Reviews

The annual exhibition of works by artists selected for the Grants and Commissions Program of the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, CIFO, in Miami, is a reference point.

If there is something conclusive in the work of Héctor Maldonado (Puerto Rico, 1972) it is his versatility.

Henrique Faria Fine Art is closing this season with an exhibition never presented before in the United States: Gerd Leufert & Gego.

Estudios paragráficos is José Damasceno’s (Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, 1968) most recent proposal, a combination of prints and installations created specifically for this exhibition with which the Madrid gallery Distrito 4 opens its new season.

It is not a simple task to interpret in a concise manner a space like the one occupied by the coldstore facility in Madrid’s central slaughter house; Carlos Garaicoa ((Havana, Cuba, 1967) however, has managed to do so.

Chronological leaps and narrative soundness may be found in “Photography in Argentina 1840-2010”, the exhibition that spans the history of the discipline from its origins to the present, through canonical images and other less known ones.

They look like exotic jewels from an Arabian Nights’ tale. We are referrring to the work of an artist with a long and fruitful trajectory, Monique Rozanès.

Who was Ana Mendieta? Who is Ana Mendieta today? “One of the most inventive and iconoclastic artists of the late 20th century;” such the categorical assertion of Olga Viso, director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

I first came across the work of Pablo Vargas Lugo (Mexico City, 1968) in the late 1990’s around the time that his seminal pieces began to exhibit internationally, thus becoming referential outside of Mexican contemporary art circles

Pablo Reinoso’s Buenos Aires, 1955 bold oeuvre defies perception; it plays with illusion and with the viewer’s participation, offering a framework for reflection.

In Mateo López’s oeuvre, drawing and its three dimensional projections are analogous to the hand that gropingly explores the world, spreading out into lines over the space with a playfulness that evokes Plato’s Myth of the Cave.

Carlos Cruz-Diez in conversation with Ariel Jiménez is the title of the first of a series of books included in an important editorial project conceived by the Cisneros Foundation, aimed at enriching the history under construction of Latin American art through a valuable resource that has been over looked by critics: the unreplaceable dialogue with the artist.

In search of new images, Marcelo Pombo reached “The Depths of the Sea” (“Lo profundo del mar”) the title of his latest exhibition , and this is the origin of the works he is currently showing at Zavaleta Lab.

Between 12 August and 2 October, 2010, Casas Riegner Gallery, Bogotá is hosting the exhibition “Rosario López: lo informe y el límite” (Rosario López: the shapeless and the limit), in which the Colombian artist presents her most recent production.

From 11 August through 27 October, 2010, the Mint of the Bank of the Republic is hosting the temporary exhibition “Re(cámaras): Espacios para una fotografía extendida”, curated by María Wills Londoño.

Social and artistic memory in Juan Carlos Distéfano. Obras 1958- 2010, the wonderful exhibition featuring more than 70 works by the remarkable Juan Carlos Distéfano (Buenos Aires, 1933), held at the Art Space of the OSDE Foundation in Buenos Aires.

The exhibition of photographies by brothers Graziano and Paolo Gasparini, entitled “2 x Gasparini” takes us back to two visions of contemporary Venezuelan photography.

The title of this exhibition is somewhat disconcerting. Luis Lizardo (Venezuela, Caracas, 1956) is showing his recent work in the framework of the old coffeee drying patios of the Hacienda La Trinidad, in Caracas.

The story of carmine red is associated to sex, violence and political struggles. Also to war and drama. The humble cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) that produces it was always alien to the passions it generated. I

“De Cuba Nelson Domínguez: Pintura, escultura, dibujo y grabados” (“From Cuba Nelson Domínguez: Painting, sculpture, drawing and engraving”), the first solo show of this great Cuban artist in the Dominican Republic, ran from mid-June to the end of September at the welcoming spaces of Alinka Arte Contemporáneo.

In José Dávila’s one-person exhibition at OMR Gallery in Mexico City, Ningún donde puede ser aquí a title inspired by the expression “Nowhere can be there".

The term ‘sesera’ (brainpan) refers to the part of the skull that encloses the brain and the grey matter itself, while at the same time it also serves to describe the person who acts with prudence and good judgment.

The Miami gallery Fredric Snitzer presented its summer group show, which explores a “macho/masculine” position throughout a wide spectrum ranging from the macho-macho, the peacock, and the gay man or woman, to childhood and the boy-girl relationship.

Under the title A Collective Sum, the Wynwood District gallery Ideobox Artspace presented during the past month of April three solo shows.

New Work Miami 2010, “was conceived as an exuberant salute to Miami’s artistic community, and it will provide a partial snapshot of the Miami art scene at this moment,” according to the press release issued by the Miami Art Museum to promote the exhibit.

One day, talking with Volf Roitman, he confessed to me that he saw everything in the shape of the geometric forms that the MADI movement had created.

Painting, as we are taught by Asians, Romantics and Surrealists alike, is valuable insofar as it opens a door to imagination.