CENTRE FOR THE AESTHETIC REVOLUTION

'BLA BLA AND CHICHI ON A BOAT' AN EXHIBITION CURATED BY CHRISTOPHE HAMAIDE PIERSON AND XAVIER MAZZAROL AT HUSENOT IN PARIS

2012-01-20T07:40:00.004Z

Blabla et Chichi sur un bateau
Curated by Christophe Hamaide Pierson and Xavier Mazzarol
January 14 - February 23. 2012
with avaf, Julien Bouillon, Claire Fontaine, Johan Creten, François Curlet, Wang Du, Mylène Eliot, Agathe Fleury, Tadashi Kawamata, Mike Kelley, Xavier Mazzarol, Daphne Navarre, Alfredo Piola, Yorgos Sapountzis, Louis-Philippe Scoufaras, Stéphane Vigny, Philip Wiegard, Franz West, Bernhard Willhelm

*****

Ragamuffin Nuffin’

What d’s’e say?
– Don’t say nuffink.

What d’s’e do?

– Don’t do nuffink.

What d’s’e fink?
– Don’t fink nuffink.

Why d’s’e say nuffink?
Why d’s’e do nuffink?
Why d’s’e fink nuffink?

– Ain’t there.

Jean Tardieu, « La Môme Néant », Monsieur, Monsieur, Gallimard 1951

(translated by David Kelley)

*****

press release (translated from french with google translate!):

Blabla and Chichi on a boat
by Sylvain Menétrey

One enters a protected environment - even overprotected - by some manic spirit, which has carpeted floor and wall space blankets browned. Spatial coverage developed by NASA to protect astronauts from the cold, heat and humidity. These metallized plastic sheets also serve as survival blankets that regulate body temperature of seriously injured or extreme sports. Just look up to take the measure of the danger which they are the sign. The light from three movie spots of a respective power of 4000 watts through the roof canopy and floods the gallery space. Three light sources believed both essential to the vision and terribly dazzling.

Rather than reduce the radiation reflect the covers as prisms, causing a loss of connection to the visitor.
Artists Christophe Hamaide-Pierson and Xavier Mazzarol and created this device perverse, where the precious, the attractive, the protector and life are transformed into a trap for the senses. Set design and implement full exposure Blabla and Chichi on a boat which they are the commissioners Hussenot Gallery, this installation so hyperbolic subverts the codes of art exhibition, the white cube becomes a green golden lighting works a blockbuster.

Inviting the viewer into this environment bigger than life, a column of twenty cents coins Agathe Fleury bar up the access corridor to the main room. His station horizontal rather than vertical floating ad following: a series of works that appear to levitate on pedestals of different heights, values down or askew. Thus, this photographic print of a distant figure, alone in a vast flooded. An image of the artist Alfredo Piola, whose apparent serenity is contradicted by the title Shipwreck. The presentation of the work flat on a pedestal under the steals. To see it, you must access the mezzanine of the gallery, a kind of belvedere where exposure is offered as a panorama.

As the protagonist of the image of Piola, humanity, or civilization celebrated by the foreign gold, seems lost in a break time and space. We do not perceive that the attributes and ornamental appendages, or utilities such as this gun piss ceramic Julien Bouillon.

The exhibition presents a series of objects changing, but arrested or mineralized by the artistic gesture in an intermediate state or embryo, like the piece of Franz West immersed in a rectangular plexiglass filled with resin. Other objects still seem warm and pulsating. And the bagpipes in pig skin bag of Philip Wiegard light rock or Mike Kelley, ironic reflection on the kryptonite of superhero confined to his wheelchair.

Through this dialogue of form and formlessness, the human and mutant, the seducer and the hostile, the picture emerges of a society that grows Promethean productivist logic to boost plant Ornamental protein (assume vivid astro focus) and the reflex to safe harbor eggs in a bunker (François Curlet).

The actual press release in french: http://www.galeriehussenot.com/IMG/pdf/cp_site.pdf
http://www.galeriehussenot.com/

'MICROCLIMAS' AT KUNSTHALLE ZURICH, A NOVO MUSEO, AN AMAZONIAN LIBRARY, A CINECLUB DE LOS TROPICOS. AN EXPERIMENT BY PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA AND FRIENDS

2012-01-16T16:51:00.002Z

MicroclimaS, an improvised experiment by Pablo Leon de la Barra at Human Valley at Kunsthalle Zurich's temporary location at Museum Barengasse

Zurich Microclima poster by PLB

Alejandro Cesarco
Broodthaers
replica of stationary fabricated by marcel broodthaers for the project musée d'art moderne, 1969
offset print on paper, A4 size
2008

Press Releases for exhibition printed on Broodthaers stationary

Microclima 1: Novo Museum: documents

Julia Rometti and Victor Costales, Ediciones del Exotismo Ordinario Internacional Neotropical, Documents in wall vitrine, 2011
the relationship between tropical organic nature and social revolutions

Julia Rometti and Victor Costales, Ediciones del Exotismo Ordinario Internacional Neotropical, Documents in wall vitrine, 2011

PLB, Nova Cartografia Tropical, 2010

PLB, vitrine with drawings

PLB, Studies for Novo Museo Tropical, drawings, sharpie on paper, 2009-2011

PLB, Savage Lava Jungles (for DGF), drawings, sharpie on paper, 2011

Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves, An Uncomfortable Eagerness, video, 20 minutes, 2011
on their research done in the Amazonic Libraries of Iquitos, which served as inspiration to create the collection of books and images named Amazonic Library in the next room.
"One fine day in the future
someone like us
will open these books and brochures,
these old magazines and newspapers,
and will try to understand
through the shadows and the lights,
through signs hard to decode,
what is all that coming from the past."

transition between Microclima 1 towards Microclima 2

Microclima 2: Amazonic Library, reading room, bed with mosquito net

mosquito net, Microclimate within Microclima!

Tetine, O Bandido, audio based on the film 'O Bandido Da Luz Vermelha (Rogerio Sganzerla 1968), recorded n 2011, listen to it here

Ana Roldan , Screen
bamboo, 2011

Ana Roldan, Primitive arrangements decorated with gold leaf

Coconuts, gold
2010

Marienbad Tropical

mosquito net and grapes

Fabio Morais and Marila Dardo, Ilha da Fantasia (Fantasy Island), Digital print on paper, 2009

Biblioteca Amazonica, an attempt to create a contemporary library of the tropics

Sophie Nys' Lyrics for Arto Lindsay baed on Roberto Burle Marx's list of plants for Parque do Flamengo

and Barbara Jones' Folies and Grottoes

Paisaje Inutil, Victor and Julia's Without Rain, and DGF's Alphaviles?

Conquest of the Useless, Up Above the World, The Crystal World, Journey to Java from Paris, Heart of Darkness, and Almayer's Folly...
and the Fanzine of Fanzines!

Tristes Tropiques, Molecular Revolution

artist books by Fabio Morais
http://fabio-morais.blogspot.com/

Recibo and publications by Recibo's friends
http://issuu.com/recibo

Revista Ramona
http://www.ramona.org.ar/

Pablo Magazine and Cassia Magazine

La Salvaje Revolucionaria en Horario Estelar by Alexander Apostol

and Duet for Canibals by Inti Guerrero

publications by Priscilla Gonsaga
http://marcelosilveira.art.br/manual

Looking at Trees, Notes of Representation by Irene Kopelman, published by Roma Publications

Andre Romao, Poemas Barbaros published by Kunsthalle Lisabon

and David Lamelas interviews by Drawing Room Confessions

Mariana Castillo Deball, Never Odd or Even, covers for non existing books published by Bom Dia

Transition between Amazonic Library and bedroom towards Microclima 3: Cine Club

Microclima 3: Cine Club de los Tropicos

CINE CLUB DE LOS TROPICOS
NOW SHOWING:
Silvan Kaelin, Lagoa de Ouro, Documentary video in the format of a “tele-novela", 18 episodes, 90 min, 2008
more about Lagoa de Ouro here

Film programme changes every two weeks. Next film:
Javier Bosques, The Splinter of the Tiger, 2007
Future Films to be announced

Julia Rometti and Victor Costales, histoire abrégée de la botanomancie portative, video slide projection on digital print, on the side of cinema room, an abstract/organic unconciouss

Julia Rometti and Victor Costales, histoire abrégée de la botanomancie portative, video slide projection on digital print, 2011

more fishing stools for extra visitors

Mathieu Copeland and Vanessa Arelle cutting the inaugural ribbon

Julia watching Rai and Gilda's video

Mr. Fischli (without Weiss) in the exhibition

Ana Roldan's coconuts with golden messages

Pineapple Fountain, a never ending fountain of tequila Margarita's, a collaboration between Radames 'Juni' Figueroa and David Waddington from Bistrotheque

Victor serving himself from the Margarita fountain

party crasher of the night, drinking non stop from the fountain and eating all the bananas!

Tom Collins from Bistrotheque preparing the canapés at Kunsthalle's kitchen

David with feijao black bean soup

feijao black bean soup

cod bolinho fritters

and mini tacos

DW, DGF and TB next to tropical drink fountain!

and Balzac shrine with green light and mini pineapple

HUMAN VALLEY – The other side of contemporary history presents:

SPRING: MICROCLIMAS, ZURICH TROPICAL

Experimento Improvisacional by Pablo León de la Barra

28 January – 9 April 2012

Opening: Saturday, 14 January 2012, 5–8 pm

with canapés and cocktails by David Waddington and Tom Collins / Bistrotheque, London

Freely inspired by Honoré de Balzac’s imaginary journey from Paris to Java (Voyage de Paris à Java, 1832), «Microclima Zurich Tropical» presents real and imagined journeys into the tropics and other jungles. Microclima proposes an immersion into a different Microclimate, and with it shifting points of references and giving visibility to narratives produced in other climates and geographies.

MICROCLIMA ZURICH TROPICAL is a salon with works by Ana Roldán, Alejandro Cesarco, Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves, Julia Rometti and Victor Costales, Fabio Morais, Radames ‘Juni’ Figueroa, Tetine, and others. MICROCLIMA ZURICH TROPICAL also includes a library and a cine club.

BIBLIOTECA AMAZONICA is an attempt to build a library with publications and posters by Irene Kopelman, Mariana Castillo Deball, Martha Hellion, Sophie Nys, Priscila Gonzaga, Leonor Antunes, Cassia Tabatini, Cecilia Palmeiro, Fabio Morais, Alexander Apostol, Inti Guerrero, Miguel Calderon, Jonathas de Andrade, Andre Romao, Ricardo Domeneck, Kenneth Bostock, Ediciones del Exotismo Ordinario Internacional Neotropical, Alias Editorial, Pablo Internacional Magazine and others…

IF YOU THINK YOUR PUBLICATIONS COULD BE PART OF THE LIBRARY, PLEASE CONTACT US!

BIBLIOTECA AMAZONICA is inspired by Mantilla and Chaves’ research into the amazonic libraries of Iquitos in Peru (“In the jungle there is a city, in this city there is a library, and in that library is the jungle”) and in Dominique Gonzalez –Foerster’s investigation on the future of books (“is it possible to expand this library, and if so, how can it be done in a completely different way?”) and the relationship between text, space and climate as explored in her exhibition Chronotopes and Dioramas, at Dia Art Foundation/Hispanic Society of America in 2010.

CINE CLUB DE LOS TROPICOS is a changing programme of artists’ films which although have no direct relationship to Balzac, explore realistic narratives, present panoramic portraits of different aspects of society, and share the Balzacian ambition of creating fictions (and realities) as big as life. Artist films in the programme include amongst others: Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves, An Uncomfortable Eagerness, 2011, about their research done in the Amazonian Libraries of Iquitos; Javier Bosques, The Splinter from the Tree, 2007, a personal portrait of the artist’s family life and history; Silvan Kälin, Lagoa do Ouro, 2008, a telenovela (soap-opera) presenting a micro cosmos of the real life dramas of a small village of Pernambuco, Brazil…

IF YOU THINK YOUR FILM COULD BE SHOWN AS PART OF THE CINE CLUB DE LOS TROPICOS, PLEASE CONTACT US!

In the course of the exhibition the presentation will grow over the space – works and books will be added, the film program extended, the exhibition will grow, like the jungle! MICROCLIMA ZURICH TROPICAL also celebrates Balzac’s attempt to create his own microclimate, a failed attempt to transform the land around his house in Paris into a pineapple farm.

The stationary used by Marcel Broodthaers for his fictional Musée d’art Moderne in 1969, was replicated by Alejandro Cesarco in 2008 and used to print the press release.

Note: Pablo León de la Barra thanks architect Douglas Stewart for collaborating on thinking the idea of the Microclimate, developed one night at East Bloc, a night club in London’s East End, where they identified (and later decided to join) a group of men dancing without shirt and creating their own microclimate in London’s cold winter weather.

Pablo Leon de la Barra is a thinker and an exhibition maker http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com

Human Valley is a space at Kunsthalle Zurich for the presentation of borderline topics created by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera especially for the rooms on the ground floor of Museum Bärengasse. After the chapters «Balzac Nouvelle Vague» by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera, «l’amour en e majeur» a proposition by Heike-Karin Föll, Jean-Michel Wicker and Gregorio Magnani and «The Money Plot» by Egija Inzule, Tobias Kaspar and Hannes Loichinger, Human Valley opens its fourth chapter with a presentation by Pablo León de la Barra.

Events:

Please consult the latest information on the websites www.kunsthallezurich.ch and www.humanvalley.ch

Guided public tours (in German):

SUNDAY TOURS, 2 pm: 5.2. (Niels Olsen) / 19.2. (Rahel Blättler) / 18.3. (NO) / 8.4. (NO)

LUNCHTIME TOURS, Wednesday, 12.30 pm: 15.2. (RB) / 7.3. (RB) / 28.3. (RB)

EVENING TOURS, Thursday, 6.30 pm: 23.2. (NO) / 15.3. (NO) / 5.4. (NO)

Opening hours:

TUE/WED/FRI 12 – 6 PM, THUR 12 – 8 PM, SAT/SUN 11 AM – 5 PM, MO CLOSED

HOLIDAYS: MAUDY THURSDAY 12 – 8 PM, GOOD FRIDAY CLOSED, EASTER SUNDAY & MONDAY 11 AM – 5 PM

Our education and tour program is supported by Swiss Re

Kunsthalle Zürich thanks: Präsidialdepartement der Stadt Zürich, LUMA Foundation

Further information and images are available on request by telephone +41 44 272 15 15 or email merkt@kunsthallezurich.ch.

http://www.kunsthallezurich.ch/

www.humanvalley.ch

'MICROCLIMA' AT KUNSTHALLE ZURICH, A PROJECT BY PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA AND FRIENDS OPENS THIS SATURDAY

2012-01-12T06:59:00.000Z

HUMAN VALLEY – The other side of contemporary history presents:
SPRING: MICROCLIMA ZURICH TROPICAL
Experimento Improvisacional by Pablo León de la Barra
28 January – 9 April 2012
Opening: Saturday, 14 January 2012, 5–8 pm

with canapés and cocktails by David Waddington and Tom Collins / Bistrotheque, London

Human Valley is a space at Kunsthalle Zurich for the presentation of borderline topics created by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera especially for the rooms on the ground floor of Museum Bärengasse. After the chapters «Balzac Nouvelle Vague» by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera, «l’amour en e majeur» a proposition by Heike-Karin Föll, Jean-Michel Wicker and Gregorio Magnani and «The Money Plot» by Egija Inzule, Tobias Kaspar and Hannes Loichinger, Human Valley opens its fourth chapter with a presentation by Pablo León de la Barra.

Freely inspired by Honoré de Balzac’s imaginary journey from Paris to Java (Voyage de Paris à Java, 1832), «Microclima Zurich Tropical» presents real and imagined journeys into the tropics and other jungles. Microclima proposes an immersion into a different Microclimate, and with it shifting points of references and giving visibility to narratives produced in other climates and geographies.

MICROCLIMA ZURICH TROPICAL is a salon with works by Ana Roldán, Alejandro Cesarco, Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves, Julia Rometti and Victor Costales, Fabio Morais, Radames ‘Juni’ Figueroa, Tetine, and others. MICROCLIMA ZURICH TROPICAL also includes a library and a cine club.

