Notes related to Spain
CONTINUUM: FROM THE DIALOGUE WITH DELCY MORELOS
The Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art (CAAC) is showing Continuum or the appearance of the parts and the whole in its recovered space in the cellars of the institution's complex in Seville, an exhibition whose origin is to be sought in Profundis, the proposal that Colombian Delcy Morelos (Tierralta, Colombia, 1967) made for this same center this year and that served as a framework to sublimate, from the analysis, the dialogue beyond the material and the relationship she kept with her collaborators when it came to putting together her recent exhibition.
THE FIRE KEEPERS, A PERSPECTIVE ON THE MYTH OF FIRE FROM A MEXICAN CURATORIAL PERSPECTIVE
In an art industry that increasingly advocates following the lines established by cultural policies, it is always comforting to return to thesis themes, to environments that draw from social and historiographic sources, of course, but also from myths and a well-understood anthropology. You can go deeper in subtitles and lines or you can put together a skeleton, but the overview can also be a reward these days.
CAN THE ARCHIPELAGO ENTER THE MUSEUM? IBEROAMERICA IN THE PROPOSAL OF THE HELGA DE ALVEAR MUSEUM
“I imagine the museum as an archipelago. It is not a continent, but an archipelago (...) The idea today is to put the world in contact with the world, to put some parts of the world in contact with other parts of the world... We must multiply the number of worlds inside museums”. Édouard Glissant (Sainte-Marie, Martinique, 1929-Paris, France, 2011) expressed his vision of museum functionality in this metaphorical way in his work Poetics of Relationship (1990).
THE DAILY LIFE AND POPULAR EXPRESSION OF MILENA MÚZQUIZ IN TRAVESÍA CUATRO
Travesía Cuatro hosts at its Madrid headquarters Surf and Turf, the fifth exhibition that the gallery dedicates to Milena Múzquiz (Tijuana, Mexico, 1972), that gathers, with about thirty works, the continuity of the production that began after the aesthetic and technical change produced by the end of Los Súper Elegantes, a musical group that he shared with the Argentine Martiniano López Crozet, and which represented a platform that brought together his purest expression through voice and body, as well as with the aesthetic possibilities of costumes and image.
THE LATEST TOUR AT DA2 OF THE LUCIANO MÉNDEZ SÁNCHEZ CONTEMPORARY CUBAN ART COLLECTION
The DA2 hosts the last stage of the itinerancy of the Luciano Méndez Sánchez Contemporary Cuban Art Collection, a cycle of exhibitions that the collection started in 2019 in Spain in this institution and that reflects, through different curatorial lines, the realities and attitudes around contemporary art in Cuba.
"RELATIONAL ROUTES": THE LATIN AMERICAN COLLECTIVE EXHIBITION AT LUCÍA MENDOZA
Rutas relacionales (Relational Routes) is the long-term collective with which the Lucía Mendoza gallery celebrates its tenth anniversary and with which it intends to raise awareness, through the work of about 40 artists, about several of the current thematic and philosophical axes, those that trace their need from the relationship of mankind with its environment. In these axes, we find lines of argument that deal with ecology, society and economies, passing through everything that composes them, such as political processes or the construction of identity.
RIO BRANCO'S JAPANESE FASCINATION IN AVILÉS
The Niemeyer Center, in the Asturian city of Aviles, hosts Tokyo Blues hacia Gritos Sordos (From Tokyo Blues to Deaf Cries), an exhibition by Brazilian photographer Miguel Rio Branco (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, 1946) that traces a journey through his work of crossed images and pieces that were conceived from his personal experience on a trip to Japan, a country whose culture and names in cinema, art and architecture have always fascinated the artist.
MERCEDES AZPILICUETA AND HER “DANCING TABLES” IN C3A
Mercedes Azpilicueta (La Plata, Argentina, 1981) lands with her dancing tables at the Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía (C3A) in an exhibition curated by Verónica Rossi and Jimena Blázquez. A visual and performance artist based in Amsterdam, her artistic practice proposes in her multi-layered works a meeting place between the past and the present through her protagonists and their expressions, some physical -but not corporeal-, such as voices; others, material, such as forms and texts; and others of a more intangible nature such as memory and remembrance.
PAMEN PEREIRA: SPACE, ORDER AND ELEMENTS, AT ARTIZAR
Pamen Pereira (Ferrol, Spain, 1963) unfolds her project Don't give up at Artizar gallery in Tenerife, a show made up of fourteen pieces that make up a total, but that must be seen from the prism of combination and language. However, the artist advocates for observing what is hidden behind the relationship of her works, the selection and the dialogue that the tour offers us.
THE PRE-COLUMBIAN ROOTS IN THE CONTEMPORARY, AT CASA DE AMERICA
Casa de América is hosting three interconnected exhibitions in Madrid until November 30 that investigate and show the influence of the arts and the roots of pre-Columbian cultures in contemporary art and architecture.
