Abstraction in Action Esvin Alarcón Lam, tepeu choc, Diana de Solares, Darío Escobar, Patrick Hamilton: Overlap/Traslape https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/esvin-alarcon-lam-tepeu-choc-diana-de-solares-dario-escobar-patrick-hamilton-overlaptraslape/

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Artists: Esvin Alarcón Lam, tepeu choc, Diana de Solares, Darío Escobar, Patrick Hamilton.

Overlap/ Traslape
Opens June 1, 2016
The 9.99 Gallery 
Guatemala City, Guatemala

Three dialogues are established with three different processes that relate to the idea of overlapping and superimposing elements, time, generations, and actions:

The first dialogue is a interaction in relation to mostly urban landscape in combination with the materials used.

Alejandro Almanza Pereda presents “Horror Vacui (Escena invernal No.1)” [Winter Scene No.1] (2014). From a snowy landscape, Almanza Pereda builds a cement structure that extends beyond the work’s frame to cover the entire wall. The seemingly accidental look of the quasi-action-painting-type dripping acquires a new connotation due to the material and the space extending beyond the painting.

In the same manner, Esvin Alarcón Lam’s  “Desplazamiento No.9” [Displacement No.9] (2016) also plays with the space outside the frame. Like a passageway leading to another dimension, the work created out of bus parts establishes an  association between the urban landscape and public transportation.

This dialogue ends with tepeu choc’s “Registration No.1” (2016) made out of the plastic material utilized in the informal economy. In it, a series of cut outs call to mind construction tool silhouettes.

The second dialogue is established by the works’s geometric elements such as line, figure, and volume.

Darío Escobar’s “Quetzalcoatl IV” (2004) plays with notions of stability between the undulating bicycle tires, as they surrender their circular shape to gravity laws, and the bronze counterweights.

The piece by Luis Diaz, “The Gukumatz in person” (1971), like Escobar’s work, references the (serpent) deity’s undulating movement: this time in its Quiché appellation, and in a more stable manner derived from flexible wooden sections that adapt to different crawling movements. These sharp forms make a return to verticality in “Chuzo” (2012-2016), a construction-tool-like work by Patrick Hamilton.

In “Sin título” (Untitled) (2015), a drawing by Diana de Solares, assorted color layers generate movement related to air and the kind found in children’s pinwheels. Thus, varying elements of nature come together and overlap in this work.

Finally, the third overlapping dialogue emerges between a spiritual perspective  and the physical body. The indigo and turquoise of Sandra Monterroso’s cotton yarn, “Expoliada III” (Despoiled III) (2016) series, colors associated with water, represent the varying tonalities of rainfall through time.

Meanwhile, in Isabel Ruiz’s “Vuelo de las Mariposas” (Flight of Butterflies) (2016 ), the set of opposing crutches reminds us of the body’s fragility: The before-and-after of a transition between what is natural and what the fire has consumed.

In Diego Sagastume’s photographs, we return to the urban landscape of painted walls and open skies whose tonalities show the passage of time, also found in Christian Lord’s “(Mira)anda IV” ((Look)go IV) (2015), a work that through wordplay, invites us to contemplation and to walk, suggested by the circle’s forward movement.

 

July 8, 2016 Patrick Hamilton: Black Tools https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/patrick-hamilton-black-tools/

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Artist: Patrick Hamilton

Black Tools
January 28, 2016 – May 14, 2016
The 9.99 Gallery 
Guatemala City, Guatemala

True to the conceptual nature of his work, Hamilton refers to the political history of his country through a series of collages and sculptures, which he has produced in the last year, and which broadens and deepens his aesthetic reflections on major issues affecting contemporary societies, particularly those that refer to labor and social inequality in Chile in recent years. These reflections analyze the consequences of the “neoliberal revolution” (Thomas Moulian) implemented in Chile by Pinochet — and the “Chicago School” — during the eighties and its projection in the social and cultural milieu in a post-dictatorship Chile; they result in works that can be read from the notion of “social forms” (Christian Viveros-Fauné), thanks to their economy of expressive resources and their deep bond with the analysis of social, political, and economic phenomena. Hamilton’s production could be described as realist art in relation to the exaltation of the physical qualities of his works, as well as a consideration of the concrete phenomena of our social reality.