BIBLIOTECA AMAZONICA is an attempt to build a library with publications and posters by Irene Kopelman, Mariana Castillo Deball, Martha Hellion, Sophie Nys, Priscila Gonzaga, Leonor Antunes, Cassia Tabatini, Cecilia Palmeiro, Fabio Morais, Alexander Apostol, Inti Guerrero, Miguel Calderon, Jonathas de Andrade, Andre Romao, Ricardo Domeneck, Kenneth Bostock, Ediciones del Exotismo Ordinario Internacional Neotropical, Alias Editorial, Pablo Internacional Magazine and others…

IF YOU THINK YOUR PUBLICATIONS COULD BE PART OF THE LIBRARY, PLEASE CONTACT US!

BIBLIOTECA AMAZONICA is inspired by Mantilla and Chaves’ research into the amazonic libraries of Iquitos in Peru (“In the jungle there is a city, in this city there is a library, and in that library is the jungle”) and in Dominique Gonzalez –Foerster’s investigation on the future of books (“is it possible to expand this library, and if so, how can it be done in a completely different way?”) and the relationship between text, space and climate as explored in her exhibition Chronotopes and Dioramas, at Dia Art Foundation/Hispanic Society of America in 2010.

CINE CLUB DE LOS TROPICOS is a changing programme of artists’ films which although have no direct relationship to Balzac, explore realistic narratives, present panoramic portraits of different aspects of society, and share the Balzacian ambition of creating fictions (and realities) as big as life. Artist films in the programme include amongst others: Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves, An Uncomfortable Eagerness, 2011, about their research done in the Amazonian Libraries of Iquitos; Javier Bosques, The Splinter from the Tree, 2007, a personal portrait of the artist’s family life and history; Silvan Kälin, Lagoa do Ouro, 2008, a telenovela (soapopera) presenting a micro cosmos of the real life dramas of a small village of Pernambuco, Brazil…

IF YOU THINK YOUR FILM COULD BE SHOWN AS PART OF THE CINE CLUB DE LOS TROPICOS, PLEASE CONTACT US!

In the course of the exhibition the presentation will grow over the space – works and books will be added, the film program extended, the exhibition will grow, like the jungle! MICROCLIMA ZURICH TROPICAL also celebrates Balzac’s attempt to create his own microclimate, a failed attempt to transform the land around his house in Paris into a pineapple farm.

The stationary used by Marcel Broodthaers for his fictional Musée d’art Moderne in 1969, was replicated by Alejandro Cesarco in 2008 and used to print the press release.

Note: Pablo León de la Barra thanks architect Douglas Stewart for collaborating on thinking the idea of the Microclimate, developed one night at East Bloc, a night club in London’s East End, where they identified (and later decided to join) a group of men dancing without shirt and creating their own microclimate in London’s cold winter weather.

Kunsthalle Zürich thanks: Präsidialdepartement der Stadt Zürich, LUMA Foundation

Pablo Leon de la Barra is a thinker and an exhibition maker http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com

Events:
Please consult the latest information on the websites www.kunsthallezurich.ch and www.humanvalley.ch

Guided public tours (in German):
SUNDAY TOURS, 2 pm: 5.2. (Niels Olsen) / 19.2. (Rahel Blättler) / 18.3. (NO) / 8.4. (NO)
LUNCHTIME TOURS, Wednesday, 12.30 pm: 15.2. (RB) / 7.3. (RB) / 28.3. (RB)
EVENING TOURS, Thursday, 6.30 pm: 23.2. (NO) / 15.3. (NO) / 5.4. (NO)

Opening hours:
TUE/WED/FRI 12 – 6 PM, THUR 12 – 8 PM, SAT/SUN 11 AM – 5 PM, MO CLOSED
HOLIDAYS: MAUDY THURSDAY 12 – 8 PM, GOOD FRIDAY CLOSED, EASTER SUNDAY & MONDAY 11 AM – 5 PM

Our education and tour program is supported by Swiss Re

Further information and images are available on request by telephone +41 44 272 15 15 or email merkt@kunsthallezurich.ch.

http://www.kunsthallezurich.ch/

RUNO LAGOMARSINO 'OTHERWHERE' AT NIELS STAERK, COPENHAGEN

2012-01-10T12:03:00.000Z

press release:
RUNO LAGOMARSINO

OtherWhere

29.10 - 17.12. 2011

OtherWhere, the title of Runo Lagomarsino's exhibition, is a starting point, an indication of the narration and visual approach that the exhibition displays and formulates. It carries issues related to travel, placement/ displacement and the constructions of spaces; being it the gallery, a nation or the cracks on a Modernist building.

In the centre of the gallery six tables display several postcards of national commercial airlines. The depicted airplanes are from different parts of the world and time periods. There are postcards from companies that for one reason or another have ceased to operate, including those from countries that don't exist anymore or have changed their name. On each of the postcards there is a line of pebbles placed side by side. As the original airplanes once did or still do and as the postcards were designed to do, the stones have also been travelling, in a conjunction of a metaphoric travelling and an actual one. The stones have been collected in different locations, during walks taken by the artist or by friends and colleagues who contributed to the collection, building a collective narrative of places and people.

The artist has meticulously positioned the stones to cover the aircrafts' windows. All the windows are covered, not letting the passengers look out or the viewers look in. It is the stones that hold the airplane on the table, forcing each of them to stay, preventing them to fly. There is a visual paradox between the physicality of the stones and the postcards, and the nature of the aircrafts they represent.

"If you hold a stone, hold it in your hand. If you feel the weight, you'll never be late. To understand."
(Caetano Veloso)

Thin papers are hanged throughout one of the gallery walls, from the beams to the floor. Looking closer one can see that it's actually a measuring device, somehow quantifying the gallery space; or the viewers. At the same time, being a very light and fragile material, with its imperfections and instability, it point towards the impossibility of any unchanging and uniform measuring mechanism. It exposes itself as an arbitrary, imaginary construction.

On another way of rethinking mechanisms of generalization and constructions of space and geography, the artist occupies another wall with a small sculptured text. A sentence built with hand-scaled MDF letters currently sold in craft shops reads: RUNO IS NOT A NATION. The artist' name in this enunciation balances personal narratives with those assumed in universalizing discourses. This exemplifies the ways in which Lagomarsino has developed a distinct and subtle aesthetic in which image and text articulate a political discourse through poetic gestures.

The second room of the gallery, the work ContraTiempos uses the Parque Ibirapuera, in São Paulo, as its starting point. Designed by Oscar Niemeyer and Roberto Burle Marx, the park was inaugurated in 1954 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the city. A slide projection loop records the artist's search for images of the South-American map in the cracks of the paved path that unites the different buildings in the park. There is an element of performativity as the artist walks along the 28.000 square meters marquise, seeking the aged concrete for fissures that resemble his idea and memory of this territory's outline.

Not only in this walk through the park and in the collection of pebbles, but also in previous works, such us Trans Atlantic and Horizon (Southern Sun Drawing), the performative aspect is becoming more and more central. This component is not directly on display, but it is crucial in the process and it inhabits the narration of the work.

Runo Lagomarsino (born in Lund, 1977; lives and works in Malmö and São Paulo) participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York 2007-8 and received an MFA from the Malmö Art Academy in 2003. Recent Soloshows include Violent Corners ar/ge kunst Galerie Museum, Bolzano; Trans Atlantic Art Statements, Basel; There is always a day away, Galeria Luisa Strina (Espaço projeto), São Paulo (in 2011). Recent group exhibitions include Speech Matters Danish Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale; Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), Istanbul and The Crisis of Confidence Prague Biennale 5, Prague (in 2011). The Moderna Exhibition 2010, Moderna Museet, Stockholm;The Travelling Show, Colección Jumex, Mexico City; All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Social at the Berardo Collection, Museu Colecção Berardo, Lisbon (in 2010) Report on Probability Kunsthalle Basel; Free as Air and Water, 41 Cooper Gallery, New York; Panorama da Arte Brasiliera, Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paolo; OURS: Democracy in the Age of Branding, Parsons the New School for Design, New York (in 2009) .

Nils Staerk

Ny Carlsberg Vej 68

1760 Copenhagen, Denmark

http://www.nilsstaerk.dk

DANIEL STEEGMANN 'FOUR WALLS' AT MENDES WOOD IN SAO PAULO

2012-01-09T04:59:00.000Z

press release:

DANIEL STEEGMANN MANGRANÉ

FOUR WALLS
November 19 – December 23, 2011
Opening: Saturday, November 19, 2PM

Mendes Wood announces FOUR WALLS, a solo exhibition of new works by Catalonian artist Daniel Steegmann Mangrané. The exhibition features four pieces that explore the semiotic structure of the projection – lacking the narrative of a picture, the projections hover between drawings, abstract structural cinema and sculpture.

The projected image here no longer pretends to a fictitious depth on the surface of the wall, but rather the projection itself expands its specific plastic and meaningful properties, joining minimalist propositions of 1970′s sculpture. FOUR WALLS draws on diverse sources ranging from traditions in literature, poetry, architecture, semiotics, popular mass-media entertainment and critical theory.

Inspired by Structuralist filmmakers, Steegmann has created these works to go against the grain of the narrative conventions of cinema and photography, achieving delicate ends with minimal means. The effect is oddly entrancing, deeply poetic, and representative of a sort of corporeal and sensuous reflection on the medium of film itself and the politics of the audience.

Steegmann’s work spans various media and oscillates between subtle, poetic but nevertheless raw experimentations. Although mainly conceptually informed, Steegmann work displays a strong concern with the existence and features of concrete objects: Steegmann activates the abstract language as a thought-generating principle and employs the idea of unstable meaning and dematerialized constructions as a way to address issues concerning “objectless”. The works articulate the sense of space and time, building up a structure as the constellation of elements enter into action. The subject’s relation to the making of meaning as a process of time continues until the object is dissolved into an execution of the relations of the separate elements.

Daniel Steegmann Mangrané was born in Barcelona in 1977 and has lived since 2004 in Brazil, both in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Daniel recently had solo shows at Halfhouse, Barcelona (2010), Centro Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janeiro (2010), Fundació la Caixa, Barcelona (2008) and A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro (2007) and group shows at Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló, (2011), Galeria Estrany de la Mota, Barcelona (2011), Galerie im Riegerungsviertel / Forgotten Bar Project, Berlin (2010), Galerie KoraAlberg, Antwerpen (2010), Entes, Barcelona (2009), After-the-Butcher, Berlin (2009); Biennial of Tehran (2008 ) and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago de Chile (2008).

He has received grants and prizes from the Musac Museum, Generalitat de Catalunya, ABC prize or Fundació José García Jiménez. Upcoming projecs include a solo show at Meulensteen, New York in the spring of 2012. Next year Daniel Steegmann Mangrané will be a fellow resident of the Junge Akademie at the Akademie der Kunste de Berlin.

Mendes Wood
Rua da Consolação, 3358
Jardins, São Paulo, Brazil
http://mendeswood.com

http://danielsteegmann.info/

STEFAN BRUGGEMANN, CONCEPTUAL JOKES: KOSUTH OVER PRINCE AT YVON LAMBERT, PARIS

2012-01-06T03:28:00.000Z

press release:
Stefan Brüggemann November 25 – January 14, 2012

Yvon Lambert is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Stefan Brüggemann. This is the artist’s third solo show with Yvon Lambert.

Stefan Brüggemann’s work focuses on contrast and contradictions. His practice is concerned with how and where mediation might occur, rather than placing an emphasis on the separateness of opposing positions. This is especially the case with language, which powerfully shapes and directs our existence. Language is envisaged in Brüggemann’s practice as a fluid medium whose objects, structure and ideology are in a state of constant alteration.

In this new series of work, entitled ‘Untitled (Definition and Joke Paintings)’, Brüggemann brings together Joseph Kosuth’s series ‘Art as Idea as Idea’ (1966-) and Richard Prince’s ‘Joke Paintings’ (1985-). Each work combines a single Joseph Kosuth definition with a Richard Prince joke, maintaining the scale and composition of each, as previous defined by these artists. Kosuth and Prince have both appropriated and repositioned language through existing tropes: the one referencing philosophy, or high culture, the other humour, or popular culture. Brüggemann’s provocation in bringing together the pop and the conceptual sees an irrefutable confrontation of irony and logic.

Elegant and decisive in a formal sense this new group of paintings is nonetheless wholly and unequivocally conceptual. The artist’s intention is to relinquish all formal decisions to his sources. These references are not used as quotations, rather, Brüggemann appropriates them in a literal, wholesale fashion, as a kind of physical and intellectual material, which is not refashioned but remains the same. Brüggemann’s reappropriation of existing works and their linked concepts allows him to present conceptual art in an ever more liminal space, stripping his own decision making to bare functionality. Paradoxically, as he approaches dematerialisation, the works resulting from this process of elimination maintain a lush and striking presence.

Stefan Brüggemann (b. 1975, Mexico City) lives and works in London and Mexico City. He has exhibited internationally at some of the most visionary institutions and private collections throughout the world. He has had solo shows at the Mies Van Der Rohe Pavilion, Barcelona; the Kunsthalle Bern and the ICA, London. He has been included in group shows at the David Roberts Art Foundation, London; the Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; the Fundacion Serralves, Porto; La Coleccion Jumex, Mexico City; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Kunsthalle Frankfurt and the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal.

ADRIANA LARA, LASSER FASHION MARTIAN HAWAIIAN MESTIZO WEARABLE PAINTINGS AND FASHION SHOW, AT HOUSE OF GAGA, MEXICO

2012-01-05T10:39:00.000Z

press release:
Adriana Lara
La pintura (lasser) moderna
Colección primavera/verano 2012
And one day art became so fashionable that fashion saw itself in art.

This exhibit takes the meeting point between the fashion world and the art world as a chance to restate the distinction between the two and the implications of this distinction. The exhibit’s starting point is an article published in La Jornada with the title “Painting strikes back” which questions the appreciation of contemporary art and its decline, taking as an example a piece by Adriana Lara. The article’s title, which was also the title of a colloquium in La Esmeralda Art School, becomes the perfect slogan to speak about trends and fashion as agents in the art market.

With the Modern (lasser) painting exhibition, Lara joins the dialogue about the role of contemporary art and, more specifically, art produced in the periphery, such as Mexico, and proposes a rethinking of art as fashion juxtaposing concepts such as identity vs. style, style vs. trend, trend vs. art, art vs. identity.

In the performance Painting strikes back (Spring/Summer Collection 2012) Lara takes the precarious state of the Mexican fashion industry as a way of showcasing the difficulty of imparting a personal substance on the construction of an identity that tends to be subjected to marketing within the global “style” market.

Through this performance turned fashion show, the artist is also presenting the exhibit’s central piece, Etre, a painting taken from a rave which depicts an alien, symbol used often to represent the world of Trans music and designer drugs, which in a way serves an anti-identity tag. The models coming out of this painting, walk on a spiral carpet which is used as a catwalk and will help give shape to the final stage of the performance in the center of the gallery: a living sculpture.

The fashion collection presented at the performance will continue to be shown throughout the exhibit in an art format, on a stretcher, strengthening the link between the two spheres.

As an antagonistic element, and a sort of self-sacrifice, the piece True artists are in the streets appropriates a slogan found on Brazilian streets. The artist substitutes this slogan for what is genuine in her own work in an attempt to grant freedom to art in an anonymous and untraceable ground.

For the exhibit’s title, Lara reuses her musical project’s name –Lasser Moderna- in order to give meaning to modern painting in 2012. She makes use of laser as a symbol of the present, but above all she plays with the multiple meanings of ‘modern’. In Mexico, besides being associated with the different tendencies in different points in History, ‘modern’ is associated with fashion. On the lateral side of the gallery, Lara exhibits a painting also titled Modern (lasser) painting, that has a USB on oil paint –USB as a tangible representation of information (perhaps containing a new trend?)- and a horizontally projected laser.

In the image that appears in the exhibit’s invitation, the pictured person’s awkwardness and discomfort comes through and reminds us of how an identity that tries to imprint itself in art will be inhibited by the unforgiving light with which each trend is discarded every time a new collection comes from abroad.1

Special thanks to Emilio Acevedo, Ana Bazdresch, Diego Berruecos, Guillermina Fabre , Arturo Jiménez, Brenda Legorreta, Mauricio Limón , Mauricio Mesta, Ana Livia Ramírez Luis Rincón, José Rojas, Ylenia Rosas .

