Artists: Ricardo Alcaide, Abdulaziz Ashour, Ernesto Caivano, Darío Escobar, Fernanda Fragateiro, Simryn Gill, Anne Lindberg, Yuri Masnyj, Julianne Swartz, Yuken Teruya, Rirkrit Tiravanija & Tomas Vu, Adam Winner.

good news.
July 28 – August 29, 2016
Josée Bienvenu Gallery 
New York, USA

good news., an exhibition of international artists working on and off paper to deconstruct and reconfigure information. With the daily deluge of bad news at our fingertips, we become disoriented in our distanced yet simultaneously intimate sense of connectedness to the world.

• Happenings

Artist: Ricardo Alcaide 

Down the Line
June 8, 2016 – July 8, 2016
Johannes Vogt Gallery
New York, New York

Alcaide’s site-specific floor installation investigates notions of instability in urban environments as a result of the mistranslation of modernism and its inherent concept of progress to Latin America.

Alcaide has used the gallery’s white cube space as a studio to create a series of sculptural painting-panels in varying sizes that are presented horizontally on the floor. In order to make these works the artist mounts wooden slats onto the surface of the panels whilst applying glossy polyurethane paint regularly used in car shops. The screwed in slats leave marks on the paint underneath once removed, like remnants of the history of its making. Within Alcaide’s installation each work follows its own linear composition while engaging a dialogue with the works in its immediate proximity. In a flow of push-and-pull, the repetitive character of the compositional methods used by the artist alludes to the sometimes monotonous formalistic appeal of modernist architecture.

• Happenings

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

Artist: Ricardo Alcaide

Not Much Further
September 18, 2015
Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

Podríamos pensar que existe una línea que divide lo inservible y lo útil, lo proyectado y lo alcanzado. Pero esa división no es real cuando deambulamos por una ciudad o recordamos una historia. Es en ese punto de suspensión donde se sitúan las reflexiones de Ricardo Alcaide.

Acostumbrado a mirar desde el modernismo venezolano, su mirada crítica se ha ido trasladando por otros entornos urbanos, ejercitando la agudeza de descubrir las promesas de lo que se imaginaba un futuro mejor en lo que está a punto de desaparecer.  En Not Much Further la sensación de atracción e incomodidad y la indefinición a través de la recuperación estética de formas modernistas, replantean imposiciones y disfunciones de la sociedad actual.

• Happenings

Artist: Ricardo Alcaide

One Phenomenon Among Others
July 4 – 25, 2015
Baró Jardins – Baró Gallery
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Com base na experiência e percepção de como a sociedade funciona e lida com os problemas causados pelas condições de vida modernas nas grandes cidades, o trabalho recente de Ricardo Alcaide tem criado diferentes paralelos entre a combinação de princípios da arquitetura modernista com a precariedade que se manifesta na vida cotidiana, revelando o progresso na sociedade como vago, perdendo rapidamente a sua forma.

Em sua terceira exposição na galeria Baró, One Phenomenon Among Others (Um fenômeno entre outros), Ricardo Alcaide apresenta suas mais recentes pinturas realizadas sobre paneis de MDF com tinta industrial. No processo, o artista constrói estruturas temporárias de madeira sobre o suporte para criar limites e divisões que conformam a composição, posteriormente removidas. Trata-se neste caso de uma aproximação fictícia de partes de mobiliário desmanchado que retém a memoria da estrutura já inexistente. Eis aqui um “ato de desconstrução” no processo real que conta como o ponto mais relevante deste trabalho. A recriação abstrata revela esta descontrolada e imprecisa condição e reflete  – novamente – sobre a falência do progresso associado com a estética moderna dentro de seu discurso. O resultado pode ser percebido formalmente como pura abstração com possíveis leituras do neoconcretismo, mas o que reside por trás disso são anedotas e formas simbólicas da dura realidade de hoje e de seu “progresso” subdesenvolvido.

• Happenings

Artists: Esvin Alarcón Lam, Ricardo Alcaide, Darío Escobar, Gianfranco Foschino, Juan Fernando Herrán, Harold Mendez, Gabriel de la Mora, Ronny Quevedo, and Ana Maria Tavares.