Through the manipulation of tools used for manual labor, the artist creates objects that represent and act as metaphors in the increasingly precarious world labor economy. The formal character of the work is provided by another of Hamilton’s great source of inspiration: the History of Art. So, is the work of the constructivists, concrete art, and Suprematism — in this case Kasimir Malevich’s emblematic black square — which serves as a link between the economy of gestures and means, the use of monochrome and the formal rigor with spatulas, pikes, and sandpaper, which leave behind their functionality and remain at the mercy of anyone who wants to contemplate them.

The placement of the works in the space resembles a shadow theater, with pieces that disguise their materiality and communication function, a contradiction between the visible and invisible, transparent and opaque, opposites that in contemporary societies contribute to the concealment of problems of unemployment, shadow economies, and illegal work that become a precarious solution to the lives of millions of individuals.

April 25, 2016 Darío Escobar, Patrick Hamilton: Pero no soy fotógrafo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-patrick-hamilton-pero-soy-fotografo/

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Artists: Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Darío Escobar, Alexandra Grant, Patrick Hamilton, Sandra Monterroso, Gabriel Orozco, Sebastián Preece, Richard Prince, Isabel Ruíz, Inés Verdugo.

Pero no soy fotógrafo / But I am not a photographer
November 5, 2015
The 9.99 Gallery
Guatemala City, Guatemala

In Roland Barthes’s book La Chambre Claire (1980), he explains that the critical part of photography focuses on the mechanical moment. The moment in which the brain decides and the finger clicks is the moment in which the “[t]he obstinacy of the referent in being there, always there” is present. Currently, that moment continues to be the most important; it is the one that makes the difference between points of view. Photography as a technique has rapidly shifted from the dark room into digitalization. When it started in the nineteenth  century, it was a contraption. The expertise one needed to have in physics for the light aperture, along with the chemistry knowledge required to reveal the images have all but faded away. Technological advances allow many of us to carry a camera in our pocket.

Photography’s goal is to capture a moment that takes place only once, whether it is in the various classifications borrowed from academic painting: still-life, landscapes, people and historical moments. The way in which we approach them, and the stories that these images tell us, are not from a specific moment; but rather from the combination of several moments: to click, to develop, to manipulate, and finally, to single that moment and to make its invisibility present.

The exhibition consists of 27 pieces, which presentation starts from a photographic aspect challenging its more orthodox definition as it returns to an academic classification. Installed in a “cabinet of curiosities” style, we see a small compilation of works that goes from landscape to photographs of historical moments, in different formats and presentations, highlighting its rareness or its single imperfection as “impure” photography.

The exhibit starts with the hesitation and manipulation of the countryside landscapes Paisajes Perforados I y II  (Perforated Landscapes I and II, 2009) by Patrick Hamilton (Chile, 1974), whose dalliances venture into his well-known photographic shots and manipulations of building materials in the series Proyectos de arquitecturas revestidas para la Ciudad de Santiago (Architectural projects re-covered for the City of Santiago, 2008) or Posters (2008), and returns to the landscapes, not only to manipulate them but to turn them into three-dimensional objects, based on repetition and reflection, as in the case of his most recent piece Escape al Paraíso (Escape to Paradise, 2014) and Spatula #1 (2015).

Playing with repetition, The less things change, the less stay the same (2013) by Alejandro Almanza Pereda (Mexico, 1977), a work that obtained an honorific mention at the XVI Bienal de Fotografía in 2014 at the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, here we see a series of moments in an exercise of constructive transformation of materials, tinged with nostalgia, which will be reactivated in Geometría Imperfecta(Imperfect Geometry, 2012) of Darío Escobar (Guatemala, 1971), but where instants are even more ephemeral as light is the main composition and appeal, or in the case of Untitled (2002) where memory is contained in the  oil stains.