NOTE:
1- The text in the invitation reads -On the 13th of August, 1521, although heroically defended by Cuahutemoc, Tlatelolco fell to Hernan Cortes. It was neither a triumph nor a defeat, it was the painful birth of the Mestizo People that is Mexico today.”

http://www.houseofgaga.com/20_Adriana_Lara.php

SOME OF PABLO'S FAVOURITE EXHIBITIONS OF 2011

2012-01-03T13:14:00.000Z

LINA BO BARDI DIDACTIC ROOM' AND 'LINA BO BARDI FAN DAY' BY WENDELIEN VAN OLDENBORGH AT VAN ABBENMUSEUM, EINDHOVEN
http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/2011/01/lina-bo-bardi-didactic-room-and-lina-bo.html

ROBERTO JACOBY, 'DESIRE RISES FROM COLLAPSE', A GREAT EXHIBITION AT REINA SOFIA, MADRID
http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/2011/03/roberto-jacoby-desire-rises-from.html

STEFAN BENCHOAM'S 'PUBLIC FOUNTAIN/PUBLIC TOILET' AT WHITE CUBICLE TOILET GALLERY
http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/2011/07/stefan-benchoams-public-fountainpublic.html

MATHIEU COPELAND: 'STUDIES FOR A CATALOGUE: A STUDY FOR AN EXHIBITION OF VIOLENCE IN CONTEMPRARY ART (REFPRISE 1964/2011)' AT LATHAM'S FLAT TIME HOUSE
http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/2011/08/mathieu-copeland-studies-for-catalogue.html

'THE PERIPATETIC SCHOOL: ITINERANT DRAWING FROM LATIN AMERICA' CURATED BY TANYA BARSON AT THE DRAWING ROOM

http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/2011/09/peripatetic-school-itinerant-drawing.html

'RESACA TROPICAL/TROPICAL HANGOVER' CURATED BY OCTAVIO ZAYA IN BOGOTA
http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/2011/10/ressaca-tropicaltropical-hangover.html

CHEVERISMO INTERNACIONAL SUMMIT: 'PRIMER ENCUENTRO INTERNACIONAL CHEVERISTA' IN MEDELLIN
http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/2011/10/cheverismo-internacional-summit-1er.html

ADRIANO COSTA, 'TAPETES' NEONEOCONCRETE GEOEMOTIONAL CARPET PRE-SCULPTURES

http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/2011/11/adriano-costa-tapetes-neoneoconcrete.html

AGAINST SAVAGE THINKING OR SAVAGE COUNTER THOUGHT, PAULO HERKENHOFF AND FRIEND'S 'CONTRA-PENSAMENTO SELVAGEM'
http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/2011/11/savage-counter-thinking-paulo.html

FEDERICO HERRERO: NEW MESOAMERICAN CONCRETISM AT PROYECTOS ULTRAVIOLETA IN GUATEMALA
http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/2011/11/federico-herrero-new-mesoamerican.html

'MYTHOLOGIES/MITOLOGIAS' CURATED BY KIKI MAZZUCCHELLI AT THE CITE INTERNATIONALE DES ARTS, PARIS
http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/2011/12/mythologiesmitologias-curated-by-kiki.html

'HANS ULRICH OBRIST WILL BE HERE IN 20 MINUTES', A BANNER BY RAFAEL RG

2012-01-01T15:41:00.000Z

"Hans Ulrich Obrist will be here in 20 minutes. Don't miss him!" a banner by Rafael RG (born in Brazil, 1986) which was installed in 2010 in abandoned public spaces of the city of Fortaleza in Brazil.

The banner makes reference to one of HUO heroes, curatorial pioneer Walter Hopps who was always famously late and preferred to work outside of normal office hours, from midnight to sunrise. Walter Hopps’s legendary elusiveness prompted the employees at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., where he served as director in the 1970s, to make buttons reading "Walter Hopps will be here in 20 minutes."

The banner by Rafael RG in Fortaleza, announces an event that will never happen, and refers to the expectations of the "peripheries" to be discovered and validated by the centre.

It also reminds me of of 'Waiting for Mr. Marshall', the Spanish film of 1953 by Garcia Berlanga which tells the story of small Spanish village, which upon knowing that the Americans are going to pass through town, embarks in a process of preparation and beautification of the village in order to be up to the expectations of the North American visitors, and benefit from the Marshall plan. When the Americans finally arrive, the streets are lined with the people dressed in their traditional clothes, the band plays, a Welcome banner hangs on the middle of the road, but the American convoy passes hurriedly through the village's main road without even making a stop. See the fantastic final scene here.

Amigos and Amigas, there's no more centre, the centre is everywhere, you are the centre.

All the best for 2012,

PLB

You can see more of Rafael RG's work here: http://cargocollective.com/rafaelrg

THE WALK UP TO ACROPOLIS BY DIMITRIS PIKONIS, AND ACROPOLIS ROCK BEFORE SUNSET

2011-12-31T14:14:00.000Z

and drawing of the walk to Acropolis designed by Dimitris Pikionis in the 1950s, taken from Andreas Angelidakis blog, read more here

LINA BO BARDI, SESC POMPEIA, AND OLAFUR ELIASSON'S INSTALATIONS

2011-12-26T14:22:00.000Z

Olafur Eliasson's colour labyrinth (with a wink to Oiticica and Buren) inside Sesc Pompeia, as part of his exhibition curated by Jochen Volz as part of Video Brasil

the handicrafts workshops at SESC Pompeia

Olafur Eliason's waterfall

the concrete with marks of the foamwork

photo of the factory in the 70s, before it was transformed into SESC Pompeia.

"Nobody transformed anything, we found a factory with a beautiful structure and an important original architecture... the children would run, the teenagers would play football under the rain falling from the roofs, laughing when the ball splashed on the water... We only added some small things: a bit of water, a staircase..." Lina Bo Bardi on her intervention on SESC Pompeia

SESC Pompeia's inauguration plaque in 1982 by military dictator João Baptista de Oliveira Figueiredo.

It is incredible that such a space of freedom and democracy, with such an avant grade programme (still today) of activities (culture + sport + leisure + dentists + theatre + library, etc) happening together, was built during that time.

OCCUPY LONDON TENTACITY OUTSIDE SAINT PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON. A CHRISTMAS VISIT

2011-12-25T20:15:00.000Z

Occupy London Tentacity outside St. Paul's Cathedral, London

http://occupylsx.org/

http://theoccupiedtimes.co.uk/

FLAVIO DE CARVALHO, FAZENDA CAPUAVA IN VALINHOS, STATE OF SAO PAULO

2011-12-24T09:57:00.000Z

Gerd and Gui

more recent brick interventions in the back of the house...

hook for hanging hammock (photo by Gui)

Gerd and Pablo next to the bamboo tree (photo by Gui)

and local tractor boy giving us instructions to the nearest churrasco.

On a Sunday in November, on an early morning, together with my dear friends Gerd and Guilherme, we embarked on a male bonding adventure to Valinhos to find Flavio de Carvalho's fazenda. Without any clear direction or map, we had the luck of finding a young man at the gas station who drove us there, if not, it would have been impossible to find it. As it was Sunday, the ex fazenda was almost empty, except for few kids playing in the empty swimming pool. The Fazenda is now used as a school for handicapped people, and shows clear signs of deterioration and the passage of time.

read previous blog post on Flavio's fazenda, with original pictures here

Acesa Capuava
ROD. Flavio de Carvalho, S/N - Capuava/valinhos, Valinhos, 13270-000, Brazil

visit Capuava school's web page

REGINA GALINDO, ONE OF THE ELEVEN 2011 PRINCE CLAUS AWARDS LAUREATES

2011-12-23T21:30:00.000Z

Prince Claus 2011 laureates and directors with Queen Beatrix and Argentinean princess Maxima

the Royal Palace in Amsterdam

royal guards outside the palace

inside the Royal Palace

carrying the weight of the world in its shoulders

Press Release:

The Prince Claus Awards

The Prince Claus Awards honour outstanding achievements in the field of culture and development. The awards are presented annually to individuals, groups, organisations or institutions whose cultural actions have a wide and positive impact on the development of their societies.

In keeping with the Prince Claus Fund’s guiding principle that culture is a basic need, the awards highlight significant contributions in regions where the human need for culture is not met or is restricted, in spaces where avenues and resources for cultural expression, creative production and the rescue and animation of cultural heritage are lacking or limited. The Awards Programme aims to bring remarkable role models in the field of culture and development to wider public attention, to provide opportunities for these role models to expand their activities and enhance their impact, and to highlight the immense importance of cultural actions on development.

Through the Prince Claus Awards, each year the Fund honours eleven cultural pioneers, whose work is located on the frontline of free cultural expression.Time and again these are courageous people working under difficult circumstances; people who are an inspiration for all those around them. The awards’ presentation will take place on 14 December 2011 during an official ceremony at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. The laureates are selected by an independent, international committee.

Prince Claus Fund’s 2011 Principal Award:
Chimurenga (“Struggle for Freedom”) is a Pan-African publication on culture, art and politics. It is an innovative platform for free ideas and political reflection by Africans about Africa. Its founder, the writer and DJ Ntone Edjabe, grew up in Cameroon, studied in Nigeria and is now based in South Africa. Chimurenga is published each month online and is distributed two to three times a year both in Africa and elsewhere.The Chimurenga Library, a unique collection of independent African cultural magazines, is available online and also in the form of a travelling exhibition. Chimurenga frequently collaborates with other media such as the Pan-African Space Station, which comprises a series of performances and radio broadcasts that focus on new African music.

Ten Prince Claus Awards:

Said Atabekov, Kazakhstan
Atabekov (Bez Terek, 1965) is a shrewd artist, who plays a leading role in the contemporary culture of Central Asia. He shifts boundaries and opens up new horizons in a difficult transcultural environment.

The Book Café, Zimbabwe
The Book Café (launched in Harare in 1997) is a lively platform for free cultural expression in a country that for many years has endured violent censorship and an inadequate cultural infrastructure.

Nidia Bustos, Nicaragua
For more than 30 years, the work of Nidia Bustos (Nicaragua, 1952) has inspired the campesinos (small-scale farmers), who develop their communities through cultural activities. In 1980 she launched MECATE (the Campesino Movement for Artistic and Dramatic Expression), which concentrates on performances in villages and now consists of more than 80 theatre and music groups.

Rena Effendi,Azerbaijan
The work of photographer Rena Effendi (Baku, 1977) upholds human dignity and resilience. Her portraits reveal her awareness of individual experience and her ability to look beyond surface impressions.

Regina Galindo, Guatemala
Regina Galindo (Guatemala City, 1974) is an enthralling and radical performance artist, whose work opposes violence, oppression and injustice.

Ilkhom Theatre, Uzbekistan
The IlkhomTheatre (founded inTashkent in 1976) combines contemporary forms and techniques with elements of Tashkent’s rich performance tradition, local street theatre, improvisation and circus traditions.

Kettly Mars, Haiti
Kettly Mars (Port-au-Prince, 1958) is a moving and energetic writer, who maintains an incisive view of reality and creates a fascinating portrait of Haitian society.

Rabih Mroué, Lebanon
The work of performance artist Rabih Mroué (Beirut, 1967) examines the social implications of revealing “truth” as based on his experience of the Lebanese Civil War.

RIWAQ, Palestinian Territories
The Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation (founded in Ramallah in 1991) plays an essential role in Palestinian society because it protects and reinforces endangered heritage.

TseringWoeser,Tibet/China
Tsering Woeser (Lhasa, 1966) is an audacious writer/blogger from Tibet, whose work provides a unique outlook on the complexity of present-day Tibet.

http://www.princeclausfund.org/

INTI GUERRERO, NEW ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF TEORETICA IN COSTA RICA

2011-12-22T09:52:00.000Z

Inti Guerrero, new artistic director of Teoretica

Fundación Ars TEOR/éTica is pleased to announce that it has appointed Inti Guerrero as its new Associate Artistic Director and Eduardo Faith as its new Executive Director.

It is with great pleasure that Fundación Ars TEOR/éTica welcomes them and wishes them great success at the forefront of the institution. These appointments conclude the restructuring process begun last September, while they also initiate a new stage in TEOR/éTica's history after the passing away of its founder Virginia Perez-Ratton in 2010.

*****

Inti Guerrero
Associate Artistic Director and Curator
"The introduction of Colombian curator Inti Guerrero in TEOR/éTica heralds a new perspective for the institution, giving continuation to the legacy of founder Virginia Perez-Ratton. With an extremely open spirit, Guerrero's curatorships articulate historical and contemporary questions, through transversal paths including art, visual culture, and contemporary behaviors. With a lighthearted spirit, Guerrero, nonetheless does not dismiss a rigorous theoretical approach. He knows how to bring together experimental risk and qualitative discernment, two characteristics for working with art. In addition, his preoccupations recognize the multiplicity of cultures in the global world, the procecess of exchange, and the necessity to expand the acknowledgement of the production standing on the margins of hegemonic systems. Mr. Guerrero will know how to guide TEOR/éTica to face the new challenges in art, maintaining a dialogue with the context of San Jose and with artists from Central America, whose role in the international scene must not be delayed" - Paulo Herkenhoff, Founding member of TEOR/éTica

Inti Guerrero (Colombia, 1983) has worked as an independent curator and art critic in Latin America and Europe. His most recent curatorial projects include: Man Up!, Tate Film, Tate modern, London; A cidade do homem nu, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo; Flying Down to Earth, MARCO, Vigo and FRAC Lorraine, Metz; and Duet for Cannibals, Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam, 2010. He co-curated the exhibitions: Eppur si muove, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, 2009 and Yo no soy esa…, Galeria Santa Fe, Bogota, 2005. His texts have been published in Art Nexus, Ramona, Afterall, metropolis M and Manifesta Journal.

Guerrero Studied History and Theory of Art and Architecture at Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia and Universidade de Sao Paulo in Brazil, and fulfilled the Curatorial Program of De Appel in the Netherlands. Currently he is a member of the Advisory Committee of Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation.

"I feel honored to be part of TEOR/éTica's new team. I'm excited to share my international experience in order to rethink its role within the local, regional and global sceneries. The inspiring work of Virginia Perez-Ratton positioned TEOR/éTica as a critical platform with a high relevance for contemporary art 'produced in' and 'thought from within' a region as diverse as Central America and the Caribbean. The current ecology of the art field in this region has created a different context to which TEOR/éTica must now respond, in order to rethink itself as an institution that forms part of a new and expanded cartography" - Inti Guerrero

As Associate Artistic Director and Curator, Mr. Guerrero whom is currently based in Hong Kong, will work from San José during intensive periods throughout the year. Abroad he'll strengthen the institution's relationships and collaborations with diverse platforms and international networks.

*****

Eduardo Faith
Executive Director
"Eduardo Faith's professional trajectory has been fruitful, both in initiatives and in achievements. Many are the public and private institutions that have benefited from his talent and have been able to take advantage of his efficiency and his systematic and organized work ethic. Without a doubt, his incorporation to TEOR/éTica as executive Director is promising. For this reason, this appointment brings great joy to those of us who have been committed to continuing and enriching the Foundation's work. I am sure that I speak on behalf of all members of the administrative board when I welcome him with an enthusiastic feeling" - Manuel Picado, member of TEOR/éTica's Board of directors

Eduardo Faith (Costa Rica, 1956) is a person with a renowned trajectory in the Costarican and Central American cultural scene. In San Jose, he has been the director of Museo Banco Central, Museo de Arte Costaricense, and Museo Nacional. Moreover, through his consulting company Mondrian S.A. he has carried out multiple museological projects in Central America, amongst them The children's Museum and INBioparque (San Jose), Museo de Arte de El Salvador-MARTE (San Salvador), the installment of previous Arte Paiz Biennials (Guatemala City) and the traveling exhibition 60 Obras de Arte Costaricense, shown at several museums of the region.

He studied Architecture at Universidad de Costa Rica. Later on he specialized in Museology at the University of Florence in Italy as well as in La Sorbone and the École du Louvre in Paris, France.