Líneas de la Mano
May 12 – July 3, 2015
Sicardi Gallery
Houston, TX, USA

Featuring artists from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Venezuela, Líneas de la mano (lines of the hand, lifelines) takes as its premise the idea that geometries connect the quotidian moments of our daily lives. Indeed, a line connects two points, A and B, start and finish, end and beginning; lines are defined by this function of connection, even as they continue to move past the points they connect

The artists in the exhibition use the languages and conceptual frameworks of modernism and abstraction to suggest poetic connections: between people, between historical referents, between political experiences, and between places. The line as connector becomes a way of skillfully addressing fraught histories, and of weaving a set of relationships. Líneas de la mano also considers the tactility of each object. The works exhibited demonstrate a strong relationship to materials and their histories, from the scrap metal of Guatemalan buses, to the thick, sooty texture of an archival photograph transferred to aluminum, to the fabric retrieved from vintage radio speakers.

The exhibition title playfully alludes to palmistry; the connection is meant to highlight the actions of the hand, implicit in the creation of the work. Astrologer, numerologist, clairvoyant, and palm-reader Cheiro (William John Warner, 1866-1936) writes, “the hand… denotes the change going on in the brain, even years before the action of the individual becomes the result of such a change.”  Read in a different context, it is a compelling statement about the artistic process.

• Happenings

Artists: Mariella Agois, Miguel Aguirre, Ricardo Alcaide, Alberto Borea, Jorge Cabieses, Alberto Casari, Aldo Chaparro, Margarita Checa, César Cornejo, Dare Dovidjenko, Sandra Gamarra, Huanchaco, Billy Hare, Haroldo Higa, Edi Hirose, Fernando La Rosa, Nicolás Lamas, Julio Le Parc, Benjamín Moncloa, Vik Muniz, Musuk Nolte, Pedro Peschiera, Jorge Piqueras, Liliana Porter, Emilio Rodríguez Larraín, Valentino Sibadon, Pier Stockholm, José Tola, Adriana Tomatis, Patrick Tschudi, and Alice Wagner.

Divertimento
January 14 – February 6, 2015
Galeria Lucia de la Puente
Lima, Peru

Group show

Image: Alberto Borea, from the series American Deconstruction, 2015, Collage on canvas, 150 x 190 cm.

• Happenings

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.

• Happenings

Artists: Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, Ricardo Alcaide, Emilia Azcárate, Juan Pablo Garza, Jaime Gili, Dulce Gómez, Esperanza Mayorbe, Ana María Mazzei, Teresa Mulet, Susana Reisman, Luis Romero, and Fabian Salazar.

Unsettled Primaries -Project by Mariángeles Soto-Díaz
Online gallery launch on August 23, 2014
Torrance Art Museum
Torrance, CA, USA

The Venezuelan flag features horizontal bands of the primary colors, yellow, blue and red, occupying equal parts in its rectangular composition. It is said that Francisco de Miranda, the Venezuelan transatlantic revolutionary known as “The First Universal Criollo” who inititated the process that would lead to the independence of Venezuela and Latin America, conceptualized the Venezuelan flag for independence after exchanging ideas about color theory with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Europe. While this is only one myth among many surrounding Miranda’s inspiration of primary colors for the flag, the story still resonates with Miranda’s interdisciplinary and philosophical interests, which are well documented in his extensive journals chronicling encounters with Europe’s leading intellectuals, artists and politicians.

For this project, Mariángeles Soto-Díaz invited Venezuelan artists to choose and interpret a set of open instructions to make an abstract work with equal distribution of primary colors. The instructions were meant as a productive challenge to the artists, particularly in light of the volatile political climate in Venezuela today and especially the many conflicts surrounding the use of the national flag in recent years.*

This experimental abstract project is a proposition put forth to think through many questions: Is it possible to reconcile formal and political meanings on a plane of simultaneity? Can color help us activate a shared experience of ambiguity and nuance, or are the established “universal” primary colors, an essential discovery in color theory, always mired in nationalism or flag-waving for Venezuelan artists? Is viewing art through the screen of a computer while imagining its materiality in real space a new kind of phenomenological experience? For individual artists, can a simultaneous performance of instructions interpreted in different parts of the world feel like a collective gesture?

