretends to point towards the details’ appearances in a work of art that unexpectedly allow viewers to comprehend the work (and even history) in a different way, even when this reading betrays our expectations or completely twists a work’s initial intention. Instead of just speaking about how important the use of historiography is for this group of artists, the show draws attention to what Roland Barthes used to call the “Punctum.” That is, that detail in an image (or work) that escapes its own structure, shooting out like an “arrow” towards the viewer. The artists selected for this exhibition have turned to the representation of history not just as material itself but also as means by which to criticize how history is constructed. They are not just interested in the past tense or simply reviving archival strategies, but in putting the past in relation to the present and the future, creating overlapping temporalities that bring disparate moments together. scottrade site down

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Artist: Cipriano Martínez

Failed Geometry
February 15 – May, 2015
Viloria Blanco Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

Solo exhibition by Cipriano Martínez.

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Artist: Ivelisse Jimenez

Else-weres
April 9 – May 31, 2015
Diana Lowenstein Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

Solo show by artist Ivelisse Jimenez.

Image: Blind Enough #4, 2010, Mixed media on canvas, 54 x 48 in. (137.16 x 121.92 cm)

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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.

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Artists: Milton Becerra, Esteban Blanco, Carola Bravo, Monika Bravo, Tania Candiani, Fernando Carabajal, Consuelo Castañeda, Othon Castañeda, Eduardo Costa, Juan Raúl Hoyos, Pablo León de la Barra, Gonzalo Lebrija, Alberto Lezaca, Gabriel de la Mora, Atelier Morales, Ronald Morán, Bernardo Olmos, Ernesto Oroza, Gamaliel Rodríguez, Rafiño, Leyden Rodríguez-Casanova, Mariasun Salgado, Sergio Vega, and Viviana Zargón.

Affective Architectures
Curated by Aluna Curatorial Collective
Closing reception March 28th, 2015
Show ran from December 6, 2014 – February 15, 2015
Aluna Art Foundation
Miami, FL, USA

Amidst the flood of banal images, what artworks created through an inter-subjective dialogue with the architecture or the spaces inhabited by artists, have the power to move us and remain in our memory? This question was the point of departure in Affective Architectures, an exhibition curated by Aluna Curatorial Collective (Adriana Herrera and Willy Castellanos), and presented with the collaboration of the Instituto Cultural de México in Miami. The opening will be on December 6 at the headquarters of Aluna Art Foundation and the show will run until February 15, 2015.

Twenty three artists from Mexico, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Spain display specular visions of the architectures that are, or were, mirrors of the failed dreams of modernism in the continent, but they also reveal the potential reserves of creativeness that often manifest themselves in the midst of chaos or necessity.

Walter Benjamin, who left the legacy of a perspective of the world around him that was as critical as it was poetic, used to say that architecture was the oldest of arts because the human need for shelter is timeless. And yet, immersed in the architectures that model our cities, we perceive them absentmindedly, without discovering to what extent they contain and alter the acts of our existence.

For Benjamin, criticism was a matter of “the right distance”. The works exhibited reflect an affective gaze on the cities inhabited on the border between the public and the private: they are re­counts of the steps that have been walked, testimonies of having got lost, but also of groping for a way out. Many images, going against the wish to “do” or build characteristic of modernism, reveal the wish to “undo” or “deconstruct”, and track the past and the present of large cities, posing questions about what may be possible.

Paraphrasing what Gerhard Ritcher termed “the question of position”, each of the participating artists approaches inhabited architectures based on a constant negotiation between closeness and distance. They observe, without indifference —from the closeness of affectivity, but also from the distant perspective of memory—, architectures that contain ‘life deposits’, stored memories of life experiences in spaces, which often fuse with social histories everywhere in the world.

Affective Architectures functions as a mirror reflecting our biographies within the failure of the grand narratives in Latin American and Caribbean cities, but also as a window into alternative passages: strategies of the imagination that may allow us to reinvent our ways of inhabiting the world.