"Twelve years of development have made TEOR/éTica a central axis for the contemporary artistic movement of the Central American region. Likewise, its international projection makes the institution a mandatory point of reference. Based on the work of Virginia Perez-Ratton we now aim to take TEOR/éTica into a new stage of further consolidation and growth, without losing sight of the mystic and spirit that gave rise to it" - Eduardo Faith

*****

About TEOR/éTica
Located in San José, Costa Rica, TEOR/éTica is a non-profit, independent, private project dedicated to the investigation and promotion of contemporary art practices from Central America and the Caribbean. TEOR/éTica’s endeavors can be grouped into four major categories: exhibition production, at both national and international levels; the promotion, documentation and support of regional artists; a strong editorial project (40 bilingual publications); and the organization of conferences and symposia. Throughout its existence, TEOR/éTica has created an international cultural network and has gained recognition for generating new ways of thought. Virginia Pérez-Ratton (1950–2010), a Costa Rican curator and investigator, founded the project in 1999. After a brief hiatus, TEOR/éTica will resume its activities in February 2012.
www.teoretica.org

See also the Coleccion Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and ICI's 2012 curatorial travel award to Central America in collaboration with Teoretica here.

HENRY KLUMB HOUSE, TROPICAL MODERNITY IN RUINS IN RIO PIEDRAS, SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO. A VISIT

2011-12-21T00:40:00.000Z

Henry Klumb's house in Rio Piedras, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Klumb's rotating table

view of the dinning room from the outside

the kitchen area, badly affected by a hurricane

gate to Klumb's house

at the house with Klumb expert Enrique Vivoni

Beta Local friends and fellows visiting Klumb's House

earlier in the morning giving a talk at Beta-Local on the Novo Museo Tropical and Tropical Modernity

and Klumb furniture at the documentation centre of the Archivo de Arquitectura y Construcción de la Universidad de Puerto Rico http://aacupr.uprrp.edu/

See a previous post with original photos of the house here

with thanks to Enrique Vivoni from the Archivo de Arquitectura y Construcción de la Universidad de Puerto Rico for opening the house for us

with thanks also to Michy Marxuach and Beta Local, for making my wish come true and organising the visit to Henry Klumb's house, and making possible that finally, after 10 years of going continuously to Puerto Rico I could finally visit Klumb's house. See Beta Local's post on the visit here

Henry Klumb was born in Koln, Germany in 1905 and emigrated to the USA in 1927 to work with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesen West, he also later collaborated with Louis Kahn. In 1944 he moved to Puerto Rico, where he developed an agenda of modernist architecture for the tropics, and was in charge of the new master plan and most of the modern buildings of the University of Puerto Rico. Klumb's own house was located in Rio Piedras, in the outskirts of San Juan, not far from the University where he was designing most of the buildings. The house, located in an existing pineapple plantation, was a traditional wooden house from the XIX century, which was intervened and opened up by Klumb. Walls were brought down and palms planted outside the house to create shade and view. The house was bought by the University after Klumb's dead, but the lack of use and maintenance and the effects of the climate have had an effect on the house, which has become almost a ruin. Now the house has been declared a modern monument and new efforts are being done for its renovation. Hopefully the future (and expensive) renovation, will bring the house back to it's old glory and not transform it into a cartoon of its former self. Klumb's example of tropical modernism becomes even more relevant today in Puerto Rico's contemporary landscape of air conditioned architecture and inhabitants isolated from the exterior world.

download a pdf on Klumb's architecture by Vivoni here.

'MYTHOLOGIES/MITOLOGIAS' CURATED BY KIKI MAZZUCCHELLI AT THE CITE INTERNATIONALE DES ARTS, PARIS

2011-12-18T18:28:00.003Z

exhibition view, Jonathas de Andrade, Rodrigo Matheus, Beto Shwafaty, Tonico Lemos Auad

Wirz, da Cunha, Craveiro

Pablo Leon de la Barra, Alexandre da Cunha, Pedro Wirz

Pedro Wirz

Jonathas de Andrade, Rodrigo Matheus

Tonico Lemos Auad, Rodrigo Matheus

Tonico Lemos Auad

Rodrigo Matheus

Theo Craveiro

Tonico Lemos Auad

Alexandre da Cunha

Pablo Leon de la Barra, Nova Cartografia Tropical

exhibition view

Beto Shwafaty

Rodrigo Braga

Cris Faria, Tamar Guimarães e Marina Rheingantz

Marina Rheingantz

Tamar Guimarães, Carla Zaccagnini, Deyson Gilbert & Roberto Winter

Deyson Gilbert & Roberto Winter

Cristiano Lenhardt, Adriano Costa

Cristiano Lenhardt

Adriano Costa

Erika Verzutti, Adriano Costa, Marcellvs L.

Marcius Galan

Barbara Wagner

Paulo Nazareth

curators Kiki Mazzucchelli and Maria do Carmo Pontes

MYTHOLOGIES / MITOLOGIAS
Private view: 6 December 2011, 6pm to 9pm
7 to 21 December 2011/Monday to Saturday, 2pm to 7pm
Address: Cité Internationale des Arts/18, Rue de l’Hôtel de Ville, 75004, Paris, France
Tel: +33 1 42 78 71 72
Blog: http://mythologiestheshow.blogspot.com/

ADRIANO COSTA / ALEXANDRE DA CUNHA / BARBARA WAGNER / BETO SHWAFATY / CARLA ZACCAGNINI / CINTHIA MARCELLE / CRIS FARIA / CRISTIANO LENHARDT / DEYSON GILBERT & ROBERTO WINTER / ERIKA VERZUTTI / JONATHAS DE ANDRADE / MARCELLVS L. / MARCIUS GALAN / MARINA RHEINGANTZ / PABLO LEÓN DE LA BARRA / PAULO NAZARETH / PEDRO WIRZ / RODRIGO BRAGA / RODRIGO MATHEUS / TAMAR GUIMARÃES / THEO CRAVEIRO / TONICO LEMOS AUAD

In the last decade, contemporary Brazilian art has achieved an international prominence that is unheard-of in its history. It has been in this period that some of the most renowned institutions in countries such as the United States, France and England have held retrospective individual exhibitions for historic artists such as Lygia Clark (Nantes, 2005), Cildo Meireles (London, 2008) and Hélio Oiticica (Houston and London, 2007). Contemporary Brazilian art was also the theme of important group exhibitions and festivals such as Tropicália, curated by Carlos Basualdo, which was presented in Chicago, New York and London (2006).

Growing international interest in Brazilian art was also apparent in the major international art fairs such as ARCO in Madrid and Frieze in London, which today feature several Brazilian exhibitors. The presence of Brazilian artists also increased noticeably among the European and North American galleries. In this same decade, Brazil reached an unprecedented economic stability, and is experiencing a period of economic prosperity as significant as that of the 1950s, whilst Europe and the United States are facing a period of crisis, which undoubtedly contributed hugely to the growing interest in Brazilian culture.

Today, Brazil is experiencing a development boom comparable to its growth in the 1950s and 60s. It was precisely in this period of significant cultural effervescence in the country that artistic movements, theories and expressions flourished in various fields of knowledge, which ultimately became representative of Brazilian culture as it is internationally known today: the architecture of Niemeyer and Bo Bardi, the artistic experiments of Clark, Oiticica and Pape, the Paulo Freire method of education, the bossa nova, among many others.

The exhibition ‘Mythologies’, which borrows its title from Roland Barthes’ renowned book, takes as a starting point issues relating to identity and cultural hybridism which are at the heart of Brazilian modernism, reflecting upon the processes that led Brazilian art to achieve international recognition today. In a ‘role-reversal’, Brazilian art is now ‘cannibalised’ by foreign artists who appropriate its symbolism, its strategies and its aesthetics.

The artists included in this exhibition have a particular interest in revisiting and reinterpreting the various mythologies and clichés associated with Brazilian culture, recapturing and updating concepts that are fundamental to our modernity, creating mythical images based on contemporary experiences or demystifying folkloric images and exploring the expanse and heterogeneity of the Brazilian territory. Thus, a body of works in Mythologies revisits and reinterprets our anthropophagic and abstract-geometric artistic legacy. Other works highlight territorial and geographical concepts, connecting with landscapes, architecture and specific characters from different places. There are also works that look more specifically at political and economic aspects, crossing the timespan that separates the two major periods of Brazilian development, 1950/60 and 2000/10.

As such, ‘Mythologies’ does not propose a generational selection that seeks to exhaustively identify a ‘new contemporary Brazilian’ art brought together in a group show. On the contrary, the exhibition aims to include works by artists from different generations and geographical regions that cover topics related to one of the hundreds of mythologies associated with Brazilian culture. An attempt was also made to create a heterogeneous group that included artists from the various regions of the country as well as those living abroad - a group that is constantly expanding and whose work is becoming increasingly important for an understanding of Brazilian art today.

This project is supported by the Brazilian Embassy in Paris.

Curator: Kiki Mazzucchelli
Kiki Mazzucchelli is an independent curator and critic. She is currently developing research for her doctorate at the TrAIN research centre, at the University of the Arts in London, with a project that examines the legacy of certain exhibitions that, in the last decade, were fundamental to the expansion of Brazilian art on the international circuit. In 2011 she co-curated the exhibition “As ruas e as bobagens” with Moacir dos Anjos (Itaú Cultural, São Paulo). This year, she edited the series of publications “The poster as expended exhibition space” and the artist’s book “4,000 Disparos”, by Jonathas de Andrade, both funded by the Biennial Foundation and the Ministry of Culture. She curated, among others, “Brasília Teimosa” (ICA, London, 2008), Barbara Wagner’s solo exhibition; the group show “OIDARADIO” (Paço das Artes, São Paulo, 2008), the first art radio station in Brazil, co-curated by Nick Graham-Smith; and “Ressaca Tropical” (Santander Cultural, Recife, 2009), a solo exhibition by Jonathas de Andrade. In 2009, she was the resident curator at the Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño, in Bogotá. She was a member of the group of critics at the São Paulo Cultural Centre (2008-2010) and at the Paço das Artes (1999-2000). She has lectured at various institutions, including the Henry Moore Foundation (Leeds), the Royal College of Arts (London) and the National University in Bogotá. She has written essays on the works of artists such as Alexandre da Cunha, Carla Zaccagnini, Erika Verzutti, Marcius Galan, among many others. Her texts appear in various publications, including Artecontexto, Cadernos do Videobrasil, Flash Art and Tatuí.

Assistant curator: Maria do Carmo Pontes
Maria do Carmo Pontes holds a degree in film (FAAP, São Paulo, 2006) and an MFA in Curating (Goldsmiths College, London, 2011). From 2007 to 2009 she worked at Galeria Fortes Vilaça, in São Paulo. In 2010, she worked as a curatorial and editorial assistant at the 29th São Paulo Biennial. She is one of the authors of artist Raul Mourão’s monograph ‘Mov’ (2011) and is a London correspondent for this artist’s blog.

most photos by Theo Craveiro, courtesy Kiki Mazzucchelli

BLACK CUBICLE AT CELESTE HOUSE, MEXICO PRESENTS 'NOTHINGNESS AND BEING SKNNY' A GROUP SHOW BY GERARDO CONTRERAS

2011-12-12T16:52:00.000Z

Black Cubicle, installation view

Assume Vivid Astro Focus’ Wallpaper

Adriana Lara ‘Installation (Prescription Glasses)’

Terence Koh’s Deer Diary Letter ‘Everybody Iz Such Beautiful’

Gerardo Contreras ‘La Toya Jackson Playboy Piece’

Installation Shot (Ben Jones’ ‘Facemaker’ Video)

Ben Jones’ ‘Facemaker’ Video

Installation Shot (Brian Kokoska’s ‘Pink Guy’)

Brian Kokoska’s ‘Pink Guy’

Mir cutting the opening ribbon

Mr. Contreras, curator of the Black Cubicle, and Vanesa Fernandez of Celeste House

Mario Garcia Torres and Jan Mot

female curator heaven, friend, Bambi, Mir, Magali

young Mr. Contreras playing the piano with his new Morrisey haircut

NOTHINGNESS AND BEING SKINNY

at Black Cubicle Toilet Gallery
Curated by Gerardo Contreras

Assume Vivid Astro Focus
Ben Jones
Terence Koh
Brian Kokoska
Adriana Lara

1. The human search for reality has been a journey towards understanding, not just the manifested but also the internal.

2. The Cartesian expression ‘I think therefore I am’ has been posited as ‘I am skinny’ replacing the dualism of the existent and the essence with necessarily the non-dualistic primacy of the existent over the essence, where existence becomes the essence. Undiluted existence, existence in its totality and existence with a freedom ‘to be skinny’.

3. Consciousness is a being whose existence posits its essence, and inversely it is consciousness of a being skinny, whose essence implies its existence; that is, in which appearance lays claim to being skinny.

4. Being is everywhere. We must understand that this being skinny is no other than the transphenomenal being of phenomena and not a noumenal being which is hidden behind them. It requires simply that the being skinny of that which appears does not exist only in so far as it appears.

5. Sartre’s concept of consciousness is the revealed revelation of existents. Existents thus appear ‘before’ consciousness on the foundation of their independent entity of ‘being skinny’.

6. There is a clear deviation from the Kantian because the a priori and the noumenal have been undermined to emphasize the ‘transphenomenal being skinny of phenomena’ where all prior beliefs make way for the phenomena.

7. How are these two transphenomenal forms of being related? As opposed to a conceptualizing consciousness in a relation of knowledge to an object, I introduce a relation of ‘being skinny’: consciousness (in a pre-reflective form) is directly related to the being of the phenomenon.

Black Cubicle Toilet Gallery at Celeste House, Mexico City
http://celeste.com.mx/

*****
in spanish

"BLACK CUBICLE TOILET GALLERY ABRE EN MÉXICO, D.F.

En enero del 2005 , en el mítico George and Dragon Pub de Londres, el baño de mujeres dio a luz al White Cubicle Gallery http://www.whitecubicle.org. Hasta el dia de hoy bajo la dirección de Pablo León de la Barra y la bendición de sus land lords Liliana Sanguino y Richard Battye, el White Cubicle se ha convertido en un referente de la escena artística londinense. En este espacio de 1.40 x 1.40 se ha presentado un cuidadoso programa de exhibiciones de artistas contemporáneos interesados en explorar mas alla de lo sexual y lo escatológico en el arte. White Cubicle presenta un programa discerniente de manifestaciones locales e internacionales como un antídoto para la a veces extremadamente comercial escena artística en Londres.

En 2011, también bajo la dirección de Pablo León de la Barra y Beatriz López, y con la bendición de Vanesa Fernandez y Aldo Chaparro abre en Celeste House la galería espejo de White Cubicle, Black Cubicle Toilet Gallery, localizado en el baño de hombres y mujeres de Celeste House y donde se presentará un programa que busca refrescar la escena del arte local y cuestionar los patrones establecidos por los cánones internacionales del mercado.. Para la inauguración del espacio Gerardo Contreros fue elegido como curador y organizo la exhibición "Nothingness and Being Skinny", que incluye el trabajo de Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Ben Jones, Terence Koh, Brian Kokoska y Adriana Lara."

Black Cubicle Toilet Gallery at Celeste House, Mexico City

http://celeste.com.mx/

1ST GRAN BIENAL TROPICAL, 'TROPICO ABIERTO' CURATED BY PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA AT LA COMAI IN SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

2011-12-11T07:09:00.000Z

Bubu Negron and Radames Juni Figueroa welcoming Pablo Leon de la Barra to San Juan International Airport, sign hand painted by Jose Lerma

a bienal that fits in a car, with Radames 'Juni' Figueroa, co-curator of the Bienal Tropical and Jose Lerma, production executive director of the Bienal Tropical

art works arriving to La Comay

Jesus 'Bubu' Negron with his mask works

Jesus 'Bubu' Negron, reproduction of folkloric coconut masks made by the artist following traditional production methods

Radames 'Juni ' Figueroa with the Bienal Poster

La Comai street sign

La Comai, Food Kiosk

La Comai, Bienal Tropical Poster

Radames Juni Figueroa, co-curator of the Bienal Tropical

Carolina Caycedo, exercises for female emancipation

Monica Rodriguez, poster for seed granade recipe

Diagrama Tropical, PLB

Karlo Andrei Ibarra, bananas tattooed with phrases related to the implementation of Free Treaties (TLC) between Caribbean and Central American countries with the USA, tattooed by Omar Velazquez

food at la Comay, arepa with conch meat, whisky and coconut water, rice with crab meat!

