Rosario Bond / Alicia Meza
Curator’s Voice Art Project. Miami
Curator’s Voice Art Project is a cultural management project led by Miami-based Venezuelan art critic and curator, Milagros Bello. Its aim is to approach art from a curatorial perspective that endorses the work and the proposals of contemporary artists. Such is the case of the two solo shows that inaugurate the pro- ject: Rosario Bond’s Beautiful Trash and Alicia Meza’s Tarsiers; both exhibitions focus on the issue of the environment from two entirely different perspectives.
Faced with the traditional archetype of feminine beauty that restrains and condemns, Rosario Bond, a native of the Dominican Republic currently based in Miami, proposes a sui generis approach to the theme of beauty. Bond has chosen, precisely, the declination point of the cult to beauty per se’s fragile territory. Her installations are comprised of accumulations of futile objects, the fruits of vanity and the restrictive social norm that establishes gagging roles: artifacts that are the fruits of fashion and the cult of beauty, fascinat- ing and terrible archetypes of our time.
From a formal point of view, the dominant trait is the Neo-Expressionist gesture combined with a preference for the dripping which, like a contaminating oil slick, covers all the elements like a fateful veil, generating dark jumbles of post-industrial society discarded materials: personal stories which may only be partially understood. Bond’s sculptures are a sort of over- whelming urban mythology not devoid of sarcasm: ghostly totems, states of alert regarding imminent dangers of contemporary society. The work of Alicia Meza,Venezuelan artist based in Washington, functions as a propitious counterpoint. Focusing on the concept of nature and the desire to survive, Meza utilizes the iconic figure of the Tarsius Tarsier or ghost tarsier, one of the smallest primates known, which for eight decades was believed to have become extinct, as cen- tral element of her proposal.
Meza reproduces the figure of the tarsier in translucid resin of different colors. The funny figurines are distributed over the walls and ceiling of the gallery, like colonies of whimsical inhabitants moving about in the coldness of the white cube. The translucency of the material chosen by the artist and the big eyes of these sui generis creatures generate a very special dialogue with the viewer, questioned by this fragile and fascinating species that challenges human civilization’s self destructive race. Meza also contests the notions of nature and simulacrum, or the visible and the invisible,while she deftly introduces us to an issue that is as urgent as it is ontological in a playful and effective way. Captivated, the spectator tries to discover the traces of such whimsical cohabitants and, once fascinated by the game, become aware of the urgency of the gesture and of our responsibilty as part of an ecosystem that is simultaneously wonderful and fragile.
Rosario Bond and Alicia Meza’s proposals are, at the same time, a warning, a denounce- ment and a reflection about essential issues of contemporary society. Both exhibitions will remain open until 20 June.