About the Instituto Cultural de México en Miami (Mexican Cultural Institute in Miami): The Instituto Cultural de México in Miami (ICMM) projects the wealth and diversity of the millenary culture of that country in Southern Florida. In addition to fostering the acquisition of knowledge on Mexico’s history, literature, cinematography and dramatic arts, it assigns special relevance to the new artistic trends and generations that are successfully developing in Mexico and that, due to their acknowledged quality, have achieved a solid projection at the national and international level.

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Artist: Fabián Burgos

Stay in Space
February 12 – April 4, 2015
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

The graphic representation of the visible spectrum of light, shows us a line with 4 colors fused, in order: violet, blue, yellow and red. Upon multiplying the lines and assigning each one a color on a scale greater than 140 colors, creates a more energetic relationship with the space. The paintings of “Stay in Space” are composed of a 140 (approximately) color palette. These colors change their hues and tones as they are being prepared. On, or “in” this mesh of lines, a group of straight lines and diagonals are drawn that cut the gentle flow of colors, to build more hard geometric shapes. This contrast is again involved in space, but this time, registers it mentally.

These paintings are accompanied by others decidedly more concrete in their geometry (“Blue Spiral”, “Endless blue”, “That network”), which confirms the persistence of Burgos in working space in a sensitive and symbolic way: symbolic in terms of space as an optical game of “truth and falsehood”.

To this insistent work on the preparation and search for colors, Burgos adds their distribution on the surface of the canvas. Sometimes the method used is intuitive; other times, mathematical (application of rule of three on the square root), a simple mechanism that Burgos uses as a random instrument to switch longer fragments of colors with other shorter ones.

Through this means a reading of blocks and forms is established, which calls every viewer to interpret with his own subjectivity. One can see in that weave of colors: spectral shapes, numbers, letters, or any other interpretation that one gives the works, like a misty narrative. However, the contrast of forms and the permanence in space, is what really occupies Burgos.

Finally, Burgos expresses once again his identification with and admiration for some Latin America’s mid-20th century geometric artists. He involves himself with them and establishes a dialogue as of today, with the differences and particularities that the passing of time imposes. In “Stay in Space” he pays a tribute to the Ecuadorian artist Manuel Rendón (Despues de Rendon, 2014).

Fabian Burgos was born in Argentina in 1962, where he currently lives and works. He is a self-taught artist and participated in Atelier Felipe Noe (1987-85), Atelier Ahuva Szlimowicz (1988-1987) and Fundacion Antorchas Scolarship organized by Guillermo Kuitca (1993-91), all them in Buenos Aires. Selected Solo Exhibitions include: Instante Eterno. Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Buenos Aires (MACBA), 2014; Comiéndose a Raúl, Galería Vasari, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2013; Abstracta, Galería Dabbah Torrejón, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010, and Conferencia de Prensa, Galería Alejandra Von Hartz, Miami, USA, 2007. Selected group exhibitions are:Recovering Beauty: The 1990s in Buenos Aires. Blanton Museum of Art. Houston. Texas, 2011; Art First, Colección MACBA Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, Fundación Pablo Atchugarry, Manantiales, Punta del Este, Uruguay, 2011; 4 Museos + 40 Obras. Muestra Itinerante de Colección MACBA; Arte en el Plata, Intervención artística sobre la fachada del Edificio del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina curated by Inés Katztenstein and Eva Grinstein, 2009; Geometrías dislocadas, Burgos, Door, Siquier, Sala Mendoza, Caracas, Venezuela, 2009; All Boys, en el Rosa x 6, Rosa Galisteo Museum, Santa Fe, Argentina, 2009; Escuelismo. Arte argentino de los 90, MALBA Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2009; Pintura Latinoamericana Contemporánea (in Guayaquil Coleccions), MAAC Museo Antropológico y de Arte Contemporáneo, Guayaquil, Ecuador, 2008.

He is currently developing large commissioned murals for the SLS Hotel and Brickell Heights project to be completed in Miami in 2015.

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Artist: Ricardo Alcaide

Displacement
November 20, 2014 – February 5, 2015
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

Displacement: The act of displacing, or the state of being displaced; a putting out of place.

The exhibition reflects how to transcend the memory of modernism and intends to rebuild the ruins and remnants through fictional construction and new compositions with architectural references.