At first sight, the photography Dot Ball (1992/1996) of Gabriel Orozco (Mexico, 1962) could be a ready-made of a balloon in the middle of nature. In reality the manipulation of an object within its context gives it a particular placement, which is one of the more evident features of portraiture. Although we usually refer to a portrait as the likeness of a person, the truth is that a person’s own objects also speak about their specific characteristics; they show us the “observing subject,” as is the case of the series Equilibrio (Equilibrium) by Patrick Hamilton and Volume XIV (2008) of Sebastián Preece (Chile, 1972).

The human figure is revisited in the gestures of Alexandra Grant (United States, 1973). In her series Shadows, a collaboration with the actor and writer Keanu Reeves, the technical manipulation creates a game of colors, shadows, and movement. This, on the other hand, is hidden in the work by Richard Prince (United States, 1949) where the manipulation is referred to as a physical object—Bill Powers’s novel What we lose in flowers (2012). The pin-up style female nude, behind a strip that reminds us of DVD titles, gives a new meaning to the idea of mixed media. compare hotel prices The human figure is also the protagonist in Sandra Monterroso’s performance documentation (Guatemala, 1974), Tu Ashé Yemaya(2015), presented in the 12 Bienal de La Habana, and in the light boxes of Isabel Ruiz (Guatemala, 1945) in the series Río Negro (1988), where photography is on the verge of gesture. Finally, the exhibition closes with a gaze looking at another gaze, that of Inés Verdugo (Guatemala, 1983) in her work Continuidad (Continuity, 2015).

 While at the beginning of photography the end of painting was predicted, today the photographic image has become such a generalized practice that “we are all photographers.” However, photography is still a specialized field where questions of light, focus, and perspective are endless challenges to overcome.

October 27, 2015 Patrick Hamilton: Progreso / Progress https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/patrick-hamilton-progreso-progress/

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Artist: Patrick Hamilton

Progreso / Progress
February 17 – April 4, 2015
Galeria Marta Cervera
Madrid, Spain

Solo exhibition by Patrick Hamilton

March 5, 2015 Patrick Hamilton: Territorios Fronterizos / La fotografía mas allá de la imagen. https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/patrick-hamilton-territorios-fronterizos-la-fotografia-mas-alla-de-la-imagen/

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Artist: Patrick Hamilton

Territorios Fronterizos / La fotografía mas allá de la imagen
November 18, 2014 – January 25, 2015
Centro Cultural Matucana
Santiago de Chile, Chile

 

February 18, 2015 Darío Escobar & Patrick Hamilton: Beleza? https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-patrick-hamilton-beleza/

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Artists: Kader Attia, Francis Alÿs, Darío Escobar, Alberto Baraya, Albano Afonso, Matías Duville, Patrick Hamilton, Carlos Garaicoa, Cinthia Marcelle e Tiago Mata Machado, Moris, Pedro Alonso & Hugo Palmarola, Sandra Cinto, and Santiago Sierra.

Beleza?
January 24 – March 29, 2015
Curated by Pamela Prado
Centro Cultural Sao Paulo
Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Beleza? – com sinal de interrogação – é uma expressão brasileira que pergunta se por acaso tudo está bem. Assim, parece relançar a beleza – conceito extinto no discurso da arte – para outro lado, para o da preocupação dos artistas com o estado do mundo contemporâneo, a globalização e a crise do modelo econômico imperante. Beleza? reúne obras que parecem formular esta mesma pergunta: está tudo bem? Em distintos formatos e estratégias, dão visibilidade e reagem às transformações e contradições próprias do desgaste dos sistemas políticos e econômicos que se chocam contra as pessoas (e suas relações sociais), as paisagens (e as definições territoriais) e os países (e suas demarcações geopolíticas).

January 27, 2015 Patrick Hamilton & Aníbal López A-1 53167: Dear Mr. Thanatos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/patrick-hamilton-anibal-lopez-1-53167-dear-mr-thanatos/

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Artists: Regina José Galindo, Patrick Hamilton, Anibal López A-1 53167, Ana Mendieta, Teresa Margolles, Alejandro Almanza Pereda, José Guadalupe Posada, and Jorge Tacla.

