Reviews

The Centre Pompidou hosts for the first time the sculptures, collages, artist's books, drawings and assemblages by the artist León Ferrari (1920-2013), considered one of the most influential in Latin America.

In 2010, the American singer, actress and producer Lady Gaga (New York, 1986) scandalized the audience at the MTV Awards by appearing at the gala in a dress made of beef, designed by Franc Fernández and styled by Nicola Formichetti. The press at the time reviewed the controversy triggered by the extravagant outfit, which for some was offensive and for others a declaration of creative freedom.

An institution that is more attentive and permeable to public debate, that has its own collection as a living witness to the changes. This could be one of the guiding axes of the work of the Venezuelan Julieta González at the head of the artistic direction of Inhotim, one of the main centers of contemporary art in Brazil and one of the most inspiring open-air museums in the world.

If the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil once had what was called the “Biennial of the Void” (2008), it could be said, bridging the gap, that Santa Cruz de la Sierra involuntarily experienced the “Biennial without public” (2020).

If the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil once had what was called the “Biennial of the void” (2008), it could be said, bridging the gap, that Santa Cruz de la Sierra involuntarily experienced the “Biennial without an audience” (2020).

I ask myself what it means to be Al día (up to date) with art, when it has already been decreed that we live in posthistory and that the present is now postpresent. The question I propose is not theoretical, but of a practical nature, since many decisions depend on its answer: which exhibitions to visit? what works to see? which artists to recommend? With these initial questions come others, also important, although not easy to answer: how much information is needed to be up to date? where can you get up-to-date information? Who has the news of the day?

Although traditional art collecting includes an investment component and a business perspective, it still invokes a sort of romanticism aura that builds around an artist. A classic collector tends to follow an artist's trajectory, supporting his work. The new wave of NFT collectors stand out for not belonging to traditional art environments. Most of them are young aged and have never set foot in a museum or gallery, and therefore prioritize the finance aspect to NFT collecting to the emotional one. Generally, they are folks whose field of expertise is related to fin tech – they come from and drive the crypto world. And yes, they are mainly men.

As a conceptual artist working in the crossroads of art, science, and technology, with a corporate past and a social communications baseline, I am deeply interested in the new digital ecosystem raised by blockchain technology, NFTs and the Metaverse, from a perspective that addresses this realm as a sociological phenomenon, as a new business field, and as another one of the many mediums I utilize to express my ideas.

The Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum (Madrid, Spain) contains the world view of the American people. Almost four centuries of American painting are on display in rooms 46 to 55 on the first floor of the museum. To name but a few names: Peale, Cole, Heade, Church, Hopper, Burchfield, Shahn, Rothko, de Kooning, Pollock, Estes... Probably the most complete collection of American art in Europe, and a must-see exhibition for anyone who wants to understand the history and thougt of the Western country.

Welcome to the fascinating world of kinetic art! The Espace Monte-Cristo, the Parisian headquarters of the Fondation Villa Datris-Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, presents to celebrate its fifth anniversary "Cinétique! La sculpture en mouvement" (Kinetic! Sculpture in movement). The staging of this exhibition allows us to discover the creations of 25 French and international artists; kinetic sculptures from the 60s to the present mixing historical and scientific references. Static, dynamic or mechanical, these works play with our perception and evolve according to our movements. A colorful, sonorous, rhythmic and moving journey opens up before us.

Review about the exhibition Into the Great Dying: (The Steps We Take), on view until June 2022

On the occasion of the centenary anniversary of the 1922 Modern Art Week, a key event for the artistic avant-gardes in Brazil and which consolidated what would become known as modernism in the country, several exhibitions throughout the year (and also in 2021) revolved around, discussed, explained, replaced and 'cancelled' such an initiative. Considered a milestone in the cultural renewal of Brazilian art, the week was about to turn around in its already canonical grave.

Before machines took over, many issues were resolved following an algorithmic principle with some logic and a little math. The originator of the idea was a Persian mathematician in the eleventh century. Later, the procedure became essential for science, everyday life and art. Basically, the algorithmic methods are in the patterns of Islamic art (see tessellation notation), in the Andean chakana and quipus of the Inca period, in the Renaissance perspective and in other representational devices of the pre-digital era.

Regarding Artist in Residence, an exhibition by Fernando “Coco” Bedoya (Borja, 1952), at the Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano (ICPNA) in Miraflores, Lima, Peru. Curated by Max Hernández Calvo, the exhibition is open until June 4, 2022.

Collectors, investors and artists are fascinated by the promising profitability of NFTs. The phenomenon exploded with the succulent sale of a digital work by Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) in 2021 and since then it has generated a chain reaction whose consequences are still not entirely clear.