Michelle and friend installing Katalina Iturralde's Drama Tropical banner

Katalina Iturralde's Drama Tropical banner

Carolina Caycedo, Live Local Love, banner

Tropical Carl Andre, Carolina Caycedo banner, table with Golden Pineapple prizes

Anomymous, Tropical Carl Andre, free recreation with graffiti spray of the floor at La Loseta

Erika Verzutti, Tropical Family, 2011

(done by instructions)

Radames 'Juni' Figueroa, Rainbow

Jose Lerma and Radames 'Juni' Figueroa, somewhere under the rainbow

Naufus Figueroa, watermelon molotov bomb with transvetite underwear
(done by instructions)

Federico Herrero, painted round rock, painted by instructions

Jorge Rodriguez, Mangoneo poster, a hybrid between banana and mango and used in puerto rican slang to mean ____________ and popularised in Melvin Santiago's song el Mangoneo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5blUWLWVoQ

Adriana Lara, Johnny La Gente Esta Muy Loca, banner on side of the road

fake Allora & Calzadilla palm fan

Jose Lerma, graffiti painting done over found doors and palms

Rafael Vargas, Tropical Drink

Stefan Benchoam, coconut pipe for smoking weed
(done by instructions)

Jesus 'Bubu' Negron, coconuts wearing copies of traditional folkloric masks made out of coconuts

Pablo Leon de la Barra, curator of the Bienal Tropical wearing the Cheverismo o Muerte cape, a collaboration between Carolina Caycedo, Beatriz Lopez and PLB

Alana Iturralde, utopic participatory sculpture

Yoyo Rodriguez, Duet of Palms, two microphones on two different palms, amplification of sound made by wind passing through palms, you can listen to the recording here

Hammock by Jesus Bubu Negron, 2004

Chemi Rosado, painting left 40 days under the influence of the jungle (recreation of original painting, now lost, and done in 14 hours!)

Michael Linares, Hombre Mata abstract paintings (Hombre Mata are solitary masturbators who harass woman in the beaches in this area)

Carla Acevedo editor of DaWire

Karlo Andrei Ibarra, political bananas hanging from tree

Guillerme Rodriguez, Bertopofagia, Bertoia Barbecue chair

El Gordito frozen beef Patties

Chaveli Cifre, wearable collars with drinking jugs

Chaveli Cifre, Boho-Hobo tent

Chemi Rosado, model for a floating skate bowl

Chemi Rosado's sunset sand sofa

Mima and Cesar Reyes

Chaveli Cifre, circle of fire

Marxz Rosado, construction of lamp on palm tree

Cesar Reyes and Radames Juni Figueroa

Piña Dorada (Palm Dior) prizes

Piña Dorada for best young artists, shared in four parts between Guillerme Rodriguez, Chaveli Sifra, Alana Iturralde and Yoyo

Jesus 'Bubu' Negron, standing on the Tropical Carl Andre. Bubu, winner of the Piña Dorada for the best art work of the biennale, and double price for attending all the exhibitions at La Loseta during the year

late arrival, Edgardo Larregui's guava seed cock

another last minute arrival, Marxz Rosado's palm tree giant lamp

Chaveli Sifre lighting Carolina Caycedo's offering to Yemaja

Carolina Caycedo's offering to Yemaja

our new friend's from La Comai food kiosk

and Green Cubicle exhibition at Roberto Paradise's toilet gallery!

video of the Bienal Tropical by Alexis Ledesma

Gran Bienal Tropical poster by PLB

TROPICO ABIERTO
GRAN BIENAL TROPICAL
Saturday December 10, 2011 12-6 PM
Kiosko La Comai, Carretera 187, Km 13
http://www.infocityturismo.com/lacomay/

A project by Pablo Leon de la Barra for La Loseta
participating artists:
Alana Iturralde, Bea Santiago, Bubu Negron, Carolina Caycedo, Chemi Rosado, Chaveli Cifre, Esteban Gabriel, Guillerme Rodriguez, Jorge Gonzalez, Jose Lerma, Juni Figueroa, Karlo Ibarra, Katalina Iturralde, Marxz Rosado, Michael Linares, Rafael Vargas, Yoyo Rodriguez, and friends...
with guest artists:
Adriana Lara, Beatriz Lopez, Erika Verzutti, Federico Herrero, Naufus Figueroa, Stefan Benchoam, Wilfredo Prieto

“The myth of “Tropicality’ is much more than parrots and banana trees: it is the consciousness of not being conditioned by established structures, hence highly revolutionary in its entirety. Any conformity, be it intellectual, social, or existential, is contrary to its principal idea.”
Hélio Oiticica, Tropicalia, March 4, 1968

The Jury of the Gran Bienal Tropical was conformed by:
Michy Marxuach, co-director and founder, Beta Local
Mima y Cesar Reyes, collectors
Gache Franco, art supporter, mother of art curator Marina Reyes Franco
Carla Acevedo, writer, critic, curator, editor of DaWire
Jose Lerma, artist

The Gran Bienal Tropical jury awarded the following Piña Dorada (Golde Pineapple) awards:

- The 1st price was given unanimously to Jesus 'Bubu' Negron, for his way of questioning puerto rican folklore and reincorporating it to contemporary life.

- The second price for best young artist was shared between:
Alana Iturralde for re-incorporating ideas of participation within the life of the aesthetic object
Guillerme Rodriguez for rethinking and re-using the inherited structures of tropical modernities;
Yoyo Rodriguez for amplifying the sound of the tropics in a poetic way;
and Chaveli Sifra for creating new forms of energy which revitalise and reinvent life in the tropics.

- The price for the best guest artist was given to Erika Verzutti, for rethinking the idea of constructing tropical sculptures

- A life time achievement award was given to La Comay, the place being an art work in itself, but also for the celebration of life, food and friendship that is made possible within the place.

A possible future Biennal Tropical might happen again in La Comay, but might also happen in the jungles of Tabasco or Palenque, near Tikal in Guatemala, somewhere in Costa Rica or Panama, in the island of Solentiname in Nicaragua, in the Peruvian Amazons of Iquitos or the Colombian Amazons of Leticia or the Brasilian Amazons or Manaos or somewhere in between, in Rio de Janeiro or in Salvador de Bahia, or in Cape Verde, Mumbai, Pondichery, Bangkok or Vietnam...

The Bienal Tropical was financed through the economy of friendship
with special thanks to Roberto 'Tito' Paradise for providing accommodation for the bienal.

http://laloseta.tumblr.com/
http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/

JOSE LERMA AT ROBERTO PARADISE'S NEW GALLERY SPACE IN SAN JUAN PUERTO RICO

2011-12-09T16:01:00.001Z

Roberto Paradise's new gallery, an old wooden house in Santurce neighbourhood of San Juan, Puerto Rico

Rober"Tito" Paradiso, gallerist, welcoming visitors to his new space

Jose Lerma's new painting and curtain at Roberto Paradise Gallery

Jose Lerma's paintings covered with parachute cloth

painting covered with parachute installed over keyboard and producing exhibition soundtrack

Jose Lerma scribble painting over keyboard and güiro

Roberto Paradise

and Jose Lerma and Mama Lerma

Jose Lerma, Jibaro Jizz, on view at Roberto Paradise until January 25, 2012

ROBERTO PARADISE’s new space: Calle Hipódromo #610, Santurce, San Juan

http://www.robertoparadise.com/

HANS ULRICH OBRIST TALKS ABOUT HIS FIRST EXHIBITION INSIDE HIS KITCHEN WITH PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA INSIDE A CAR IN MIAMI

2011-12-05T13:00:00.001Z

Hans Ulrich Obrist in Conversation with Pablo Leon de la Barra about his first exhibition which took place inside his kitchen in 1991. Within the new European economy and European debt (is Europe the new Latin America?) HUO early exhibition strategies, including the exhibition within the kitchen, but also the Robert Walser Museum in Switzerland (a vitrine in a restaurant where the writer used to go to drink, a non-monumental, modest, and very discreet museum, an elastic institution: a migratory museum), and his Do it! exhibition (sets of instructions to produce works) make more sense than ever.

and having lunch at Enriquetas Cafe in Miami with Beatrix Ruf, Mr. Ruf, HUO and PLB

THE NEW ACROPOLIS MUSEUM BY BERNARD TSCHUMI IN ATHENS, A VISIT

2011-11-25T12:03:00.000Z

all the white sculpture casts are the missing marbles which are located in the British Museum, and which were bought by Lord Elgin

and a few days later I went to the British Museum in London to visit the missing Elgin Marmols

BRITISH MUSEUM, THERE ARE NO EXCUSES ANYMORE, IT'S TIME TO RETURN THE MARBLES TO THE ACROPOLIS MUSEUM!

read more on http://www.parthenonuk.com/

and visit the acropolis museum's website here: http://www.theacropolismuseum.gr

PIERE LEGUILLON, 'NON-HAPPENING AFTER AD REINHARDT' AT RAVEN ROW, LONDON

2011-11-24T12:29:00.000Z

Pierre Leguillon presenting Ad Reinhardt's slides

Pierre Leguillon, Non-Happening after Ad Reinhardt, slide show, carrousel 1

Pierre Leguillon in conversation with Seth Sieglaub

one of the carrousels with Ad Reinhardt's slides

cabinets of curiosities with different kinds of Ad Reinhardt's work, black silkscreens, cartoons, etc...

Pierre Leguillon

Non-Happening after Ad Reindhart

Raven Row invites you to a special presentation by French artist Pierre Leguillon, with the participation of Seth Siegelaub. For his Non-happening after Ad Reinhardt, Leguillon will show 350 slides that were used in performance lectures by New York abstract painter Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967). Leguillon will then discuss Reinhardt with Conceptual Art pioneer Seth Siegelaub, who as an art dealer in New York in the 1960s knew Reinhardt and shared with him an interest in Islamic art.

Ad Reinhardt is best known for his black monochromes, or ‘ultimate paintings’, to which he devoted himself during the 1960s. Also well known are the satirical comic strips and illustrations he made for Art News magazine and the leftwing newspaper PM. However, little is documented about the artist’s archive of 10,000 photographic slides, now held by the Ad Reinhardt Foundation in New York.

From eyewitness accounts it has been established that Reinhardt’s slide shows consisted of a rapid succession of details of art, decorative art and architecture, photographed during his many travels abroad. Constructing a formal analysis of artistic creation over centuries, they seemed to follow George Kubler’s hypothesis in The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things that there is no progress in art. By framing his shots so as to reveal hidden or overlooked aspects of cultural artefacts, Reinhardt also offered a global ‘reading’ of the history of art, anticipating today’s image search engines.

For the London chapter of this event, Leguillon has invited Seth Siegelaub, who in the mid-1960s let Reinhardt consult his collection of books on oriental rugs shortly before they joined the library of Asia House in New York. Their discussion will highlight the fact that Reinhardt’s slides, beyond their author’s acknowledged role as a leading proponent of Abstract Expressionism and a precursor of Minimal Art, can be seen as a missing link in a history that leads from Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1924–1929) to similar archival endeavours by Charles Eames, Sol LeWitt and Gerhard Richter.

Pierre Leguillon (b. 1969, France) lives and works in Paris. Leguillon has been working with slide shows since 1993, most recently in presentations at Artists’ Space in New York, Mudam in Luxembourg and the Louvre in Paris. His solo exhibition at Mamco, Geneva, in 2010 took the form of a large-scale installation exploring the notion of a personal archaeology of perception. Leguillon’s exhibition Diane Arbus : Rétrospective imprimée (1960-1971), which was first shown in 2008 at the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris, toured to Moderna Museet in Malmö, De Hallen in Haarlem and CCA in Vilnius.

Seth Siegelaub (b. 1941, USA) lives and works in Amsterdam. A prominent art dealer, independent exhibitions organiser, publisher, political researcher and textile bibliographer, he is best known for his pivotal role in the emergence of Conceptual Art in the 1960s through his projects with artists such as Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, and Lawrence Weiner. As part of the manifold activities he undertook after leaving the art world in 1972, Siegelaub has been collecting woven and printed textiles, embroideries and costume from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas as well as bark cloth and headdresses from Oceania and Africa. A selection of works from his textile collection will be shown at Raven Row from 1 March to 6 May 2012 in an exhibition curated by Sara Martinetti, Alice Motard and Alex Sainsbury.

The next instalment of Pierre Leguillon’s ongoing series of Non-happenings after Ad Reinhardt will take place on 17 December 2011 at Murray Guy in New York and will feature guest speaker Ute Meta Bauer.

With the kind support of the Ad Reinhardt Foundation, New York.
Special thanks to Rita Reinhardt, Anna Reinhardt and Susan Sabiston.

Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, London E1 7LS
T +44 (0)20 7377 4300
info@ravenrow.org
www.ravenrow.org

DOCUMENTA 13: 100 NOTES, 100 THOUGHTS, 100 PAMPHLETS

2011-11-23T13:32:00.000Z

5 Pamphlets, 5 Thoughts

14. Alejandro Jodorowsky: Drawings for the filming of Dune

22: Suely Rolnik: Archive Mania

18: Mario Bellatin: The Hundred Thousand Books of Bellatin

26. Mario Garcia Torres: A Few Questions Regarding the Hesitance between Bringing a Bottle of Wine or a Bouquet of Flowers (on Alighiero Boetti's One Hotel in Kabul)

24: Mariana Castillo Deball & Roy Wagner: Coyote Anthropology: A Conversation in Words and Drawings

On my last visit to Koenig Bookshop in Charing Cross Road, in London, I bought 5 of the Documenta 13 pamphlets (I actually bought 6 including a fantastic small Lawrence Wienner one). The truth, is I wish I could have bought more, but at prices between 5 and 8 pounds each I will go broke if I buy them all, and then won't have money to buy my easy jet flight to go to Kassel in the Summer. So to start, I bought the ones printed by my friends (except Jodorowsky who unfortunately I don't know) as an act of support to the publishing of their thinking.

Press Release from the saturated with information and complicated to navigate (I couldn't even find opening dates!) Documenta 13 web page below:
(and what's with this calling of the Documenta curators Agents, and Member of Core Group, Head of Department, etc. since Maria Lind calling Sputniks her resident artists and curators at Kunstverein Munich, we hadn't heard such original naming within the profession...)

*****

100 Notes – 100 Thoughts

As a prelude to the 2012 exhibition, dOCUMENTA (13) and Hatje Cantz are publishing a series of notebooks, 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts, that is comprised of facsimiles of existing notebooks, commissioned essays, collaborations, and conversations.

A note is a trace, a word, a drawing that all of a sudden becomes part of thinking, and is transformed into an idea. This publication project follows that path, presenting the mind in a prologue state, in a pre-public arena. A space for intimacy and not yet of criticism, dOCUMENTA (13) is publishing the unpublishable, the voice—and the reader is our alibi and ally. Note taking encompasses witnessing, drawing, writing, and diagrammatic thinking; it is speculative, manifests a preliminary moment, a passage, and acts as a memory aid.

With contributions by authors from a range of disciplines, such as art, science, philosophy and psychology, anthropology, economic- and political theory, language- and literature studies, as well as poetry, 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts constitutes a space of dOCUMENTA (13) to explore how thinking emerges and lies at the heart of re-imagining the world. In its cumulative nature, this publication project is a continuous articulation of the emphasis of dOCUMENTA (13) on the propositional, underlining the flexible mental moves to generate space for the possible. Thoughts, unlike statements, are always variations: this is the spirit in which these notebooks are proposed.

The notebooks, designed by Leftloft, will be published from March 2011 on in three different formats, 16 to 48 pages, in English and German.