Unsettled Primaries explores the potential of making something charged, tired and familiar new again, examining settled meanings. As in past projects directed by Soto-Diaz under the umbrella of her entity Abstraction At Work, Unsettled Primaries rests on the underlying premise that there is a conceptual and ambiguous border in the notion of abstraction that encroaches upon and even overlaps with symbolic representation, underscoring the uncomfortable fuzziness and fluidity of meaning in subject matter.

NOTE

* In 2013, as the two major candidates for presidential elections dressed in primary colors, government officials forbid the opposition from using them in their campaign despite the fact that the flag and its colors in various configurations were being used by the incumbent presidential candidate and precisely in that context. The rationale used by government officials was that using primary colors was an inappropriate use of patriotic symbols as per the Constitution passed in 2006 revising the Ley de Bandera Nacional, Himno Nacional y Escudo de Armas de la República Bolivariana Venezolana and/or the Supreme Justice Tribunal’s own judgment.

• Happenings

Artists: Josef Albers, Ricardo Alcaide, Salwa Aleryani, Afruz Amighi, Rasheed Araeen, Dana Awartani, Marlon de Azambuja, Rana Begum, James Clar, Graham Day, Ayman Yossri Daydban, Richard Deacon, Adrian Esparza, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Mounir Fatmi, Basmah Felemban, Babak Golkar, Hazem Harb, Nargess Hashimi, Sahand Hesmayan, Saba Innab, Nadia Khawaja, Sol LeWitt, Hazem Mahdy, Sama Mara & Lee Westwood, Moataz Nasr, Timo Nasseri, Mujahidin Nurrahman, Seckin Pirim, Younes Rahmoun, Dania Al Saleh, Nasser Al Salem, Sara Salman, Gulay Semercioglu, Seher Shah, Ayesha Sultana, Gebran Tarazi, Michael John Whelan, and Ralf Ziervogel.

The Language of Human  Consciousness
July 11- October 10, 2014
Athr Gallery
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

For thousands of years, the question of whether the basics of geometry came naturally to all humans or if they had to be taught has been explored. According to Plato’s writings, Socrates attempted to determine how well an uneducated slave in a Greek household understood geometry, and eventually concluded that the slave’s soul “must have always possessed this knowledge.”

In the midst of startling havoc; humans by this very instinct seek to find order in this chaos, to reason with it; translating it to a language that is perhaps visual and universal is a common field of exploration for scientists and artists alike.

Athr Gallery will deliver a groundbreaking exhibition titled The Language of Human Consciousness in July and will include work by over 39 artists from around the world. Most of these artists will be exhibiting work for the first time in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East at large. To inaugurate the opening on July 10, Director of Tate Modern, Chris Dercon will moderate a discussion with pioneering artists in the field whom are Rasheed Araeen, Dana Awartani, Richard Deacon and Founder of Agial Gallery Saleh Barakat, who will be representing the late Gebran Tarazi.

Work by pioneering artists such as Josef Albers, Rasheed Araeen, Richard Deacon, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Sol Lewitt and Gebran Tarazi will be exhibited: Rasheed Araeen—a Pakistani national and London-based conceptual artist, sculptor, painter, writer, curator and founder of the The Third Text—will also be participating in the exhibition with his work, Zero to Infinity—of which a variation of the work was exhibited and acquired by the TATE Modern. The installation consists of 36 multi-colored cubes. The discussion will end with Rasheed inviting guests to move the units around the gallery, disrupting the uniform display to leave the cubes in a more complex and spontaneous arrangement.

The Language of Human Consciousness takes geometry as a starting point, accepting its heritage as a symbol of purity, intelligence and perfection and bringing it towards a more contemporary interpretation as a language for exploring the atypical, the imperfect and the alternative. Works are brought together that seek to dissect segments of times, contexts and places and open them up to universal interpretation. The works, in the potency of the contradiction between their infinite possibilities as geometric compositions and the range of their references—social, political, art historical or other—are reduced to a neutral ground: to a human and conceivable form.

• Happenings

Artist: Ricardo Alcaide

Settlements
April 5 – June 6, 2014
Baró Galeria
Sao Paulo, Brazil

The exhibition proposes a “settlement” of objects and situations that take ownership of the gallery space in an almost invasive way to freely occupy the metal structures presented as a symbol of imposing rationalist architecture. “My main interest in this show is defined by sculptural, pictorial and questions the current values of art, chaos and uncontrolled progress”, defines the artist.