As a continuation of moving and relocating —displacing— objects, and based on my experiences and perceptions of how society functions and deals with industrial problems caused by modern living conditions in densely populated cities, my recent work has created different parallels through the combination of principles of modernist architecture and the precariousness that manifests itself in ordinary day to day living, while still working as a continuation of previous dialogues, from shelter for individuals to social solutions, revealing the “progress” in society as a vague and rapidly losing shape.

Living and working in Sao Paulo over the last years—and after more than a decade in London, and previously in my hometown of Caracas— is an experience that still informs my practice and has been strongly influenced by architects like Gio Ponti, Carlos Raul Villanueva and Lina Bo Bardi, for example, all of whom projected a great spirit of forward thinking and an extraordinary sense of aesthetics—something that I cannot avoid to express myself. Latin-American architecture, or even generally speaking, is not only as a reference for my work but also as a way of living, a day by day personal exchange that affects the way I think, I function, and interact with the world.

The work for this first solo show in Miami at Alejandra Von Hartz proposes a dialogue between all these areas observations -the balance between the formal aesthetics of modernism and the utopian impossibility- captured within the combination of found objects and the abstraction (out) from them, as in the Settlements installation: a construction built out of found disposed objects, next to a display of a small group of bronze sculptures of crushed cardboard boxes and other rejected material.

From a recent series ‘Intrusions’: a painted photograph is included; Land Of Order, an image of Brasilia’s iconographic -perfect modernism- interrupted by geometrical elements.

To complete the group of works, dismantled painted panels are the most recent, industrial paint on mdf board, they retain a memory of a disassembled shelving unit, from which all elements have been removed to reveal only the divided sections of the back wall. Here it’s the ‘action of deconstruction’ in the actual process that counts as the most relevant point for this work. An abstract recreation of construction that reveals the uncontrolled and imprecise condition to reflect —once again— about the failure of progress associated with modern aesthetics within my discourse, what could be perceived formally as an abstraction. Perhaps the necessity to synthetize the visual elements as an aesthetic resource in my work, is almost like “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling” expressed in Malevich’s Suprematism, but despite that, what lies behind are the anecdotes and symbolic shapes from today’s hard reality.

Ricardo Alcaide
November 2014

Ricardo Alcaide was born in Caracas in 1967. He currently lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.   Recent exhibitions include: Settlements, Baro galeria, São Paulo; The Language Of Human Consciousness, Athr gallery, Jeddah. Saudi Arabia; Donde Hay Protesta Hay Negocio, Galería Agustina Ferreyra, San Juan de Puerto Rico (2014); Solo Project, Curated by Jose Roca. Pinta NY Art Fair, New York; Incidental Geometry, Project Room – Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York; Visão Do Paraiso: Pensamento Selvagem, curated by Julieta Gonzalez and Pablo Leon de la Barra, Rio de Janeiro; From Disruption To Abstraction, New Art Projects Gallery, London (2013); Prototipo Vernacular, Oficina #1, Caracas, Venezuela; Optimismo Radical, Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York (2012). His work is part of the following collections: Sayago & Pardon, Los Angeles, CA. LIMAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima, Zabludowicz Collection. London. Colección Fundación Cisneros, Caracas. Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas.

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Artist: Mauro Giaconi

Revuelta (Revolt)
December 1, 2014- February 13, 2015
Dot Fiftyone Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

Mauro Giaconi will exhibit “REVOLT”; a series of moving sculptures based on the ephemeral site-specific mural “Volver a Girar” done at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico in May 2013. By deconstructing the mural and wall fragments detached from its walls, Giaconi launches a poetic exploration on detachment, fragility, rupture and social breakdown.

By accepting the possibility of loss, of an end, Giaconi provokes a spatial reconfiguration of the memory of a static image. Its traces are then used to evoke past events and erect upon its ruins a dreamlike environment, which by stirring the past builds a future, in order to turn again.

As part of the exhibit, he will be showing his new video LÍNEA TRANSVERSAL, (Transversal Line), in the video-room and a collection of recent drawing in the project room.