Dear Mr. Thanatos, Modern and Contemporary Art from Latin America
Curated By Christian Viveros-Fauné
October 2 – December 13, 2014
Cristin Tierney Gallery
New York, USA

Dear Mr. Thanatos: Modern and Contemporary Art from Latin America
 curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné, is a missive or love letter to the dark forces—death, destruction, war, political violence, etc.—as seen through the lens of modern and contemporary Latin American art.Proposed by psychoanalytic theory as the “death drive” in opposition to Eros—the tendency toward survival, propagation, and the life-giving pleasure principle—Thanatos describes, in Sigmund Freud’s terms, “the inclination to aggression,” which the Austrian thinker defined “[as] the greatest impediment to civilization.”The themes of death, aggression, and psychic and physical violence have long been central to contemporary Latin American artists. Because of Latin America’s violent history, most artists from the region find themselves at most a single generation away from large-scale collective manifestations of the “instinct toward aggression”—with its devastating effects on local societies. From the repeated figure of Santa Muerte evoked by turn of the century Mexican engraver and cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada to Jorge Tacla’s paintings of bombed out buildings in the Middle East to the mortuary and burial-related video and sculpture of Guatemalan Regina José Galindo, artists throughout Latin America have repeatedly turned to the subject of death to express not just existential dread, but the reality of living the examined life in situations of heightened insecurity.
Some Latin American artists—like those in this exhibition—draw creative sustenance from these experiences and often interpret their reflections in the context of social, political and cultural advances. That is the role the destabilizing spirit of Thanatos assumes in the minimalist-inspired sculptures of Chilean artist Patrick Hamilton and the radically unstable structures of Mexican sculptor Alejandro Almanza Pereda. Others, like Ana Mendieta and the Guatemalan Anibal López connect dramatically to specific narratives of violence as urgent subjects for their video and photography.
The death instinct is familiar to all of them, as it is to millions of other people around the world. Like language, geography and identity, Thanatos remains an important part of Latin American art’s peculiar symbolic inheritance to this day.

Image: Patrick Hamilton, Wheel lock #1, 2014. Copper. 5.9 x 21.65 x 5.11 inches.
October 9, 2014 Patrick Hamilton: Proyecto Lanz https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/patrick-hamilton-proyecto-lanz/

Lanz Cigueñal (2009)

Artist: Patrick Hamilton

Proyecto Lanz
August 2 – September 20, 2014
FLORA ars+natura
Bogotá, Colombia

Heinrich Lanz AG dates back to 1859, when it was founded by Heinrich Lanz (1838-1905) in Germany. The original heavy machinery factory remained operational until slightly after World War II, when it was acquired by John Deere. In 1960, the company’s name was changed from Heinrich Lanz AG Mannheim to John Deere-Lanz AG. Shortly thereafter, the word Lanz was also dropped from its name.
According to a myth popular throughout southern Chile, a group of Nazis hid gold in Lanz tractor parts as the allied forces bore down on Germany. These gold- laced components were then shipped to Chile and elsewhere in South America.
For the past several years, stories have abounded of Germans traveling around Chile and buying 1945 Lanz tractors, better known as the Lanz Bull- dog. It is estimated that the quantity of gold melted into the parts of each one of these machines is about 2 kilograms. After World War II, the ounce of gold was pegged at 35 US dollars. At present, an ounce is worth more than 1500 US dollars. This explains the increased interest in the Lanz tractors and the large sums of money paid for each tractor.
More than 1000 Lanz Bulldogs have been bought in Chile and shipped back to Germany. The best-known buyers are Thomas Tisch and his brother, who have paid as much as 15,000 US dollars for tractors that would otherwise be junked.
Speculation about “Nazi gold” is not limited to Chile’s borders. It is said that the Vatican received some of this illicit treasure as compensation for helping some Nazis escape to remote locations in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. Other stories suggest different destinies for the Nazi gold: deposited in Swiss bank accounts, sunk below the waters of Austria’s Lake Toplitz, hidden in Germany or placed in submarines with a destination unknown.
Lanz 45 (2009-2014)
August 29, 2014 Patrick Hamilton: Slow Future https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/patrick-hamilton-slow-future/

