Reviews

Inscribed within the conceptualist trends on account of his reflexive lineage, geographically and culturally anchored in the contradictions of a Catholic Caribbean America, Héctor Fuenmayor is a Venezuelan artist whose oeuvre is difficult to situate both within local and foreign historiographical frameworks.

John Perreault: “At the end of the 1960s, when we were part of a group which included Scott Burton and Vito Acconci, among others, it seemed that your forte was to invent a basic innovation and, based on it and on the “ism” it generated, begin to construct your work. ¿Do you still believe that is what must be done?”
EC: “Yes”(1)

Aprofound humanist concern underlies the work of Colombian artist Doris Salcedo. Shibboleth, her most recent work exhibited at the Turbine Hall in London between October 2007 and April 2008, reiterates this concern. As the artist states, this work makes reference to the deep divisions that prevail in the present-day world.

The panorama of contemporary visual art, in full evolution, is forever presenting us with work that goes beyond the limits we know.

Miguel Ángel Rojas invents ways of doing that go beyond “the academic”.

A post-culture situation like the one we are experiencing at present is the breeding ground that unveils and highlights particularities and singularities, questioning de facto hegemonies – including contemporary artistic practice itself.

Last year I proposed a reading of Arturo Herrera’s output that counters previous interpretations. That first text steps back from other writers’ psychoanalytic treatment of Herrera’s tendency to fragment the silhouettes of cartoon figures and reinscribe them in a both gestural and serialized mode of abstraction.

First space for socialization, the table is where children learn to share and adults make a cult of conversation.

One of the characteristics which have defined photography as a medium has been its voyeuristic capacity...the act of observing, entering into, and poking one ́s nose in the lives of others as if they were one ́s own... The appropriation of the act of breaking up the space of intimacy that exists between private and public.

In her current production, the Brazilian artist generates a true double eulogy of shadows and luminosity. Her most recent works are the territory hosting a critical, and at the same time nostalgic, exploration of a present that mixes the mentioned perceptive configurations, either through the fragmentation or the completion of the spatial enclaves she transforms.

With Demuéstranos qué es la premura (Show us what haste is), a proposal that is being exhibited as of September 28 at the Estrany-De la Mota Gallery in Barcelona, Spain, José Antonio Hernández-Diez configures a systemics of gears and calibrations, but also of codes and functions

The following is a dialogue, via SMS, between Mark Coetzee and Mark Clintberg concerning the work of Hernan Bas.

Founded in 1998 by Silvia Arrocés in Montevideo (Uruguay), Galería del Paseo inaugurated a new venue in Manantiales, Punta del Este, in 2004. Open year-round, it features a distinguished calendar of exhibitions including mainly Uruguayan and Argentinean artists.

When he arrived in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1935, Carmelo Arden Quin, born in Rivera in 1913, attended Joaquín Torres García’s famous lectures at the Theosophical Society in Uruguay and became fascinated with his teachings, which also allowed him to come into contact with the European constructivist trends.

Verena Urrutia emerged in Santiago in the 2000s, working in the field of photography, performance and video, and featuring images that used to show secretions, pieces of intimate clothing, the idea of the trace and the experience of the body.

Internally, the Chilean art scene often falls under the stereotype of a cold and academized conceptualism. Some artists, on the other hand, have shown an interest in “refreshing” the atmosphere through aesthetic warmth, a certain humor, and urban culture.

Cristóbal Lehyt positions himself very well in large and reduced contexts

Impossible to ignore and really impressive, the four artistic interventions featuring gigantographs of works by up-and-coming contemporary artists on the façade of the Del Plata Building managed to transfer images which are habitually viewed in more intimate venues, such as museums and private collections, to the public sphere.

A great success of attendance, the traveling exhibition Andy Warhol. Mr. America, at Malba-Fundación Costantini, coincided with the sale of 200 One Dollar Bills (1962), auctioned by Sotheby’s for 43 million dollars; a smaller, cross-shaped version of the same work was featured at the Buenos Aires show.

Galería Vermelho, Sao Paulo, inaugurated its 2010 exhibitions program with three excellent solo shows: “Universe”, work by the collective Detanico Lain; Ana María Tavares’s “Paisagems perdidas” (Lost Landscapes); and the recent work of the Portuguese artist Gabriela Albergaria.

Independently of the pleasure or the gratification that we have always obtained from viewing Guillermo Trujillo’s works, he has not ceased to amaze us with his capacity to offer us new emotional experiences in each of his incursions in the world of creation.

After a long wait, Venezuela witnessed the first solo show of Arturo Herrera (Caracas, 1959), an artist trained in the U.S.A. and currently living in Berlin.

The sensation of color exerts an influence on and affects our everyday life. The lay person simply does not perceive it. Man shows more interest in form than in color. However, he experiences color in his daily life. To understand this we must analyze “the problem of color” and become aware of the fact that perception of the harmony of colors is part of an individual’s culture.

Ana María Nava’s (Venezuela, Edo. Zulia, 1962) work is featured as a fresh proposal related to the use of glass in art.

As part of the development of the theme of assemblage, Oscar d’Empaire (Venezuela. Edo Zulia, 1930) is featuring his most recent show, where he exalts the use of iron and welding.

Although presented with great irregularity, the Muestra Nacional de Arte de Puerto Rico (National Art Exhibition of Puerto Rico) is an event that is enthusiastically awaited and welcomed by the lovers of the visual arts of this island, since it gives them an idea − sometimes whimsical − of what is taking place in those complex and always changing/controversial creative spaces.