Mauro Giaconi was in born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1977, he lives and works in Mexico City. He studied Architecture in the Buenos Aires University (U.B.A.) and Fine Arts in the Prilidiano Pueyrredon National School of Fine Arts (E.N.B.A.P.P), getting in 2001 the degree of National Painting Professor. Since then, his work has developed in the sculpture field, Installation and drawings, has been the major focus in his investigation and development. During 1998 and 1999, he worked on mural painting and historic buildings restoration. In the artistic teaching field he imparted class in the Prilidiano Pueyrredon National School of Fine Arts, in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the year of 2002. At 2011 was teacher in the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. He is co-founder of Obrera Centro, an non profit and independent art space in México City. He received the first Philips (Argentina) Award for young talents, Mention of the jury, and the honor mention in the National Drawing Salon, was selected for the First and the Second award ArteBA-Petrobas. He participated as scholarship holder during 2010 in the Center of Artistic Investigation (CIA , Buenos Aires),  then he attended to the artistic residences, Bémis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, Nebraska) and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Skowhegan, Maine) in 2013; and in 2014 he participate in Art Omi International Residency (NY). He has exhibited in various solo shows and group shows in Buenos Aires, Mexico City New York, Boston, Miami, Marseilles and Switerzland. Including: ¨Temporada de Plomo (Lead Season) in Arroniz Gallery (Mexico City), “Partir“ (depart) in the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires), “Immense Parellel“ in Dot Fiftyone (Miami),  “Panorámica, Paisaje, 1969-2013“ (panorama, landscape, 1969-3013” in Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City) and “AQULLA” in Gallerie HO in Marseilles.

View video of exhibition here

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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.

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Artist: Jaime Gili

Ornament and Barricade
November 20, 2014 – February 5, 2015
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

Only after doing it three times and approaching a fourth, I realized that for exhibition titles, large projects, or even a series of paintings; I have repeated a dialectical formula that recreates links between Europe, European minds, and the coasts: South America or its local counterparts. I did it, for instance, when, for an exhibition in Winterthur, I placed Max Bill at Henri Pittier´s Park in Venezuela, and also when I completed the story of Gio Ponti on the Venezuelan coast and Reverón in the Mediterranean, for a series of paintings.

I was about to work on Carlo Scarpa, an obvious candidate as he built the Venezuelan pavilion at the Venice Biennale—which has always fascinated me— when I recognized the formula and tried to avoid it; perhaps even the pavilion commission lacks the anecdote that justifies a wider story.
And yet, Scarpa´s story and use of concrete and structural ornament keeps on fascinating me, and he has, indeed, been present in my mind when developing the current series of works. Of course, painting is slow, and the works here also contain elements from the previous series, the 2013 series which was a utopian homage to a fictional meeting of Armando Reverón and Gio Ponti. That series had some elements, like the thin stripes, that are still present in these works. Made in summer 2014, these paintings actually lie somewhere between winter 2012 and February 2014. So even if Scarpa was in the studio, also present at the party were Ponti and Reverón. And in the real world, miles away, the protests on the streets of Venezuela were starting; they unavoidably entered the mix.

Guarimba is a Venezuelan word that could be translated as “makeshift barricade to block roads by people who stay around it protesting loudly”. Guarimbas were very active in spring 2014 on the streets of Venezuela as a way of protest to block normal life against the regime. Many youth have been detained around them and then imprisoned and tortured thereafter. There are no glimpses of freedom yet and few other ways to protest.

Now imagine the doors of the studio as a barricade that only lets some things come through. But the barricade is a response to what is happening. The gates are also the work, the work is a final guarimba that decides what can and cannot enter in it. A filter that is in itself a response to what is happening. Painting is a political act, but it is also slow.

Jaime Gili
London, September 2014

Jaime Gili was born in Caracas in 1972. Studied first in Caracas, at a tropical Bauhaus that failed to change the country, never mind the world; later at the University of Barcelona, where he learned to be a painter but nobody was there to witness, and finally at the Royal College of Art in London, the city where he found his voice as an artist, paradoxically, based upon the Venezuelan modern tradition that he carried within. He has exhibited widely in Europe and the Americas and works mainly in London, but also in Barcelona and Caracas. He has created large commissions in public and private buildings integrating painting in architecture, in England, the US and Venezuela. He is currently developing his second largest one, a mural for Baltus House, a Condo in the Miami Design District, which will be ready in 2015.