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Artists: David Adamo, Bigert & Bergström, Bianca Bondi, Tania Bruguera, Fernando Bryce, Ella de Búrca, Luis Camnitzer, Jota Castro, Joachim Coucke, James Deutsher, Maarten Vanden Eynde, Kendell Geers, Nuria Güell, Patrick Hamilton, Cinthia Marcelle, Tiago Mata Machado, Gordon Matta-Clark,Ingrid Wildi Merino, Mariele Neudecker, Wilfredo Prieto, Aleksandra Wasilkowska, and David Zink Yi.

Slow Future
June 19 – September 7, 2014
The Centre for Contemporary Art
Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland

The theme of the exhibition Slow Future is degrowth, in other words, a social movement postulating a break with the current paradigm of economic growth in favor of aspiring to improve the quality of life within the capabilities of the environment. The propagators of degrowth, also known as degrowthists, oppose the dogma of economic growth, negate the supreme value of material goods, and propose alternative models of exchange – barter, cooperatives, co-ownership, and community exchange. According to them, assuming that economic growth is essential for development and constitutes a fundamental value to which we should all aspire – is a mistake.

August 18, 2014 Artists: Dario Escobar, Diana de Solares, tepeu choc & Patrick Hamilton: Height x Width x Depth https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/artists-dario-escobar-diana-de-solares-tepeu-choc-patrick-hamilton-height-x-width-x-depth/

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Artists: Dario Escobar, Diana de Solares, Diego Sagastume, Esvin Alarcón Lam, Sandra Monterroso, tepeu choc, Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Carolina Caycedo and Patrick Hamilton.

Height x Width x Depth
July 31, 2014
The 9.99 Gallery
Guatemala City, Guatemala

Group exhibition celebrating one year anniversary of The 9.99 Gallery.

July 18, 2014 Alexander Apóstol, Magdalena Fernández, Patrick Hamilton & Ishmael Randall-Weeks: Beyond the Supersquare https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexander-apostol-magdalena-fernandez-patrick-hamilton-ishmael-randall-weeks-beyond-supersquare/

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Artists: Leonor Antunes, Alexander Apóstol, Alexandre Arrecha, Felipe Arturo, Alessandro Balteo Yazbek, Alberto Baraya, Carlos Bunga, Los Carpinteros, Jordi Colomer, Livia Corona, Felipe Dulzaides, Magdalena Fernández, Fernanda Fragateiro, Carlos Garaicoa, Mario García Torres, Terence Gower, Patrick Hamilton, Quisqueya Henríquez, Diango Hernández, Andre Komatsu, Runo Lagomarsino, Pablo León de la Barra, Maria Martínez-Cañas, Daniela Ortiz, Jorge Pardo, Manuel Piña, Ishmael Randall-Weeks, Mauro Restiffe, Pedro Reyes and Chemi Rosado-Seijo.

Beyond the Supersquare: On Modernism
May 1, 2014 – January 11, 2015
Bronx Museum
Bronx, NY, USA

The indelible influence of Latin American and Caribbean modernist architecture on contemporary artists will be explored by The Bronx Museum of the Arts in the exhibition Beyond the Supersquare, on view May 1, 2014 through January 11, 2015. The exhibition features 30 artists and more than 60 artworks—including photography, video, sculpture, installation, and drawing—that respond to major Modernist architectural projects constructed in Latin America and the Caribbean from the 1920s through the 1960s. Beyond the Supersquare examines the complicated legacies of Modernist architecture and thought—as embodied by the political, economic, environmental, and social challenges faced by countries throughout Latin America—through the unique perspective of artists working today.

