Eight Latin American artists explored the spectator´s experience at Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City
The exhibition Medios y ambientes, curated by Tatiana Flores and Laura Roulet, at the Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, allowed the display, from May to October, of the artwork of eight Latin American artists employing an expansive notion of space to challenge the boundaries of the object and the artistic media.
They propose the spectator’s experience as their principle theme, in creating totally immersive environments, using diverse means.
The works relate to each other in various ways. In the Central Gallery, Guerra de la Paz and Angela Bonadies are inspired by the Mexican setting. Bonadies creates photographs of the old penitentiary, now the National Archives and building for the Chopo University Museum, which establishes an interesting dialogue between the past and present, the art work and the museum building. Guerra de la Paz elaborates a site-specific piece with used clothing, creating a range of chromatic values that make reference to a consumer society, human suffering, and the political policies that exclude marginal groups.
In the South Gallery, the plein air paintings by Lilian Garcia-Roig occupy the border between painting and sculpture, creating tactile surfaces that show how the process of seeing is related to physically feeling, a theme that is also reflected in Irene Clouthier’s piece, comprised of 17 fishbowls that view the spectator. Magdalena Fernández’s piece, inspired by abstract paintings and penetrable installations by Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, creates a colorful environment that plays with the relationship between two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality. The installation by Nayda Collazo-Llorens also relates to the spectator’s experience, creating fragmentary images with sound projections that repeat themselves within a blackbox space. Charles Juhasz-Alvarado as well as Clouthier play with scale: Clouthier with her magnified cubes, and Juhasz-Alvarado with his sofa in the shape of an ear, which refers to the historical markets in the Chopo area.
The exhibition reflected how the spectator and expositive context have displaced the object itself in contemporary art, creating an active relationship between the viewer and space.