• Happenings

Artists: Marta Chilindron, Matthew Deleget, Marcolina Dipierro, Juan Pablo Garza, Pachi Giustinian, Gerardo Goldwasser, Lynne Golob Gelfman, Artur Lescher, Lori Nozick, Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova, and Sam Winston.

New Dialogues
June 12 – August 16, 2014
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

New Dialogues is a curatorial exercise, work in progress, that will reflect on the resignificance of the work of art through dialogue, contextualization, association, and juxtaposition. Throughout the summer, selected works of the gallery’s artists will share the space creating situations that will generate or identify new perspectives.

Image: Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova. Round Faux Marble, 2014, Vinyl, Wood, Steel, 41 1/2 X 41 1/2 X 12 Inches (105.41 X 105.41cm).

• Happenings

Marcolina Dipierro

….. In Circle
February 15 – April 5, 2014
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

For her first solo show at the Gallery and in the USA, Marcolina Dipierro has immersed herself with the investigation of the possibilities and potentiality of the circular form. To show its formal visual and perceptive infinity while identifying dialogues of direction, attitude, limits, volumes, and folds.

In her practice, Dipierro explores the unlimited possibilities that SPACE offers as the support of art work, as a constructive tool of the creative instance, and as a protagonist.

“Object” pieces of elemental geometric lines (volumes, planes and shapes), elaborated in simple materials that enter in direct dialogue with the walls and floor, establish formal ties with the shadows and the materials of the same,  rendering subjective the superficies and  the tridimensional.
The series of works that Dipierro presents for this occasion reflect on the formal continuity of the circle and its respective quadrature as constituent members of the geometrical universe:

Continuity in time
Continuity in reflection
Continuity in shadow

Born in Chivilcoy, Buenos Aires, Argentina, holds a Fine Arts Degree from the National Fine Arts School “Prilidiano Pueyrredón” in 2000. Amongst her solo and group exhibitions: Color y Consecuencias, site-specific light intervention at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Rosario, Argentina – MACRO (2007); Projections, Les dix ans du 19, Centre Régional d’ Art Contemporain de Montbéliard, Paris (2007); Ficción Encendida, CCEBA, Spanish Cultural Center at Buenos Aires (2009); Planograf, Zabaleta Lab-Arte Contemporáneo (2010); en ángulo, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2011); “en cuadre “, Jorge Mara La Ruche Gallery, Buenos Aires (2012). She was recipient of the Scholarship FONCA-CONACULTA for the Program of Artistic Residencies for Ibero American and Haiti Creators in Mexico (2009) and was awarded the National Fund for the Arts Scholarship (2013). Dipierro lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

• Happenings

Pablo Siquier: Contracture
December 2, 2013 – February 8, 2014
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

Alejandra von Hartz Gallery is very pleased to present the solo exhibition, “Contracture” by Pablo Siquier. This is the artist second solo exhibition with the Gallery and will feature a mural and drawings on paper, part of a series of large scale charcoal drawings designed with a vector 3D program and realized by hand directly on the wall. The show runs from December 2, 2013 to February.

Part of a generation of artists that emerged in Buenos Aires at the end of ‘80s, Pablo Siquier’s work resists historical context and interpretation. His abstract black and white canvases and drawings remain silent, even as they evoke the rhythms of the city and subtly reference architectural ornament. In his work, Siquier explores the tensions between perfect and imperfect media. After years of precise schematic drawings with rulers and compasses, he uses computer software to design his intricate compositions. Once they are designed, he creates them on paper or canvases with charcoal or paint; they are at once hand-made and machine-influenced. The hyper precise and exact designs are finally executed with a primitive and incorrect tool. Although, in appearance, ultra perfect, the works challenge our perception and reveal an inherent and disquieting tension, the total opposite of fluidity.

Born in Buenos Aires, Siquier studied at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón. In 1997, he co-founded the artist collective “Grupo de la X”, which was connected to the famous Madí artist Enio Iommi. From 1989-1993, he began to restrict his palette, and he developed geometric zed shapes inspired by architectural motifs and ornaments. In 1993, he abandoned color and began a series of abstract paintings and drawings in black and white.