Reluctantly classified, with increasing complexity and interest, the work of Maria Martins (1894-1973) has yet to gain recognition in her native country. But a selection of some 50 pieces, on display in Rio de Janeiro through June, should help reposition the sculptor, draftswoman and engraver in the pantheon of leading Brazilian artists.

A few decades ago, the art utopia consisted of incorporating the viewer into the work, either physically or sensorially. Frank Popper called these practices with the term "participation art".

The Cartier Foundation presents "Heliotropo 37", the first major exhibition in France dedicated to the work of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide. It brings together more than 200 images from the 1970s to today. Photographs from the most iconic to the most recent, as well as a color series specially produced for the exhibition. If today she is famous for her portraits of the Indians of the Sonoran Desert, the women of Juchitán, or for her photographic essays on the ancestral communities and traditions of Mexico, Graciela Iturbide also draws an almost spiritual focus to landscapes and objects. Showing for the first time these two facets, these two points of view of the artist's work, the exhibition thus offers a renewed vision and reveals her great contribution to photographic art.

Ronald Morán's individual exhibition, Por encima del Jardín (Above the Garden) (2021-2022), with which public activities were reinstated at the Marte Museum in San Salvador, has become a paradigmatic exhibition, not only as a new consecration of one of the Central American artists of greater international recognition, but as a sign of the vision of an institution that is committed to experimentation and accompaniment in the practices that link contemporary art and social imagination.

This exhibition features thirteen photographs by Gory from the Moonlight Serenade series (2012-2018). The essay by the curator Julia P. Herzberg discusses the varied contexts of the photographs, which are exhibited and discussed here for the first time.

One of the key works of the 34th São Paulo Biennial literally anchors the robust and uncomfortable presence between the interstitial areas of this modernist building, so questioned today. However, its meanings go beyond the perimeters of the construction and extend to, for example, some of the civic sculptures that populate public places throughout Brazil and that are also located in the surroundings.

With the curatorship of Félix Suazo, Pinta Miami 2021 becomes a scenario for immersive and thought provoking installations. The aim of Pinta’s section Special Projects is to accentuate the individuality and artistry of contemporary artists who, through their works and installations, bring to life the concerns and possibilities of the near future.

Recently, Richard Garet, a multimedia artist based primarily in New York City, opened a solo exhibition titled “Frame Compositions” with 1stDibs NFT marketplace. The eponymous show exhibits 29 vibrant NFT works and explores the relationship between color, light, surface and form. Garet’s practice encompasses sound installations, performance, computer applications and other mediums. Adhering to strict parameters, he creates compositions by carefully selecting high-definition 1080x1080-pixel square frames one-by-one and then collating 60 per second using computer applications. Because each work contains 1800 frames squeezed into a 30 second time period, the eye can no longer identify individual frames, thus, creating moving images.

“Moving with great fluidity between spirituality, the production of visuality, academic reflection and political action, Heráclito is explicit when he says that he wants to ‘act, in a symbolic way, on the devastating consequences of racism and social inequality that affect the black populations'." In this way, the curator and researcher Solange Farkas (Videobrasil and ex-MAM Bahía) summarizes the approach to the production of Ayrson Heráclito, a Bahian artist who won a retrospective at the MAR (Museu de Arte do Rio) and who had an important recent solo show at the Simões de Assis Gallery, in São Paulo.

In the interest of paying tribute to one of the photographers who contributed in building Argentina's visual identity, Francisco Medail dedicated the Artista Homenaje section in BAphoto to Lucrecia Plat. Working with an extensive archive of portraits, conceptual photographs and the collaboration of Clara Nerone, Medail highlights the important role of archives in the conception and appreciation of contemporary art.

Geometries Reimagined, the title of the inaugural exhibition at the Tanya Brillembourg Art space, inquires the way in which the incessant transformation of the abstract forms imagined since cave art, is once again realized in the works of Colombian Juan Raul Hoyos, Guatemalan Tepeu Choc, and Haitian Marcus Blake. By different means, the three of them confront the form that, since the onset of the 20^th century, generated the whole current of geometric abstraction imposing itself, according to Rosalind Krauss, as "the emblematic image of the modernist ambition" [1]: the grid. Its presence, explicit or tacit, continues to be unraveled and remade incessantly in contemporary art, and it is no stranger to that "schizophrenia" which, as Krauss wrote, arises between its concentration on the materiality of the pictorial surface and the undeniable spiritual tension that its mythical geometry contains [2]. No less is the opposition between the "discursive silence" sought in the grid through the "complete liberation from naturist appearances" [3], and the paradoxical conversion of its geometry form ─inexistent in nature─ into the matrix of urban modernity: Mondrian ended up creating Boogie Woogie, 1943, in allusion to the rhythm and pulsating vibration of New York.