For this exhibition, the artist presents a large installation of industrial steel shelves with groupings of works created in the studio and objects collected in the street -converting their vulnerable aspect into something solid and permanent, a series of sculptures made of bronze, developed from the same objects and other objects made of different materials and also paintings. That way, Alcaide evidences the “disposable” and its vulnerable, susceptible to destruction and disappearance nature and that requires an exercise of observation and rediscovery.

• Happenings

Ricardo Alcaide: Incidental Geometry
October 31 – December 14, 2013
Josée Bienvenu Gallery
New York, NY, USA

Josée Bienvenu is pleased to present Incidental geometry, an exhibition by Ricardo Alcaide. In this project, Alcaide addresses his interest for geometric abstraction, modernist constructions, and social dynamics in urban centers. His new body of work oscillates between the poetic and the political, juxtaposing playful and stern elements.

In Intrusion, Alcaide conceptualizes aesthetics that refer to vernacular and modernist architecture, along with the geometric abstraction that marked his academic background. In this group of over painted images of Modern mid-century interiors, the geometrical shapes subtly deconstruct the carefully designed rooms. These incidental openings, thickly painted planes of colours, alter the dynamics of the interiors, invading the space and creating a new reality. Alcaide attempts to hinder the pictorial and symbolic reality of these immaculately designed spaces with a foreign and striking element which appears to be floating in the space like an abandoned shelter. A group of sculptures Fabric, Paper, Plastic, Book made of found and recycled materials finds temporary shelter on a metallic shelving structure which alludes to the city’s vertical and geometric urban landscape.

Ricardo Alcaide was born in 1967 in Caracas, Venezuela, he currently lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Select solo exhibitions include: Una Forma De Desorden Invasivo, Galería Lucia de la Puente, Lima (2013);Intrusiones, Galería Tajamar, Santiago de Chile (2013); Prototipo Vernacular, Oficina #1, Caracas,Venezuela (2012); A Place To Hide, Baró Galería, São Paulo (2011). Select collections include: LIMAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima; Colección Fundación Cisneros, Caracas; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Venezuela; Galeria de Arte Nacional GAN, Caracas; Zabludowicz Collection, London.

Click here to view Ricardo Alcaide on Abstraction in Action.

• Happenings

My projects engage both poetically and politically within a discourse of multicultural exchange. How do people in different environments cope with economic and social exclusion? The physical and psychological correspondences between individuals and temporary precarious architecture are my primary preoccupations. My practice is increasingly focused on the architectural solutions to social situations. I am particularly interested in the Latin American Modernist Movement’s often un-acknowledged debt to vernacular world architecture. I have spent many years living and working in four capital cities – Caracas, my home city, London, Madrid and Sao Paulo – and my experiences of these extremely different economies have given me insights which deeply inform my practice. I engage directly, initially with photography, with specific locations, which are then combined and abstracted to various degrees to allow more universal human conditions to become evident.

Traducido del inglés

Mis proyectos se relacionan, de manera poética y política, dentro de un discurso de intercambio multicultural. ¿Cómo es que gente en diferentes ambientes sobrelleva la exclusión económica y social? Mis preocupaciones primordiales son los intercambios físicos y psicológicos entre individuos y la arquitectura temporal precaria. Mi práctica se enfoca cada vez más en las soluciones arquitectónicas de situaciones sociales. Estoy particularmente interesado en la a menudo no reconocida deuda del movimiento modernista latinoamericano a la arquitectura mundial vernácula. He pasado muchos años viviendo y trabajando en cuatro ciudades capitales: Caracas, mi ciudad de origen, Londres, Madrid y Sao Paulo, y mis experiencias con estas economías extremadamente distintas me han otorgado conocimientos que informan profundamente mi práctica. Me involucro directamente, inicialmente con la fotografía, con lugares específicos, que son después combinados y abstraídos a diferentes niveles para permitir que condiciones humanas universales se hagan evidentes.