In 1995, he participated in the exhibitions “Mesótica” and “Transatlántica”, curated by Carlos Basualdo at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, San José de Costa Rica, and the Alejandro Otero Museum of Visual Arts, Caracas, respectively. Also participated in “Space of Time”, curated by Sandra Antelo Suarez and Alisa Tager at the Americas Society, New York, and in “Slow Paintings”, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Alemania (2009).

In his most recent work, Siquier leaves behind the canvas to work directly on the walls of galleries and museums; drawings and installations that operate with the illusion and real perception of space. Via computer generated drawings transferred onto gigantic printed surfaces, these installations appear to erase the borders between painting and the real world. He has created murals at the Los Molinos Building at Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires. Other murals are at the Carlos Pellegrini Subway Station and Centro Cultural General San Martin, both in Buenos Aires City. He represented Argentina at the 3rd Cuenca Biennial, at the 1st and 2nd Porto Alegre Biennial, at the 9th Habana Biennial, and at the 26th São Paulo Biennial. Siquier had major solo exhibitions at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. His work is included in many public and private collections, including the Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires; Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario (MACRO); and the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA). Pablo Siquier lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Click here to view Pablo Siquier on Abstraction in Action.

• Happenings

About the Artist

My work aims to be an exploration on photography as a technique and as a language in itself, becoming an important aspect within my personal discourse. From this central idea derives my interest on the revision and dialogue between the photographic image and other representation mediums, as well as the investigation on the possible transformation of content in everyday spaces, in expressive subjects. I seek to approach the image not as a mere fact anchored to formal rules, but also being interested in the use of the image as a sort of container of ideas, as a vehicle of information. This has taken me, among other things, to the manipulation of found scenes, as well as the complete construction of images. I conceive the creative process as a tool for research and knowledge, as an active way of relating to the world, as an experience that transforms into a process of understanding. I believe as much in intuitive intelligence as in intellectual exercises. Whichever the case, I believe the constant questioning and the formulation of questions is vital for the beginning of new possibilities and directions in the creative endeavor.

—

Mi trabajo pretende ser una exploración en torno a la fotografía como recurso técnico y como lenguaje en sí mismo, convirtiéndose ésta en un factor determinante dentro de mi discurso personal. De esta idea central parte mi interés por la revisión y el diálogo entre la imagen fotográfica y otros medios de representación, así como también, la indagación en torno a la posible transformación del contenido de espacios cotidianos en materia expresiva. Busco entonces abordar la imagen, no como mero hecho anclado a leyes formales, sino interesándome también en el uso de la imagen como una suerte de contenedor de ideas, como vehículo de información. Esto último me ha llevado, entre otras cosas, tanto a la manipulación de escenas encontradas, como a la construcción completa de imágenes. Concibo el proceso creativo como una herramienta para la investigación y el conocimiento, como una manera activa de relacionarme con el mundo, como experiencias que se transforman de alguna manera en un proceso de comprensión. Creo tanto en la inteligencia intuitiva, como en el ejercicio intelectual. En cualquiera de los dos casos, el constante cuestionamiento, el planteamiento de preguntas me resulta vital para la apertura de nuevas posibilidades y direcciones del hacer creativo.

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

• 2005: Taller Aproximación a la Fotografía Contemporánea dictado por 
Nelson Garrido, Maracaibo, Venezuela.
• 
2004: Estudios de fotografía en Miami Dade College,
Junto a la artista Teresa Dihel. Miami, USA.
• 1999: Taller El Diseño Y la Fotografía dictado por Mariano Díaz,
Maracaibo, Venezuela.
• 1999: Estudios de fotografía en la Escuela Julio Vengoechea, 
Con los fotógrafos: Alvaro Silva y Alejandro Vásquez.
Maracaibo, Venezuela.

