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

• Happenings

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

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

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

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

• Happenings

Artists: 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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The First International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias
#1: Cartagena
February 7–April 7, 2014
Cartagena de Indias, Colombia

#1: Cartagena is an issue-oriented project with works spread throughout the historic district. #1: Cartagena reflects on the cultural traditions of the people, the history and the deep connections to the colonial past, as well as encompassing literature, cinema, music, dance and crafts. The Biennial focuses on the idea of presence in its multitude of meanings, conveying how the past continues with us in the present. Structured as a hypertext, the macro project of the Biennial proposes a discontinuous journey through nine locations, each one presenting a multiplicity of narratives and memories. This structure also promotes the re-signification of the city as a monument. The viewer decides their own itinerary, making links from one space to another, stopping here and there to look at the city-monuments, and endowing their chosen circuit with the power, excitement and soul of the city. This personal journey gives meaning to the macro text: the Biennial and its exhibitions, site-specific projects, performances, film program and lectures.

Founded in 1533, Cartagena de Indias is a colonial town located in the center of the northeastern coast of Colombia. Surrounded by the Caribbean Sea, Cartagena has received a unique and interesting confluence of influences over its 500-year history that include pre-Columbian native Aboriginal, Spanish, African and Arab cultures. It is rich in multicultural folklore, and widely considered to be one of the most beautiful cities in the Caribbean.

The Biennial´s Artistic Director is international curator and writer Berta Sichel. For this project, she worked with three co-curators: Bisi Silva, the Center for Contemporary Art, Lagos; Barbara Krulik, independent curator; and Paul Willemsen, film scholar. She also consulted with critics and other curators in the formation of the Biennial.

#1: Cartagena: international exhibition
Suzanne Anker, Eduardo Abaroa, Helena Almeida, Julieta Aranda, Maria Jose Arjona, Charles Atlas, Radcliffe Bailey, Rosa Barba, Perry Bard, Yto Barrada, Lothar Baumgarten, Terry Berkowitz, Janet Biggs, Anna Boghiguian, Francois Bucher, Trisha Brown, Fernando Bryce, Anna Camner, Peter Campus, Nuria Carrasco, Nick Cave, Willie Cole, Bill Culvert, Elena del Rivero, William Engelen, Nezaket Ekici, Richard Garet, Ximena Garrido-Leca, Justine Graham, Asta Gröting, Federico Guzman, Romuald Hazoume, Diango Hernandez, Kirsten Heshusius, Sheila Hicks, Maria Teresa Hincapie, Candida Höfer, Katie Holten, Shirazeh Houshiary, Satch Hoyt, Marine Hugonnier, Jesper Just, Clemencia Labin, Dana Levy, Ligorano/Reese, Christiane Löhr, Inés Lombardi, Oswaldo Maciá, Lucía Madriz, Marcellvs L., Jenny Marketou, Billy Martin, Julie Mehretu, Zwelethu Methethwa, Marta Minujín, Guillermo Mora, Carlos Motta, Beth Moyses, Maria Nepomuceno, Lorraine O’Grady, Emeka Ogboh, Uche Opka-Iroha, Kristin Oppenheim, Trevor Paglen, Guillermo Paneque, Periferica, João Penalva, Libia Posada, Freya Powell, Khalil Rabah, Jessica Rankin, Luis Fernando Ramirez, Alvaro Restrepo and El Colegio de Cuerpo, Steven Roden, Lotty Rosenfeld, Ruby Rumié, Eduardo Sarabia, Carlos Schwartz, Teresa Serrano, Hassan Sharif, Yinka Shonibare, Kimsooja, Philip Taaffe, Tallur L.N., Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Mickalene Thomas, Ana Torfs, Adán Vallecillo, Raúl Gómez Valverde, Sergio Vega, Anton Vidokle, Leo Villareal, Bill Viola, Stephen Vitiello, Gijs van Bon, Svetlin Velchev, Friedemann von Stockhausen, Pawl Wojtaski, Ming Wong, Betty Woodman, Yin Xiuzhen, Suda Yoshihiro, Dolores Zinny and Juan Maidagan

Imperfect Idler or When Things Disappear: Colombian artists exhibition
Felipe Arturo, Jaime Avila, Andrés Felipe Castaño, Colectivo Octavo Plastico (Roberto Carlos Pérez, Ana Victoria Padilla, and Emanuel Julio Pinilla), Nicolás Consuegra, Wilson Díaz, Julián Dupont, Juan Manuel Echavarría, Clemencia Echeverri, Adrián Gaitán, Elías Heim, Leonardo Herrera, Juan David Laserna, Verónica Lehner, Diego Mendoza, Ana Maria Millan, Óscar Muñoz, Oscar Murillo, José Olano, Juan Obando, Bernardo Ortiz, Juan Peláez, María Fernanda Plata, Luis Roldan, Miguel Angel Rojas, Maria Isabel Rueda, Wilger Sotelo, Paola Tafur, Pablo Gomez Uribe

• Happenings

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

• 1996: Yale University MFA sculpture.
• 1992: Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

Prizes / Fellowships

• 1999: The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.
• 1990: The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2013: “Disassembling Paradise”, Kabe Contemporary, Miami, Florida, USA.
• 2013: “14 juillet, le manifeste du coq flâneur et autres histoires…”, Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, France.
• 2012: “Sublime Entropies”, Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne, Germany.
• 2011: “Paradise: Real Time (stills)”, Kabe Contemporary, , curated by Julieta Gonzalez, ARCO, solo projects, Madrid, Spain.
• 2010: “Paradise: Real Time”, , curated by Jonathan Watkins, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK.

Publications

• 2012: “Between Walls and Windows: Architecture and Ideology”, book edited by Valerie Smith, Paradise in the New World, Sergio Vega pp.65-7, text and images by Sergio Vega. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Published by Hatje Cantz, Germany, ISBN 978-3-7757-3474-5
• 2012: “The Storytellers, Narratives in International Contemporary Art”, book edited by Selene Wendt, Chapter eight: Sergio Vega, Paradise in the New World, text and images by Sergio Vega, pp.50-55. Published by Skira Editore, Milano, ISBN 978-88-572-1721-5
• 2011: “Ciels”, Nanni Balestrini and Sergio Vega, poet-artist book images by Sergio Vega, designed and published by Gervais Jassaud, Paris.
• 2011: “Paradise: Real Time”, book, introduction by Jonathan Watkins, essays and images by Sergio Vega, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK December, 120 pages, ISBN 978-0-615-56381-7
• 2010: “Argentina in Focus: Visualizing the Concept” exhibition catalogue, essay by Alma Ruiz, Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States, Washington DC, 32 pages, December.

Collections

• MAR Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
• Art Museum of the Americas, OEA. Washington DC, USA.
• Fondazione Biennale di Venezia, Italy.
• LWL-Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, Germany.
• KIASMA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland.

Additional Links

• Sergio Vega interviewed by Nicolas Guagnini
• Sergio Vega interviewed by Luigi Fassi

• Artists