Selected Biographical Information

Solo Exhibitions

• 2013: “Una Forma De Desorden Invasivo”, Galería Lucia de la Puente, Lima.
• 2013: “Intrusiones”, Galería Tajamar, Santiago de Chile.
• 2012: “Prototipo Vernacular”, Galería Oficina nº1, Caracas.
• 2012: “Modelo de Observação”, Espaço Cultural Instituto Cervantes, Sao Paulo.
• 2011: “Solo Project”, Curated by Pablo Leon De La Barra, Pinta Art Fair, London.

Group Exhibitions

• 2013: “Visao Do Paraiso: Pensamento Selvagem. ArtRio”, Curated by Julieta Gonzales-Pablo Leon de la Barra, Rio de Janeiro.
• 2013: “Tomar Medidas”, Espacio OTR, Madrid.
• 2012: “Optimismo Radical”, Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York.
• 2012: “Lejos De Casa”, masART Galería, Curated by Virginia Torrente, Barcelona.
• 2011: “Album: fotografía contemporânea”, Baró Galería, Sao Paulo.

Publications

• Artealdia International, Ricardo Alcaide: The Space Between Two Worlds, Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, February 2012.
• HotShoe International, Ricardo Alcaide: The Necessities Of Verticality, Becky Beasley, London, October 2008.
• HotShoe International, Ricardo Alcaide: The Skin That Walks, Becky Beasley, London, February 2007.

Collections

• Zabludowicz Collection, Londron.
• Colección Fundación Cisneros, Caracas.
• Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo.
• Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Sofía Imber, Caracas.
• GAN, Galeria de Arte Nacional, Caracas.

Links

• Arte Al Dia Internacional.
• Crítica de Arte Contemporáneo.

• Artists

Ricardo Alcaide: Una Forma De Desorden Invasivo
August 9 – September 7, 2013
Lucia de la Puente Gallery
Lima, Peru

In this first solo exhibition in Galeria Lucia de la Puente, Alcaide presents a combined selection of his three last series, where he ponders through photography, painting, sculpture and installation, about the contrast between precarious architecture and the presence of modern architecture and some of the possible problems based on everyday experiences in the city of Sao Paulo, where he lives.

On one hand, small format paintings of “A Place To Hide” series, still under development, which are abstract formal studies created from temporary precarious architectural structures. On the other, “Vernacular Prototype”, which appear with fragmented planes compositions present in the sculptures and installations in the exhibition room, suggesting incomplete shapes referring to similar profiles of modern architecture, but they arise from discarded objects from the streets. Both series operate as a preamble to his latest show, “Intrusions”, centerpiece of this exhibition.

The selection of photographs taken over with acrylic paint of “Intrusions” are iconic images of Latin America’s modern architecture, in the case of Venezuela, where Alcaide was born and raised, and Brazil where lives and works. The works of the architect Oscar Niemeyer (Panalto Palace and The Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia), Lina Bo Bardi (Glass House in Sao Paulo), Gio Ponti (Villa Planchart in Caracas) and Carlos Raúl Villanueva (University City of Caracas).

“Intrusions” bring to these constructions of fine and delicate lines different masses of color. His main concern is to interrupt, pictorial and symbolic, inside specific architectural spaces, recognizable and impeccable, as a foreign and external element to the self-image and to the space itself. As objects that appear and disappear messily in the urban spaces, a sort of lost shapes, as to be objects abandoned and discarded or confusingly used to form a small temporary structure for shelter to the homeless.

In “intrusions”, Alcaide conceptualizes aesthetics that refer to vernacular and modernist architecture, along with the geometric abstraction that marked his academic background. In this group of over painted images of Modern mid century interiors, the geometrical shapes subtly deconstruct the carefully designed romos. These incidental openings, thickly painted planes of colours, alter the dynamics of the interiors, invading the space and creating a new reality. Alcaide attempts to hinder the pictorial and symbolic reality of these immaculately designed spaces with a foreign and striking element which appears to be floating in the space like an abandoned shelter.

This contrast appears in his works to compose a more complex approach to the topic of past modernism and his relationship with the harsh reality in modern times. The artist’s approach is to address a so complex social issue, from an ambiguous and ironic point of view, as presenting these ideal scenarios formally occupied by geometric objects and attractive compositions, and yet represent a form of invasive disorder.

• Happenings