Commissioned by dOCUMENTA (13)’s Artistic Director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev together with Agent, Member of Core Group, and Head of Department Chus Martínez, this series is edited by Head of Publications, Bettina Funcke.

you can buy the pamphlets in print or e-version here:

http://d13.documenta.de/#publications/?tx_publications_pi1%5Bcat%5D=3&tx_publications_pi1%5Bdetails%5D=6&cHash=a7d7f220c1aa63502c482fadcff9c0ba

'CAMULODUNUM', OYSTERS AND ARCHAEOLOGIES AT FIRST SITE IN COLCHESTER, ESSEX, CURATED BY MICHELLE COTTON

2011-11-22T10:09:00.000Z

I was invited by Aleksandra Mir to her talk as part of the exhibition 'Camulodunum' where she also participates at the newly opened (and polemical) building of First Site in Colchester. Not knowing what to expect, I was very positively surprised by the exhibition curated by First Site's Senior Curator Michelle Cotton (who previously was curator at Cubitt). Instead of doing an all star exhibition for the opening of the not so bright star-architecture (starchitecture), Cotton presents a very intelligently articulated exhibition, where contemporary artworks dealing with history and archeology are in dialogue with documents and artefacts relating to Colchester's history as the first Roman settlement in Britan, its later medieval history, its oyster industry and traditions, as well as with Colchester's everyday history today.

Danh Vo, 'We the People', 1975, part of an attempt by the artist to construct a one to one scale replica of the Statue of Liberty

Subodh Gupta's 'Two Cows', 2003-2008

Aleksandra Mir's 'HELLO Colchester' an image research on the connections between people in Colchester. You can see all the photographs of the series here

starting point of Aleksandra Mir's research, Colchester's Ashley James Hall who lost both legs in a bomb explosion in Afghanistan, meeting Queen Elizabeth

the Damon Albaran connection

and historical connections

Greyson Perry's Essex vases

the fantastic Neo Naturist flashing in the British Museum, 1983

Andy Warhol's 'Campbell Soup II - Oyster Stew', 1969

historical photos of Colchester's Oyster Feast

historical documentation of Colchester Pageant of 1909 which re-enacted 2000 years of Colchester's history

Bill Woodrow, 'Car Door, Boot and Wing with Roman Helmet', 1982

Richard Hawkins, 'Urbis Paganus' 2009 exploration of greek and roman sculpture, archeology and homoerotism

English Roman Ceramics from Colchester and Ipswich Museums

Rebecca Warren's 'Journey into the Heart of the Night', 2000

Robert Smithson's 'Chalk Mirror Displacement', 1969 originally done at a chalp pit in Oxted, Surrey and exhibited simultaneously at 'When Attitudes Become Form' at the ICA, London in 1969. Incredibly, the work had never been shown in the UK again!

Henry Moore, found flints that served as models for his sculptures

Sarah Lucas, Penetralia, 2008

JMW Turner, Colchester sketches c. 1824

1900s photographs of Colchester Castle taken by John Benjamin Stone and Ai Weiwei's 'Bamboo and Porcelain', 2008

Ai Weiwei's 'Bamboo and Porcelain', 2008

Barbara Hepworth's 'Pierced Form' 1963-63

Henry Moore's Helmets from the 50s and 60s

Cildo Meireles coins and English Roman antique coins

Cildo Meireles, Cero Cent, USA coin with Coca Cola bottle on one side, 1974

Cildo Meireles, Zero Centavo, 1974

view of First Site's giant curved corridor which undramaticlly ends with a restaurant called MUSA, with the exhibition space existing in the transition towards it

First Site's polemical (and funny) building, designed by Uruguayan USA based architect Rafael Viñoly, a curved corridor covered in gold cladding, which looks like it was designed in the 90s, called by the locals the golden banana, and which opened two months ago being 3 years late and 10 million pounds over budget, and which aims to finance itself partly by renting the space for weddings and events http://www.firstsite.uk.net/page/venue-hire

young skaters loving the new outside public space, hopefully they won't be kicked out of it soon

and fantastic pedestrian crossings painted by Venezuelan 60s op artist Carlos Cruz Diez, commissioned for First Site by Michelle Cotton, who first came in contact with Cruz Diez work at Pinta the Latin American art fair in London

Aleksandra Mir with scarf outside the bus station's waiting room next to Frist Site and Cruz Diez pedestrian crossings

and the remains of a previous art project (not Cruz Diez) in the interior of the bus station's waiting room!

Sadly First Site's website doesn't have enough information on the exhibition, or even a proper press release or artist list, but here's the link in case you need basic information

http://www.firstsite.uk.net/page/5/Camulodunum/72

MARCO ROUNTREE, TOILET PARADISO, AN EXHIBITION AT WHITE CUBICLE TOILET GALLERY

2011-11-21T10:58:00.001Z

Toilet Paradiso, Marco Rountree at White Cubicle Toilet Gallery

Marco Rountree and Vanessa Arelle on her banana phone

Lisa and Osvaldo

at play in the fields of the lord

Gilos y dj Seb

Jeanette eats his jewels

Cameron Banana

Juan Pablo Grape fruit jewelry

and Richardette Bananarama necklace

apple of sin

bananas is my business

WHITE CUBICLE TOILET GALLERY
Is happy to invite you to the opening of an exhibition by Marco Rountree
Sunday November 20, 2011 8PM to 12 PM
at the George and Dragon Public House, 2 Hackney Road, London E2
DJ of the night Mr. Seb Patane

Marco Rountree was born in Mexico City in 1982 and has exhibited internationally
Marco Rountree at White Cubicle guest commissioned by Vanessa Arelle

THE WHITE CUBICLE TOILET GALLERY measures 1.40 by1.40 metres, is located within the Ladies Toilet of the George and Dragon, and works with no budget, staff or boundaries. White Cubicle presents a discerning programme of local and international manifestations as an antidote to London’s sometimes extremely commodified art scene. Past exhibitions have included the work of Deborah Castillo, Gregorio Magnani, Butt Magazine, Federico Herrero, Terence Koh, i-Cabin, Steven Gontarski, Pixis Fanzine/Princess Julia and Hanah, General Idea and avaf, Basso Magazin, Carl Hopgood, Giles Round, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Superm, (Brian Kenny and Slava Mogutin), Elkin Calderon, Wolfgang Tillmans, Calvin Holbrook/Hate Magazine, Husam el Odeh, Simon Popper, Fur, Dik Fagazine, Rick Castro/Abravanation, Jean Michel Wicker, Noki, Ellen Cantor,Karl Holmqvist, Julie Verhoeven, Aldo Chaparro, Esther Planas, Nikos Pantazopoulos, Luis Venegas, Twinklife, Rocky Alvarez, Benedetto Chirco, STH Magazine, Elmgreen & Dragset, Francesc Ruiz, Sico Carlier, Stefan Benchoam, Thomas Dozol, ...
website: http://www.whitecubicle.org
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/White-Cubicle-Toilet-Gallery/119074441495849

FEDERICO HERRERO: NEW MESOAMERICAN CONCRETISM AT PROYECTOS ULTRAVIOLETA IN GUATEMALA

2011-11-20T00:35:00.001Z

FEDERICO HERRERO: NEW MESOAMERICAN CONCRETISM AT PROYECTOS ULTRAVIOLETA IN GUATEMALA

Press Release:
(mistranslated from spanish with google translate! spanish original version below)

CATARACT
Federico Herrero

In his first solo exhibition in Guatemala, Federico Herrero seeks to distance itself from its renowned line of work to explore a variety of sculptural forms that are specified in the cement. This formal exercise and research is a new possibility in his work that adds to his most famous painting operations.

Federico Herrero (Costa Rica, 1978) is considered one of the most important figures in contemporary Latin American art. His artistic work is influenced by political, cultural tradition and natural fertility of Costa Rica, where he lives and works. Smith transfers the colors and shapes of dense landscape around his native city, San Jose, different supports such as walls and canvases. At the same time, there is intense interaction between geometric and organic forms in the spaces between figuration and abstraction. A Federico Herrero particularly interested in the interface between culture and nature, carefully monitoring the urban environment of Costa Rica that often seems on the verge of being reclaimed by the incessant local flora. This is evident in much of his work in situ, where the stairs or the corner of a room can be "claimed" by the various organic forms of his work. It blends the tradition of mural painting with different regional sources of inspiration including traffic signage, tropical plants, colorful houses in rural areas and suburbs, graffiti, old signs and other media and advertising . All this is based on an unusual mix of traditional and folk elements with sophisticated and abstract forms.

In 2001 Smith received a Golden Lion for best young artist of the Venice Biennale. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in museums around the world, including venues in Germany, Italy, Japan and Spain. The work is part of multiple collections worldwide, including Mudam Luxembourg, the Museum Santander in Spain, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, and the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan.

Ultraviolet Projects
5-36B Street 11 Z.1
Lux Between the tower and parking
Parking in the tower, open 24 hours.

http://uvuvuv.com/

*****
Proyectos Ultravioleta presenta:
CATARATA
Federico Herrero

En su primera muestra individual en Guatemala, Federico Herrero busca distanciarse de su reconocida línea de trabajo para explorar una serie de formas escultóricas que se concretan en el cemento. Este ejercicio formal y de investigación supone una nueva posibilidad en su obra que se suma a sus más conocidas intervenciones pictóricas.

Federico Herrero (Costa Rica, 1978) es considerado una de las figuras más importantes del arte contemporáneo latinoamericano. Su trabajo artístico está influenciado por la política, la tradición cultural y la fecundidad natural de Costa Rica, país en el que vive y trabaja. Herrero transfiere los colores y formas del denso paisaje que rodea su ciudad nativa, San José, a distintos soportes como muros y lienzos. Al mismo tiempo, se percibe una interacción muy intensa entre formas geométricas y orgánicas en los espacios entre la figuración y lo abstracto. A Federico Herrero le interesa de manera particular la interface entre cultura y naturaleza, monitoreando cuidadosamente el ambiente urbano de Costa Rica que muchas veces parece estar a punto de ser reclamado por la incesante flora local. Esto es evidente en gran parte de su obra in-situ, en la que unas escaleras o la esquina de un cuarto puede ser “reclamada” por las distintas formas orgánicas de su trabajo. En él se mezcla la tradición regional del muralismo con distintas fuentes de inspiración que incluye la rotulación de tránsito, las plantas tropicales, las casas multicolores de las áreas rurales y los suburbios, el graffiti, los rótulos viejos y distintos medios de comunicación como la publicidad. Todo esto se funde en una mezcla inusual de elementos tradicionales y folclóricos con formas sofisticadas y abstractas.

En el 2001 Herrero recibió un León de Oro como mejor artista joven de la Bienal de Venecia. Ha tenido numerosas muestras individuales en museos de todo el mundo, incluyendo recintos en Alemania, Italia, Japón y España. Su trabajo forma parte de múltiples colecciones a nivel mundial, incluyendo el Mudam Luxembourg, el Museo Santander en España, el 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art en Kanazawa, y el Hara Museum of Contemporary Art de Tokyo, Japón.

Proyectos Ultravioleta
11 calle 5-36B Z.1
Entre el Lux y la torre de parqueos
Parqueo en la torre, abierto 24hrs.
http://uvuvuv.com/

FRIENDS ART ALPHABET, HELP US COMPLETE THE ALPHABET, SEND US THE LETTERS WE ARE MISSING!

2011-11-13T11:22:00.001Z

Esther Planas and Mathieu Copeland spell Hi

Marta Hellion and Maria Ines Rodriguez do the M

Esther Planas does the P

Maria Ines Rodriguez does the X

Esther does the Y, yeah!

and Mathieu Copeland does Y

Marta Hellion does the F

PLB spells Art

A few weeks ago I received an email from my friend Raimundas Malasauskas asking me to contribute a letter for an alphabet he was curating. Not being a designer myself, I felt uneasy about designing a letter, that until I met last Friday with Mariana Castillo Deball, who suggested I should do the letter I wanted with my body. So that's what we did on Saturday and together with some friends we did some letters of the alphabet which we sent to Raimundas. But now we want to complete our art human letter alphabet, so we ask you to PLEASE SEND US THE LETTERS WE ARE MISSING! PLEASE ALSO FEEL FREE TO INVENT NEW LETTERS! LET'S INVENT A NEW ALPHABET!

Below some of the Letter's we've received:

Beatriz Lopez spells B-Lo in Bogota

and in Sao Paulo, Melissa and Cassia do the M

LIMA PERU ART REPORT, NOVEMBER 2011

2011-11-08T10:25:00.000Z

Lima centre from above, view from the Sheraton

American drawings by Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves at Verme collection

Lima fog drawings by Raimond Chaves at Verme collection

Francys Alys Fabiolas' at the Museo de Arte Italiano in collaboration with MALI

Pablo Vargas Lugo's Solar Spots at (e)Star project space

and Pablo Vargas Lugas butterfly pattern cutouts at Lucia de la Puente gallery

Iosu Aramburu's paintings and House of Cards at 80m2 gallery

Pablo Hare's astronomical phtographies at La (Ex)Culpable

Giancarlos Scagglia's peru terrorism paintings and sculptures at Revolver Gallery

fan, ceiling, light, chairs and tables at cevicheria La Buena Muerte

modernist building on pilotis in the centre

Inca and Amazonic blankets

Sometimes street murals are more interesting than art

and street performance by a Jota Castro look alike!

FERNANDO BRYCE 'DRAWING MODERN HISTORY' AT MALI, LIMA, PERU

2011-11-07T14:27:00.000Z

early Fernando Bryce colour watercolours

early Bryce sculpture

view of the exhibition at Fundacion Telefonica Lima

Tatiana Cuevas, curator of the exhibition together with Natalia Majluf

The Progress of Peru, part of Atlas Peru

intellectual visitors to the exhibition, Mr. Medina doing photos of the Museo Hawai vitrine

Museo Hawai

Abstract Indigenism

exhibition views MALI

Historia de la Pintura Occidental, copies of 'grand' 'masters' at MALI

Emiliano Zapata

Pancho Villa

Pan American Day

The Banana Business

Exposition Coloniale Internationale

FERNANDO BRYCE

DRAWING MODERN HISTORY

MALI/Museo de Arte de Lima and Fundacion Telefonica, Lima, Peru

28 de octubre de 2011 al 5 de febrero de 2012

Over the past decade Fernando Bryce (Lima, 1965) has produced a vast corpus of works based on the exploration of libraries and archives to produce new forms of representation of historical memory. This exhibition, jointly presented by Fundación Telefónica, the Museo de Arte de Lima and the City of Lima, brings together for the first time the greater part of the artist’s most ambitious series drawn from private and public collections in America and Europe.

Bryce focuses on certain crucial historical episodes which he explores critically and systematically. His method, which he early defined as “mimetic analysis”, is based on the careful copy of pamphlets, official documents, press images, political propaganda and advertisements so as to articulate large series of ink drawings that focus on power relations and their mediatization in twentieth-century history. Through the basic play of re-presentation (in the most literal sense of showing again), by copying or by the simple mise en scène of documents and objects, Bryce uses appropriation, parody and irony as weapons to expose the prejudices underlying commonly accepted official discourses.

A significant group of Bryce’s early work is shown at Fundación Telefónica. In these drawings and paintings made between Berlin and Lima in the second half of the 1990s, the artist explores diverse approaches to the representation of the local context and its history through images drawn from mass media. There are small paintings devoted to historical figures, like Mao, whose image still circulated broadly in Peru during those years, but also the first freehand drawings in black ink, that announce the artist’s later graphic style. Chronologies (1997-1998), composed of some twenty paintings on paper, reveals Bryce’s interest in extensive series that construct their meaning through accumulation. The artist here alternates between different sources, from images inspired on photographs made by himself on the streets and beaches of Lima, to others copied from newspapers or directly from the television screen. Beginning withMuseo Hawai (1999), a case/vitrine turned into a cabinet of curiosities, showing original documents, books and all sorts of pamphlets, the artist finally concentrates his attention on printed media. Bryce thus gradually consolidates what he then termed “Hawai thought”, a critical form of collecting that plays on the ironic juxtaposition of images.

These early explorations lead to The Progress of Peru (1998), the first drawing series copied from a document, and to the discovery of the system on which his work would be based. But the early culmination of “mimetic analysis”, and the starting point for the programatic character of Bryce’s work is Atlas Peru(2000-2001), an ambitious series of close to five hundred drawings based on images in newspapers and magazines that tell a visual history of of twentieth century Peru.