Prizes / Fellowships

• 2012: La exposición Reforma del Ahora (Al Borde. Maracaibo, 2012) fue 
reseñada por la curadora Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy en la revista 
ArtForum como una de las mejores exposiciones del año.
• 2012: Seleccionado para participar en el programa de residencia de
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Beca otorgada por
La Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.
• 2012: Beca otorgada al espacio de arte contemporáneo AL BORDE por la 
Fundacion Cisneros/Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros en su 
Programa de apoyo a organizaciones culturales
2011: Grafica Mercantil, Proyecto realizado por la Colección Mercantil 
y el TAGA (Taller de Artes Gráficos Asociados) Caracas, Venezuela.
• 
2010: Primer premio. 6to Salón Regional de Jóvenes Artistas.
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del Zulia. Maracaibo, Venezuela.
• 2010: Lugares de Tránsito. Encuentro-residencia. 
Proyecto desarrollado por: Asociación Hablar en Arte, 
En colaboración con AECID. Venezuela/Spain.
• 2010: Primer premio. XII Salón SuperCable Jóvenes con FIA.
Centro Cultural Corp Banca. Caracas, Venezuela.
• 
2005: Mejor Fotografía. Salón de Artes Visuales de la Ciudad de Coro.
Museo de Arte Coro. Venezuela.
• 
2004: Mejor fotografía en la 38ava exposición anual de estudiantes.
Miami Dade College. Miami, USA.
• 2004: Mejor serie fotográfica, Miambiance magazine of arts & literatura
Volume 14. Miami, USA.
• 2003: Mejor fotografía en la 37ava exposición anual de estudiantes.
Miami-Dade College. Miami, USA.
• 2003: Beca basada en portafolio. Miami Dade College. Miami, USA.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2014: “Sin Titulo con Amarillo“, Oficina#1, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2012: “Evidence Multigrade Light”, Alejandra Von Hartz Gallery, Miami, USA.
• 2012: “Them Elementals”, Goldrushfineart, Maine, USA.
• 2012: “Reforma del Ahora”, Al Borde, Maracaibo, Venezuela.
• 2011: “Nuevas Consecuencias“, Oficina#1, Centro de Arte Los Galpones, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2009: “Dos Series“, Oficina#1, Centro de Arte Los Galpones, Caracas, Venezuela
• 2009: “Instantáneas”, Espacio PP Hotel Paseo las Mercedes, 
Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2005: “Puesto por los Caminos”, Galería de la Escuela de Fotografía 
Julio Vengoechea, Maracaibo, Venezuela.

Group Exhibitions

• 2015: “Selección=Relación”, Espacio Monitor, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2015: “New Dialogues 2”, Alejandra Von Hartz Gallery, Miami, USA.
• 2014: “Blog-ReBlog“, Austin Center for Photography, Austin, USA.
• 2014: “Grafica Mercantil, Indagación y seguimiento”, Espacio Mercantil, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2014: “New Dialogues“, Alejandra Von Hartz Gallery, Miami, USA.
• 2013: “Momento Material”, Salón Comunal, Bogotá, Colombia.
• 2013: “XII Edición del Premio Eugenio Mendoza“, Sala Mendoza, 
Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2013: “A Language Beyond Form“, Alejandra Von Hartz Gallery, Miami, USA.
• 
2012: “Pedazos de Pais (II)“, Oficina#1, Centro de Arte 
Los Galpones, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2012: “Juan Pablo Garza ·Suwon Lee · Ernesto Montiel”, 
ARTBO Feria Internacional de Arte de Bogotá.

• 
2012: “Lugares de transito“, Tabacalera, Madrid, Spain.
• 2012: “Papeles“, Oficina#1, Centro de Arte Los Galpones, 
Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2011: “Propuesta de arte emergente”, Centro de Arte los
Galpones (Galpón g7), Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2011: “Juan Pablo Garza · Rafael Serrano · Beto Gutiérrez”, 
ARTBO Feria Internacional de Arte de Bogotá, Colombia.
• 
2011: “Expedientes FOTOFIA 2011”, Los Secaderos 
Centro Cultural La Trinidad, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2011: “Enemies of my enemies”, OCAD University Graduate Gallery, Toronto, Canada.
• 2011: “Affinity“, Kulter Gallery, Holanda, Amsterdam.

Collections

• Cisneros Fontanals Foundation (CIFO), Miami, USA.
• Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC), New York – Caracas, USA – Venezuela.
• Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del Zulia (MACZUL), Maracaibo, Venezuela.
• Colección Mercantil, Caracas, Venezuela.

• Artists