The exhibition represents the culmination of a four-year research initiative at the Bronx Museum spearheaded by Executive Director Holly Block and Independent Curator María Inés Rodriguez. Many of the exhibition themes have grown out of a three-day conference held at the Bronx Museum in October 2011, during which artists, architects, urban planners, and scholars convened to discuss the enduring impact of Modernist architecture and ideas in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Beyond the Supersquare explores how contemporary artists from Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions have responded to the aggressive rise of Latin America’s urban centers and the ways in which those urban areas have evolved since the mid-20th century. Also examined is the social critique of political, social, economic, and environmental issues in Latin America and the Caribbean, including unstable economies, ad hoc urbanism, militarized police forces, and rapidly exhausting natural resources. Exhibition designer Benedeta Monteverde of Mexico City has worked closely with the two curators to generate the exhibit plan for the galleries at the Bronx Museum.

Beyond the Supersquare will be accompanied by a volume, co-published by The Bronx Museum of the Arts and Fordham University Press, featuring original scholarship by noted Latin American architects, historians, and curators. Beyond the Supersquare: Art & Architecture after Modernism in Latin America will include material presented at the Museum’s 2011 Beyond the Supersquare conference led by Ms. Block and Ms. Rodríguez. The advisors for the conference were Carlos Brillembourg (Carlos Brillembourg Architects), Felipe Correa (Somatic Collaborative and Harvard Graduate School of Design), Ana Maria Duran (Estudio A0), Belmont Freeman (Belmont Freeman Architects), Jose Lira (University of Sao Paulo), Ligia Nobre (Independent Curator), and Pedro Reyes (Artist).

The volume will also include an image-rich folio highlighting artworks from the exhibition. Drawing from architectural projects of the 1940s to the 1960s, as well as from socially engaged artistic practices of the present day, the anthology will examine the consequences of the heroic and utopian ideals popular in architectural discourse during the Modernist era, which are evident in the vastly uneven economic conditions and socially disparate societies found throughout the region today

April 24, 2014 The 9.99 Gallery: día a día / day by day https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-anibal-lopez-a1-53167-patrick-hamilton-dia-dia-day-day/

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día a día / day by day
November  2013 – January 2014
The 9.99 Gallery
Guatemala City, Guatemala

The artist’s day by day develops in the studio, a space that serves as a laboratory of ideas. Just as the everyday governs most people’s lives—the teacher teaches every day or the doctor sees patients week after week—it also tends to provide a daily routine for the artist, allowing a pattern of reflection and research that leads to the creation of works of art based on his observation of the political, social, and cultural life of a city or country.

Day by Day is the fourth exhibition The 9.99 presents this year, bringing together six international artists: Patrick Hamilton and Sebastián Preece (Chile), Andrea Aragón, Darío Escobar and Aníbal López (A1-53167) (Guatemala) and Nery Gabriel Lemus (United States), all artists whose work tends to reflect the everyday of our lives.

Working in Santiago, Chile, Hamilton and Preece represent the new generation of artists from this South American country; both use everyday objects to map aspects of the city where they live. Hamilton’s elegant minimalist geometric forms made with sharp cutting razor wire, Composición con diamantes (Composition with diamonds, 2011), and pieces created with tools, Serrucho (Hand saw, 2013), speak of the social insecurity that forms in a country where recent economic wealth has not been distributed evenly. The decay of infrastructure in certain city neighborhoods is present in Volumen XIV (Volume XIV) and Volumen XVI (Volume XVI, both 2008) by Preece. The truncated history of everyday life is buried in the ruins that survive time, in the books that daily disintegrate into dust.