One of Bryce’s most incisive works, Visión de la pintura occidental (2002), is shown at the Museo de Arte de Lima. This installation, inspired on a museum of pictorial reproductions housed at the University of San Marcos, makes an ironical commentary on the precarious nature of the art system in Peru, as well as on the ambivalent relation of the local scene with the great European pictorial tradition and the very category of art. In its manner of framing notions of originality and of the copy, the piece also proposes itself as a variant of “mimetic analysis” and as a commentary on the artist’s own work.

The ambitious series of drawings presented at the Museo de Arte de Lima reveal the way in which Bryce’s project gradually acquires a programmatic character and assumes an almost encyclopedic ambition. At the turn of the millennium, his work opens up, as in concentric circles, to encompass other regions and other chapters in twentieth-century history. He first tackles critical episodes of the revolutionary cycle and the Cold War in Latin America, focusing on the stereotypical and paternalist images produced by Panamericanism. Later, he begins to explore the Spanish Civil War, diverse moments of European colonialism and the Second World War. In these works, which reveal an ever broader plan, the juxtaposition of images of diverse origin form particularly incisive narrative groups. Series like L’Humanité (2009) or El mundo en llamas (2010-2011) bring together the headlines referring to the crude events of the moment with the commercial iconography of classic North American and German cinema which, in their allusions to power and violence, establish a fictionalized counterpart to the atrocities of the period.

Bryce centers on the printed matter of ideology: war and revolution, colonial exploits, foreign policy, imperial domination and art programs, as officially portrayed in their own graphic language. As they are carefully drawn and copied, the sources are subjected to Bryce’s analysis and objectified into a bizarre uniformity through his graphic style and calligraphy. It is in this process that mimetic analysis produces the effect of parody, establishing the critical purpose of the artist’s project.

“...I feel as close to history painting and the chroniclers, as I do to certain contemporary artistic practices”, Bryce has stated in a recent interview. His project may be indistinguishable from the practice of the critical historian, except his focus is placed on the visible traces of history, made concrete through visual means. Through this strategy, Bryce recovers the figuration of ideology. His project engages the images of history in the modern world, fixed selectively to forge a genealogy of the present.

Tatiana Cuevas and Natalia Majluf
Curators

http://www.mali.pe/expo_detalle.php?id=97&p=act&anio=2011

http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com.pe/centro/bryce.htm

JARBAS LOPES 'CICLOVIAEREA' AND PICNIC AND SAMBA AT IBIRAPUERA PARK

2011-11-06T05:23:00.000Z

Jarbas and samba

picnic with Paulista family at Ibirapuera

see more picnic photos here

a ride on the cicloviarea courtesy of piknik

and PLB sings samba mañanitas to Amilcar Parker and dog,
(video by Guilherme Altmayer http://www.guigo.com)

Jarbas Lopes’ Cicloviaérea proposes the use of the bicycle as a main source for transportation and the construction of "aerial" routes for bike transportation. As part of the Panorama exhibition at MAM Sao Paulo, he constructed an Aerial Cicle Route within the Ibirapuera Park in Sao Paulo, as a possible model for ways of occupying cycle space in a joyful way.

AGAINST SAVAGE THINKING OR SAVAGE COUNTER THOUGHT, PAULO HERKENHOFF AND FRIEND'S 'CONTRA-PENSAMENTO SELVAGEM'

2011-11-05T04:46:00.000Z

Contra-pensamento Selvagem

curated by Paulo Herkenhoff with Cayo Honorato, Clarissa Diniz and Orlando Maneschy

with works by

Armando Queiroz, Berna Reale, Coletivo Madeirista, Daniel Lisboa, Daniel Santiago, Edson Barrus, Fernando Peres, Grupo EMPREZA, Grupo Urucum, Jayme Figura, Jonathas de Andrade, Jonnata Doll, Juliano Moraes, Lourival Cuquinha, Mariana Marcassa, Miguel Bezerra, Moacir, Oriana Duarte, Paulo Meira, Pitágoras Lopes, Solon Ribeiro, Thiago Martins de Melo, Victor de la Roque, Wolder Wallace e Yuri Firmeza

Contra-pensamento Selvagem exhibits work by artists of the North East of Brazil, and proposes a state of "non conceptual purity," in which the works presented share some perspectives in common, such as "an untreatable libido", "the placing of the subject in a place of power" and the "violentation of political violence".

Contra-pensamento Selvagem is part of the exhibition Caos e Efeito

at Instituto Itaú Cultural, Avenida Paulista 149, São Paulo, Brazil

http://www.itaucultural.org.br

*****
curatorial text:

caos e efeito/
contra-pensamento selvagem
Explosições. Artes blásticas.(1) A necessidade de demarcar distinções de linguagem, inventando outras significações, evidencia inteligências e sensibilidades, que advertem para diferenças irredutíveis. Não somente as práticas artísticas podem configurar territórios para outros modos de existência, como também, dentro do próprio campo artístico, pode-se perceber outras maneiras de se pensar e de se fazer arte.

Os trânsitos entre tais diferenciações podem ser pensados a partir do livro O Pensamento Selvagem, escrito pelo antropólogo Claude Lévi-Strauss em 1962. Analisando as confrontações culturais a partir da perspectiva das sociedades ameríndias, o autor questiona o rebaixamento do pensamento "primitivo" pelo pensamento científico, sustentando, no entanto, certa simetria entre ambos, se não uma identificação de um a outro. Para ele, embora sejam "desiguais quanto aos resultados teóricos e práticos", ciência e mito seriam equivalentes em suas "operações mentais", partilhando de uma mesma "exigência de organização".
Assim, considerando que o pensamento primitivo é também "científico" e, por isso, atento às propriedades do real, Lévi-Strauss organiza esses diferentes "modos do conhecimento" de maneira linear, inserindo a arte "a meio caminho entre o conhecimento científico e o pensamento mítico ou mágico". Sua concepção de arte, portanto, termina submetida aos interesses da ciência, o que de resto demonstra que ela não pode acompanhar a produção do pós-guerra.

Para questioná-lo, Contra-pensamento selvagem não terá sido uma simples oposição a O Pensamento Selvagem do antropólogo, mas o desejo de promover uma discussão sobre singularidades que não se reduzem aos interesses da razão cientificista. Justapõem-se aqui artistas cujos trabalhos dão a ver certa indomesticação existencial do pensamento.

Os artistas que tomam parte nesta exposição procedem das regiões Norte, Nordeste e Centro-Oeste do país (com exceção do Distrito Federal). Não há nisso, porém, qualquer reivindicação de uma cota de visibilidade cultural para o que está à margem – o que em última instância lhe seria conferido pelo centro. Tais regiões oferecem um repertório cuja força específica pode ser aqui aventada, mas não afirmada previamente. Pode-se todavia sublinhar algumas perspectivas: uma libido intratável, uma deposição do sujeito como lugar de poder, uma violentação política da violência – sinais do que se poderia situar para além de uma pureza conceitual. Por não se adequar ao que lhe é assinalado, por não se sentir confortável na sua "identidade", a arte é o que realmente pensa.

cayo honorato, clarissa diniz, orlando maneschy e paulo herkenhoff

nota:
(1)-Expressões usadas, respectivamente, por Jayme Fygura e Fernando Peres.

*****
Google Translation:

against wild thinking or counter savage thought

Explositions. Blastic arts (1) The need to mark distinctions of language, inventing other meanings, evidencing intelligences and sensitivities, which warn of irreconcilable differences. Not only the artistic practices can configure territories for other modes of existence, but also, within the artistic field, they can perceive other ways of thinking and of doing art.

The movements between these differences can be thought from the book The Savage Mind, written by anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss in 1962. Analyzing the cultural confrontations from the perspective of Native American societies, the author questions the lowering of "primitive" thought by scientific thinking, arguing, however, certain symmetry between the two, if not an identification of one with another. For him, though they are "unequal regarding the theoretical and practical results", science and myth would be equivalent in their "mental operations", sharing the same "requirement of the organization."
In this way, considering that primitive thought is too "scientific" and therefore aware of the properties of the real, Levi-Strauss organizes these different "ways of knowing" in a linear fashion, inserting art "midway between scientific knowledge and mythical or magical thinking." His conception of art, therefore, ends subject to the interests of science, which therefore demonstrates that it can not follow the post-war production.

To question him, counter-savage thought is not a simple opposition to The Savage Mind of the anthropologist, but the desire to promote a discussion of singularities that are not reducible to the interests of scientistic reason. Here there are juxtaposed artists whose works give visibility to a certain un-domestication of existential thought.

The artists taking part in this exhibition come from the North, Northeast and Midwest regions of the country (with exception of Brasilia, the Federal District). However, there's not in anyway, a claim of a quote of cultural visibility for those who are at the margin - a visibility which ultimately would be conferred by the center. These regions provide a specific repertoire whose strength can be suggested here, but which has not previously stated. You can however highlight some perspectives: an intractable libido, a deposition of the subject as a place of power, a political violentation of violence - signs of what might be situated beyond a conceptual purity. Not subjected by what it is assigned to, not comfortable with its "identity," art is then that, that really produces thought.

cayo honorato, clarissa diniz, orlando maneschy e paulo herkenhoff

note:

(1)-expresions used, in that order, by Jayme Fygura and Fernando Peres.

ADRIANO COSTA, 'TAPETES' NEONEOCONCRETE GEOEMOTIONAL CARPET PRE-SCULPTURES AT VIDEOBRASIL

2011-11-04T15:05:00.000Z

Adriano Costa, Tapetes, 2010

In 'Tapetes', Costa appropriates everyday objects and arranges them in a fashion he describes as “pre-sculptoric,” to explore the undefined moment in which something has not yet been defined as art. This piece problematizes the statute that confers artistic character.

PLB:
Oi Adriano, can you tell me more about the work you are exhibiting in Videobrasil? I think the work is very autobiographical, while on the other hand it deals with the very specific legacy of neoconcretism in Brazil. Anything else you would like to say about it?

Adriano Costa:
The work is called "Tapetes" (Carpets)! and it's formed with pieces of fabric I've been collecting since 2008. I've got a big collection of them. The funny thing about the material I choose is that some of them I found, some of them were stolen from friends house, bars, etc... There's a kind of "emotional" issue about them. The carpets I do are not a proper sculpture because they don't have any kind of material that makes them a "solid" thing... (I call the sculptures "carpets" because of that way one proceeds, but I find some funny stuff about calling them sculptures... I'm working in a certain way, on a thing that once was design, and now is "fine Arts"... I think I'm talking about how we think about visuality ... how unsure it is to think about those things ). They're just a juxtaposition of the material... So fragile and aggressive at the same time... About the forms: I'm working with basic geometric forms... And for that reason I think one of the best things about the work is the question: is it possible to make a blend of GEOMETRY with EMOTION? Questões paradoxais... I think is possible... Pablito: when you do a proper sculpture one of the issues is to create a kind of solid product. My carpets are made without any kind of solidification... is it a nice way to think about life and death. But also about some geometric iconic Brazilian sculpture (the concrete's and neoconcrete's... so European... so amazing as well... ) The first time the work was installed, it had no protection around it, people could walk around the carpets, the installation was destroyed in two days! I had to reinstall it again, now there's a protection perimeter around the sculptures...

Adriano Costa, Tapetes, 2010, was awarded one of the jury's prices at Videobrasil festival in Sao Paulo. The Festival jury included Agustín Pérez Rubio, director of the MUSAC (Contemporary Art Museum of Castilla y León), in Spain; Bisi Silva, founder of CCA Lagos (Center for Contemporary Art), in Nigeria; Gabriela Salgado, an independent curator specializing in Latin America; Rodrigo Moura, curator of Instituto Inhotim (Brumadinho, state of Minas Gerais); and Raquel Schwartz, director of Galeria Kiósko in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.

The 17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil is an undertaking of Associação Cultural Videobrasil (www.videobrasil.org.br) and SESC São Paulo (www.sescsp.org.br).

17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil
SESC Belenzinho
SESC Pompeia
Pinacoteca do Estado (São Paulo State Art Gallery)
September 2011–January 2012
São Paulo, Brazil

JONATHAS DE ANDRADE 'PACIFICO', AN EARTHQUAKE SEPARATES CHILE FROM SOUTH AMERICA AND BOLIVIA REGAINS ACCESS TO THE SEA

2011-11-03T14:24:00.000Z

Jonathas de Andrade, Pacífico, 2010 as seen in Videobrasil

Jonathas de Andrade,

Pacífico

Animation with styrofoam model board, maps and paper
stop motion in super-8

12 minutes

2010

A massive earthquake erupts over the Andes, detaching Chile from the South American continent. As a consequence, the sea returns to Bolivia restoring its lost coastline, Argentina gains coasts with both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, and Chile becomes a floating island adrift in the seas.

"In my visit to Bolivia in 2009, I was affected by the way the loss of the sea to Chile in the bloody Pacific War (1879-1884) was a delicate subject, unresolved, a real historical taboo. Even the smallest Bolivian bookshops sell educational material for schools that didactically show the injustice of what was done, Chile’s cowardliness, the need to regain the lost sea and to defend the coast’s sovereignty. In Chile, the existence of the war is not emphasised: generally, it is taught that the whole coast has always been Chilean.

In this project, the idea of the construction of truth and feelings about historical events interests me. Moral and civic didacticism is linked to my decision to work with paper and styrofoam, as they are the materials originally used for teaching in these regions. This aesthetic approach allows me to touch upon some other topics: the notion of truth as an ideological construction, the document’s relative trustworthiness, the historical resentment as a social feeling, and the fabrication of mass commotion/emotion as political artifice.

Jonathas de Andrade, Pacífico, was exhibited in the 17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil, an undertaking of Associação Cultural Videobrasil (www.videobrasil.org.br) and SESC São Paulo (www.sescsp.org.br).

17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil
September 2011–January 2012
São Paulo, Brazil

RUNO LAGOMARSINO 'HAY SIEMPRE UN DIA MAS LEJOS' IN SAO PAU

2011-11-02T13:10:00.000Z

Press Release
RUNO LAGOMARSINO
Hay siempre un día mas lejos

Runo Lagomarsino's exhibition Hay siempre un día mas lejos (There is always a day away) creates a break which allows us to go forward and backward in space and time. The installation sets up a narrative from fragments that allude to historical events in order to analyze how we construct history. One of the starting points of the exhibition are the dates of departure and arrival of first two journeys of Christopher Columbus to American continent: August 3rd to October 12th of 1492, January 16th to March 4th of 1493. These sun drawings emphasize the link between time and travel while pointing to the Atlantic as geopolitical space.

On a single shelf objects are arranged, collages, little sculptures, wine cork stoppers, a collection of ships printed on napkins and matchboxes... that in one way or another tell about the metaphors built around travel and conquest. Focused on the imagination of a colonial past, the installation calls into question how these images have circulated and have been constructed. In this way the exhibition uses museological discourse to group materials and to connect objects in order to destabilize notions of geography and linear narratives.

September 28th to October 22nd, 2011
Galeria Luisa Strina
Rua Padre João Manuel, 755 - 01411-000 - São Paulo - SP, Brazil
www.galerialuisastrina.com.br

'RECIBO 23' GUEST EDITED BY CARLA ZACCAGNINI, LAUNCH AT EDIFICIO ESTHER, SAO PAULO

2011-11-01T00:54:00.000Z

Edificio Esther, one of the first modernist condominiums of Sao Paulo

at Esther's elevator

Como Club's apartment at Edificio Esther, where Recibo's presentation took place

amigos at Como Club

Zaccagnini, guest editor of Recibo 23, Pipa, guest designer of Recibo 23, and Traplev, editor of Recibo

Amilcar Packer, in charge of the kitchen and bar for the night

some pages of Recibo 23

and Edificio Esther next day during the day...

