PERU – FRACTURED ATLAS AT VIGIL GONZALES GALLERY

Over time, Latin America has developed powerful processes of cultural readjustment and reinvention in response to the various manifestations of neocolonialism that have been imposed. In the last century, the region has suffered countless blows to constitutional order, civil wars, external interventionism and unregulated exploitation of basic resources. In counter-demonstration to these phenomena, forms of resistance have risen to affirm visions of reality and a reformulation of our historical memory.

Since 2005, Puerto Rican artist Karlo Andrei Ibarra has been reviewing aspects of our political history. In this new series Mapas de piel (Skin Maps), the artist is interested in the idea of the map as a membrane that constantly mutates. After many years of research, the map is for him a primary entity, thus his dedication to recreate maps of characteristic territories such as Peru, Lima, Cusco, among others. Through this exercise, Ibarra recounts the changes to which our region is subjected from a political, environmental and economic perspective.

This series of collages and cartographies are meticulously constructed with collections of paint layers which are extracted from colonial structures and buildings in constant transformation in the city of San Juan. Ibarra uses these skins and his personal perspective to animate a flexible geography with, for example, memory as a fundamental basis for understanding our past, as well as our present.

Karlo Andrei Ibarra (b. 1982, San Juan, Puerto Rico) has graduated from the San Juan School of Visual Arts in 2005. He has participated in Biennials in San Juan (2009 and 2012), Bucharest (2008) and Denver. Ibarra has also been awarded the First Prize in the 6th edition of the Digital Art Contest for Central America and the Caribbean Restless Image at the Museum of Art and Design in San José, Costa Rica, and the People Choice Award at the video festival Optic Nerve, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of North Miami in 2011. In addition, he has been selected to be part of the new book by Phaidon publishing house, entitled Art Cities of the Future: Contemporary Avant Gardes. He also exhibited at Pacific Standard Time, under the title of Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art from the Caribbean Archipielago curated by Tatiana Flores at MOLAA and at the Video Arte en Latin America exhibition at Laxart curated by Glen Philips at the Getty Institute. Ibarra has exhibited individually and collectively in Cuba, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Canada, Spain, Romania, Norway, Holland, Sweden, Czech Republic, China, Taiwan and cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Denver and New York.

Fractured Atlas

Until May, 5^th

VIGIL GONZALES Cusco

Pampa del Castillo 455. Tercer piso | Cusco