A daily routine involves facilitating the existence of human beings, but the work of Guatemalans Andrea Aragón, Darío Escobar and Aníbal López (A1 -53 167) evidence otherwise. Escobar has a group of paintings, which at first glance shows an abstract composition on a supposedly perfect sheet of white paper; under closer scrutiny one can see that the artist has torn the sheet in two. Dibujo interrumpido No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 (Interrupted drawing No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3, all 2013) represent a fractured society that tries to remedy injustices and historical errors with cosmetic fixes, but these breaks remain always there, even if difficult to see with the naked eye. The poignant photographs of Aragón, capture reality as it is, and it is often tough. Images De la serie “antipostales” (From the series “antipostcards,” 2001) and De la serie “Ghetto” (From the series “Ghetto,” 2010) sadly delve into what everyday life can be for people who live in a dilapidated house, with scruffy furniture and graffiti on the walls, or in those terrible and impersonal modern buildings that instead of making life more enjoyable make it an earthly hell. Listón de plástico negro de 250 mts. de largo x 4 mts. de ancho colgado sobre el puente del Incienso (Black plastic strip of 250 meters. long x 4 mts. wide hanging over the Incienso Bridge, 2003) by López (A1 -53 167) captures for posterity the grief that people express when the constitutional laws of the country are broken. The documentation of this action adds to the rich artistic and historical file that the artist has been building since the beginning of his career.

Nery Gabriel Lemus is a foreigner who should not be. The son of Guatemalan immigrants living in the United States, Lemus has developed his career in Los Angeles, California, which focuses on many of the tensions that routinely affect people in his condition. His foreign status gives him an objective distance that makes his observations not only very keen but are also permeated by nostalgia about what is not known but is sensed. De Guatemala a guatepeor (From Guatebad to guateworst, 2013) Lemus resists stigmatizing a country that has suffered daily violence while improvement and progress are also being achieved.

In Day by Day, artists seem to agree that not all is bad, nor all good, and that this constantly changing, precarious balance upholds the survival of mankind and is one in which the artist finds inspiration for his creative activities.

-Alma Ruiz F.

December 10, 2013 Patrick Hamilton https://abstractioninaction.com/artists/patrick-hamilton/

Translated from Spanish

I develop my work through photography, collage, objects and installation, and it comprises an analysis of concepts of inequality, architecture, and spectacle in Chile in the last twenty years—Chile after the dictatorship. In this sense, it presumes an aesthetic reflection of the consequences of the “neoliberal revolution,” imposed on Chile during the ‘80s, and its projection on the social and cultural field since then until this day. In the series Spike Drawings, 2010-2013, I make a type of drawing on the wall with simple geometric shapes such as squares, rhomboids, etc., which is constructed with a metal material that is used as protection on the walls of middle and high class houses in Santiago de Chile. The wall protections are very sharp and comply with the fight against crime and the protection to private property. These works describe the segregation and social divisions, confinement and limitations, in a very simple way, using basic but eloquent shapes such as the square, which is the simplest act of delimitation in geometry. These works also refer to a tradition in modern art linked to Constructivism, geometric abstract art and minimalism. In this sense, it is a series that joins an extreme formalism of minimal shapes, with social content.

 

Mi trabajo desarrollado en fotografía, collage, objeto e instalaciones, comprende una reflexión en torno a los conceptos de trabajo, desigualdad, arquitectura y espectaculo en el Chile de los últimos 20 años; en el Chile de la postdictadura. En este sentido, supone una reflexión estética sobre las consecuencias de la “revolución neoliberal” implantada en Chile durante los años 80´s y su proyección en el campo social y cultural desde entonces hasta ahora. En la serie “Spike drawings” (2010-2013) realizo un tipo de dibujo sobre la pared con formas geométricas simples -cuadrados, rombos, etc- que están construidos con un material de fierro que se usa como protección en los muros de las casas de gente clase media y media alta en Santiago de Chile. Las protecciones de muro son muy filosas y remiten a la lucha contra la delincuencia así como a la protección de la propiedad privada. Estos trabajos hablan de segregación y división social, de encierro y de límites, de una manera muy simple, usando formas muy básicas y elocuentes como el cuadrado que es el acto geométrico más simple de delimitación. Estos trabajos, hacen referencia también, a cierta tradición del arte moderno vinculada al constructivismo, al arte abstracto geométrico y al minimalismo. En este sentido, es una serie que vincula un formalismo extremo, de formas mínimas, con un contenido social.

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October 9, 2013