Recibo 23

Receita e Roteiros

guest edited by Carla Zaccagningi

guest art direction by Pipa

with collaborations by Desaba, Petra, Daniela Mattos, Regina Melim, Nicolas Paris, Victor Costales e Julia Rometti, Laercio Redondo, Laura Lima, Narda Alvarado, Amilcar Packer, Raquel Stolf, Rivane Neuenschwander, Runo Lagomarsino, Superflex, Lucia Koch

Recibo is an editorial project of edicoes traplev orcamentos

Queridos,
Nesta quarta-feira, dia19 de outubro de 2011, mais uma edição do Como no Como
Lançamento de RECIBOS EM GERAAAAAL
distribuição dos recibos 88 e 34º + lançamento do recibo 23
Com: Traplev, Thelma Bonavita, Pipa, Vitor César, Carla Zaccagnini, Beto Grimaldi e Amilcar Packer
Quando: 19 de outubro 2011 a partir das 20hs

Onde: Como Clube, Praça da República nº 80 apto 905, Centro, São Paulo - SP

Como no Como:
A coisa é mais ou menos assim : Não é um restaurante mas servimos comida, não é um bar mas servimos bebida, não é uma boate mas se pode dançar, não é uma galería nem centro cultural mas se apresentam trabalhos, não é academia mas se apresentam pesquisas. A idéia é circunscrever negativamente um lugar/situação, para desenvolver um possível espaço de argumentação. Para isso, a idéia é sempre apresentarmos alguma coisa que está em fase incial, que ainda não foi apresentado; dúvidas e não teses... experiência no sentido de laboratório; pesquisa...

cardápio: empanadas criollas; salada verde e 1 prato surpresa!!!

see issue 23 of recibo here:

http://issuu.com/recibo/docs/recibo23_online

RICARDO DE CASTRO, NEW WORK AND HOME/STUDIO VISIT IN SAO PAULO

2011-10-31T00:12:00.000Z

Mr Ricardo de Castro at his home/studio/office in Higienopolis neighbourhood in Sao Paulo

Ricardo de Castro, new works from the Acumulo series, abstract vinyl cutouts on framed glass

jungle corridor of joy

Mr. Castro's terrace

you can see Ricardo de Castro's 2008 White Cubicle exhibition here

also more of his work at Casa Triangulo

and read about Abravanation, the movement created by de Castro here

CASSIA TABATINI AND DUDU BERTHOLINI, NEON HOME INTERIORS, SAO PAULO

2011-10-30T17:44:00.000Z

neon by Kleber Mattheus

folk and African prints and textiles

prints by Neon

avaf wall piece

corals and african objects

cheetah prints

toucan room

While in Sao Paulo I was very lucky to stay with my Paulista family in the flat in Higienopolis photographer Cassia Tabatini shares with Neon's fashion designer Dudu Berthonlini.
http://www.cassiatabatini.co.uk/
http://www.neonbrazil.com.br/

WHITE CUBICLE SAO PAULO: CUBICULO BRANCO PRESENTS YURI FIRMEZA AT UVA PASSARO

2011-10-29T10:19:00.000+01:00

outside Uva Passaro

looking eye installed in the door of the toilet

Étant donnés inside the White Cubicle

collapse of the ceiling, chocolate penises hanging from above for visitors to use and play with

artist Yuri Firmeza inside the White Cubicle

Sandy playing with the art

Fabio Kawallys clothes for sale

presentation of Nova Cartografia Tropical in Sao Paulo

Uva Passarinho host Tica Bertani

tasting the art

Ca and Gui

friendly Ilan

Fabio and friend

Adriano and Gui with opening ribbon

PLB and Lau

WHITE CUBICLE SAO PAULO:

CUBICULO BRANCO PRESENTS YURI FIRMEZA AT UVA PASSARO

28 October · 20:00 - 24:00
Uva Passaro, Rua Bartira, 1042 - Perdizes, Sao Paulo

tel.: (11) 3673-2376

Nesta ocasião, a convite de Kiki Mazzucchelli, a White Cubicle se instala no banheiro do Uva Pássaro, em São Paulo, e busca mostrar situações mais radicais e não decorativas. A presença da White Cubicle em São Paulo é uma resposta ao contexto econômico atual do circuito de arte brasileiro e sua crescente mercantilização, e com isso busca contribuir para repensar estratégias alternativas de circulação da arte e seu público. O artista convidado para esta edição da White Cubicle é Yuri Firmeza.

Sobre Yuri Firmeza:
Eu poderia dizer que hoje me aventuro nos sustenidos de uma flauta transversal. Que deslizo sobre as ondas desde criança. Que quando me perguntam: o que é ser artista? eu finjo ser surdo – a vontade de essência me ensurdece. Eu choro de alegria ao ler Manoel de Barros dizer: Não sou biografável. Ou, talvez seja. Em Dez linhas.
Deixo as minhas linhas para a costura de Miguel Bezerra:
“Yuri não é filho de algo ou alguém, nem nasceu em lugar algum. Yuri sequer é Yuri. Nem se quisesse poderia. Não nascemos para sermos nós. É, antes, fagulha riscando espaços, continuação abrupta do que cega em cada deslocar; dança entre um caldeirão ausente e o estrondo de um raio branco”.

http://yurifirmeza.multiply.com/

A WHITE CUBICLE TOILET GALLERY nasceu em janeiro de 2005, no banheiro feminino do pub George and Dragon, em Londres. Mede 1,40 x 1,40m e funciona sem orçamento, equipe ou fronteiras. Desde então, a White Cubicle tem apresentado um programa de manifestações locais e internacionais que funcionam como antídoto à cena artística hipercomercial de Londres. Exposições passadas incluíram o trabalho de Deborah Castillo, Gregorio Magnani, Butt Magazine, Federico Herrero, Terence Koh, i-Cabin, Steven Gontarski, Pixis Fanzine/Princess Julia e Hanah, General Idea e avaf, Basso Magazin, Carl Hopgood, Giles Round, Tim Noble e Sue Webster, Superm, (Brian Kenny e Slava Mogutin), Elkin Calderon, Wolfgang Tillmans, Calvin Holbrook/Hate Magazine, Husam el Odeh, Simon Popper, Fur, Dik Fagazine, Rick Castro/Abravanation, Jean Michel Wicker, Noki, Ellen Cantor,Karl Holmqvist, Julie Verhoeven, Aldo Chaparro, Esther Planas, Nikos Pantazopoulos, Luis Venegas, Twinklife, Rocky Alvarez, Benedetto Chirco, STH Magazine, Elmgreen & Dragset, Francesc Ruiz, Sico Carlier, Stefan Benchoam, Thomas Dozol…

website: http://www.whitecubicle.org/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/White-Cubicle-Toilet-Gallery/119074441495849

Na mesma noite, haverá o lançamento do cartaz "Nova Cartografia Tropical"
NOVA CARTOGRAFIA TROPICAL
Nova Cartografia Tropical é uma primeira aproximação para a construção de uma nova história tropical, e é necessariamente incompleta.
Nova Cartografia Tropical é uma tentativa de criar um campo expandido para manifestações tropicais, que as des-localiza de qualquer geografia ou forma de representação nacional
Nesse sentido, “Ser tropical não é uma questão de localização, mas de atitude”.
A Nova Cartografia Tropical é livremente inspirada pelos (e uma resposta e reação aos) diagramas “Cubism and Abstract Art' (1936), de Alfred Barr e 'How to Look at Modern Art in America' (1946) de Ad Reinhardt.
A NOVA CARTOGRAFIA TROPICAL foi desenvolvida por Pablo León de la Barra como parte do projeto 'O Cartaz Como Espaco Expositivo Expandido' com curadoria de Kiki Mazzucchelli e direção de arte de Mel Duarte.

CHEVERISMO INTERNACIONAL SUMMIT: 'PRIMER ENCUENTRO INTERNACIONAL CHEVERISTA' IN MEDELLIN

2011-10-26T22:36:00.000+01:00

mattresses arriving to the house where the Cheverismo campsite took place in Medellin

Taller Sitio/Plazarte, house where the Encuentro Cheverista took place, with outside hammock by BIP

Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala- Así que se vaya
Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Radamés "Juni" Figueroa, Buró de Intervenciones Públicas (BIP), Byron Mármol, Jessica Kairé, Alberto Rodríguez Collía, Stefan Benchoam.

José Aramburo and Mateo Rivano
Paris-Dakar Road Movie, driving from Bogota to Medellin

Nuevo La Ene, Buenos Aires- Un Museo Chévere
Gala Berger, Agustín Díez Fischer, Sofía Dourron, Leopoldo Estol, Franco Ferrari, Lala Ladcani + Martín Lowenstein, Adriana Minoliti, Andrés Pereira Paz, Marina Reyes Franco, Felipe Salem, Marcela Sinclair, Nicolás Sarmiento, Santiago Villanueva.

La Loseta, Puerto Rico- Más rápido que la luz
Jesús "Bubu" Negrón, Adriana Lara, Yoel Rodríguez, Radamés "Juni" Figueroa.

Preteen Gallery, Mexico City- Black Hoes Black Holes
Kari Altmann, Ilia Ovechkin, Hanna Terese, Marcel Alcalá, Jeffrey Joyal, Carlos Laszlo, Ben Aqua, Cédric Fargues, Justin Bochek, Abdul Vas, Petra Cortright, Rachel de Joode, Martin Kohout, Parker Ito, Andrew Norman Wilson y Laura Brothers.

Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City- Los intereses materiales de Francia*
Edgardo Aragón, François Bucher, Mario García Torres, Chrsitian Jankowski, Nina Beier y Marie Lund.

Diablo Rosso, Panama- La cena de los idiotas (kit to build an exhibition from the distance)
Brooke Alfaro, Jonathan Harker, Abner Benaim, Fabrizio Arrieta, María Raquel Cochez, Monchi Zafrani y Pilar Moreno.

Proyectos Sauna, Bogota- Ambiente Chévere: ¡Espectacular!
Natalia Sorzano, Santiago Monge and Juan Haag with Andrea Barragán, Alias Angelita, Juan Pablo Echeverri, Bastardo, Manuel Londoño, Lilith Natasha Border Line, Guillermo Riveros, Pablo Adarme, Catalina Rodríguez, Andrés Felipe Uribe, William Contreras, El Ciudadano Gay, La Corporación El Otro, Amigos en Común, Hernando Muñoz, Corporación Creemos, entre otros amigos.

views of the beautiful patio of the Taller Sitio/Plazarte house, where el Encuentro Cheverista took place

my cheverista team, Stefan and Emiliano

Chevere is Chevere: Lord Byron on top of a Botero sculpture in Medellin's main square

ENCUENTRO INTERNACIONAL (CHEVERISTA) MEDELLIN 2011

“Es chévere ser grande, pero más grande ser chévere.”
(It's chevere to be grand, but it's more grand to be chevere!"
- Héctor Lavoe

"Cheverismo o Muerte!"
(Cheverismo or Death!)
- Che Guevara

The first Encuentro Internacional (Cheverista) de Medellín 2011 -MDE(CH)11- recently took place as part of the Encuentro Internacional de Medellín -MDE11-. The MDE(CH)11 was held during the first three weeks of October in Medellín (Colombia), and served as a platform for the development of a series of exhibitions, discussions, happenings, banquets, and work meetings between a group of cheverista artists, curators, thinkers, and cultural producers. It took place in Plazarte and was organized by Proyectos Ultravioleta, with the ongoing support of Beatriz López, Pablo León de la Barra and the curatorial committee of MDE11 (Jose Roca, Eva Grinstien, et. al.). The exhibition programme included exhibitions by La Loseta, Preteen Gallery, Nuevo La Ene, Proyectos Monclova, Diablo Rosso, Proyectos Sauna, La Central, Proyectos Ultravioleta, and a two-person show by José Aramburo and Mateo Rivano.

Cheverismo is an international art movement started by Beatriz Lopez and Pablo Leon de la Barra the last days of 2008, as an attempt to generate a new art movement for the next decade. Cheverismo art is critical, socially and politically engaged, but also full of humour. Cheverismo art is chevere. Cheverismo develops from the American continent, but has no nationality. Cheverismo produces aesthetic manifestations which exist beyond the circuits of galleries, museums, art fairs and biennales, creating new networks for exchanges. Cheverismo Internacional developed after a meeting of some of the participants in Puerto Rico in 2009. Since then a series of exchanges between the participating members, and new incorporated ones has occurred. Cheverismo is financed by the economy of friendship.

The original Cheverismo Manifesto consisted of the following commandments:

1. Cheverismo doesn't belong to anyone, it belongs to all.
2. Cheverismo doesn't need art, art needs Cheverismo.
3. Cheverismo exists beyond the art market, and beyond the circuit of galleries, museums, festivals and art fairs.
4. Not only does Cheverismo allow internal and external contradictions, it celebrates them.
5. Cheverismo has no form and sets out no formulas.
6. Cheverismo proposes a new language and a subsequent new form of action.

7. Cheverismo is transmited orally and telepathically.

8. Cheverismo never dies… it transforms it self
8. Cheverismo is bipolar

9. Cheverismo auto curates itself.
10. Cheverismo is for everyone. Cheverismo is only for chevere people!

A new Cheverismo manifesto, from the experience of the Encuentro Cheverista, will come out soon!

What is Chévere?
First we need to discuss the exhaustion of art forms and models. In the last year of its first decade, we will revise the model, the quote, the market. A decade in which the commonplaces of 20th century art were constantly revisited and cited, as if art refused to take over its time and embrace the new millennium.
Nevertheless, some artists took the risk of experimenting in their own stance, and consolidated works from this, our time and beyond. Hence, Cheverismo is a celebration of the works that by their chévere, unprecedented characteristics have marked the beginning of the history of a new art, anticipating, creating new windows, possibilities and fields of action. Cheverismo proposes to eliminate the boundaries of conventions and to point out those manifestations that happen beyond the conventional spatial limits of art, set by the museum, the studio, the gallery, etc. It concentrates on the creation of direct realities that stem from the way we relate to each other, inside or outside of the art world.
Chévere, is a Caribbean word that describes that which is unpretentious and good. It could also allude to a milestone in the Latin American revolutionary imagery: Che Guevara. Thus, Cheverismo gathers that which is chevere and simultaneously political and revolutionary.

For more information, please visit:
http://cheverista.com
http://cheverista.tumblr.com

http://www.mde11.org/?page_id=1916

Participating Artist Spaces, Galleries and Artists at the Encuentro Cheverista:

Nuevo La Ene, Buenos Aires- Un Museo Chévere
Gala Berger, Agustín Díez Fischer, Sofía Dourron, Leopoldo Estol, Franco Ferrari, Lala Ladcani + Martín Lowenstein, Adriana Minoliti, Andrés Pereira Paz, Marina Reyes Franco, Felipe Salem, Marcela Sinclair, Nicolás Sarmiento, Santiago Villanueva.

Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala- Así que se vaya
Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Radamés "Juni" Figueroa, Buró de Intervenciones Públicas (BIP), Byron Mármol, Jessica Kairé, Alberto Rodríguez Collía, Stefan Benchoam.

La Loseta, Puerto Rico- Más rápido que la luz
Jesús "Bubu" Negrón, Adriana Lara, Yoel Rodríguez, Radamés "Juni" Figueroa.

Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City- Los intereses materiales de Francia*
Edgardo Aragón, François Bucher, Mario García Torres, Chrsitian Jankowski, Nina Beier y Marie Lund.

Preteen Gallery, Mexico City- Black Hoes Black Holes
Kari Altmann, Ilia Ovechkin, Hanna Terese, Marcel Alcalá, Jeffrey Joyal, Carlos Laszlo, Ben Aqua, Cédric Fargues, Justin Bochek, Abdul Vas, Petra Cortright, Rachel de Joode, Martin Kohout, Parker Ito, Andrew Norman Wilson y Laura Brothers.

Diablo Rosso, Panama- La cena de los idiotas (kit to build an exhibition from the distance)
Brooke Alfaro, Jonathan Harker, Abner Benaim, Fabrizio Arrieta, María Raquel Cochez, Monchi Zafrani y Pilar Moreno.

La Central, Bogota- Imprevisible
Beatriz López y Yoshua Okón

Proyectos Sauna, Bogota- Ambiente Chévere: ¡Espectacular!
Andrea Barragán, Alias Angelita, Juan Pablo Echeverri, Bastardo, Manuel Londoño, Lilith Natasha Border Line, Guillermo Riveros, Pablo Adarme, Catalina Rodríguez, Andrés Felipe Uribe, William Contreras, El Ciudadano Gay, La Corporación El Otro, Amigos en Común, Hernando Muñoz, Corporación Creemos, entre otros amigos.

Photos of the 'Mas Cheverismo' exhibitions and facade of the Cheverista House by Lord Byron Marmol