STEFAN BRÜGGEMANN'S LINES OF FAITH, AT CASA DE MEXICO
Stefan Brüggemann (Mexico City, Mexico, 1975) disembarks at Casa de México with Dos líneas (fe), a series that is understood as an installation and that starts from the impact and the apparent simplicity exposed to develop the concept of inheritance and its satellites. The Mexican conceptual artist uses the power reflected by symbols, religion and history, an element that he deploys, sometimes explicitly, in his large-format works.
THE WANDERING STORIES OF CECILIA PAREDES, IN BLANCA BERLIN
From her different interdisciplinary perspectives, Cecilia Paredes (Lima, Peru, 1950) lands in Blanca Berlin with a collection of images that deal with imaginary cartographies, displacements and human relations in their conceptual part, materialized, above all, on canvas as the main exhibition material. In Historias errantes (Wandering Stories), the Peruvian artist bets on recovering graphic materials anchored in antiquity, such as astrological charts, engravings of discoveries and maps, which become, after the manipulation of the parts, absolute compositions of impossible -but also aesthetic- iconography.
GUSTAVO PÉREZ AND LIN CALLE CONNECT IN THE ARBOREAL, IN MEMORIAM
The two venues of MEMORIA gallery enter into a necessary dialogue by hosting the individual but connected exhibitions of Gustavo Pérez (Mexico City, Mexico, 1950) and Lin Calle (Hubei, China, 1994), who put on the table, from their techniques and perspectives, a debate of thought on the impoverishment and extinction of contemporary imaginaries.
OPAVIVARÁ! INSTALLS ITS “SOCIAL NETWORK” IN THE CAAC
The artistic collective from Rio de Janeiro OPAVIVARÁ! intervenes in the space of the Capilla de Afuera of the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville with its Rede social, a sensorial and materialized symbology with which the Brazilians invite the spectator to place himself in a position to negotiate and cooperate with his fellow men and women. The intervention, consisting of the unfolding of fabric hammocks that acquire the rhythm and cadence that the visitor imprints with his movement and presence and that adds sounds of snoring, follows the group's premise of building spaces and devices that offer a collaborative experience.
ALLEGRA PACHECO AND THE IMPACT OF THE LABOR ISSUE
There seems to be, and increasingly so, a constant and growing debate in the social sphere about labor relations and the impact of work on people. Almost absolute concepts in current narratives such as work-life balance or resilience lack the necessary background to create that conversation. However, in order to build precisely on them, the research being done on the impact and culture of work in this new revision that Postmodernity leads to value proposals such as the one Allegra Pacheco (San Jose, Costa Rica, 1986) lands in her conceptual Dear Salaryman, which in its latest evolution is exhibited at the Museo La Neomudéjar in Madrid.
HARMONY AND CHANCE IN HÉCTOR ZAMORA'S EMERGENCIA
Héctor Zamora (Mexico City, Mexico, 1974) navigates between opposing concepts. His particular interest in the incessant search, or in the eagerness of understanding, for conceptual equilibrium serves as an engine for a creative explosion in the search for that fragile space that results between actions and intentions, between should and being. In Emergencia, his first solo exhibition at Madrid's Albarrán Bourdais, the Mexican artist manages to capture in several dimensions that almost obsessive vocation of his personal struggle between the opposite poles that have been shaping his proposal.
GERMÁN TAGLE'S REDEFINITION OF LANDSCAPE
Germán Tagle (Santiago, Chile, 1976) returns to Madrid's Daniel Cuevas, where he held his first exhibition two years ago, with El territorio portátil, a show in which the Chilean artist returns to the axes of landscape, painting and culture that have been the backbone of his latest productions.
THE NARCO-HYPOPOTAMUSES’ TALE, BY CAMILO RESTREPO
The double problem that arose from the acquisition in the 1980s of several hippopotamuses in one of the many eccentricities of the trafficker Pablo Escóbar is the starting point of a fable that, between the tragic and the comic, Camilo Restrepo (Medellín, Colombia, 1975) has managed to weave with a very successful graphic and conceptual narrative. With Cocaine Hippos Sweat Blood, the spectator faces this surrealistic story from its beginnings to the present by the hand of a figurativism that sets aside the academic and the technical for the sake of a greater aesthetic and relational concordance with that of the madness transmitted by the story itself.
THE UNFINISHED STORIES OF LILIANA PORTER
Liliana Porter (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1941) has a long history shared with Espacio Minimo. The Madrid gallery pampers every move and celebrates the extensive relationship with the Argentinean artist, always offering her the possibility of receiving her work and witnessing its evolution. For the opening of the space's season, the landing is called Otros cuentos inconclusos, a new proposal that deals with representation and two dimensional axes —space and time— that bear witness to many of the questions raised about human relations.
GABRIEL PÉREZ-BARREIRO: THE MUN'S NEW ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
After six years of his collaboration as a teacher in the Master's Degree in Curatorial Studies offered by the Museo Universidad de Navarra (MUN), Gabriel Pérez-Barreriro has been appointed as the institution's new artistic director. With extensive experience in university museums and other centers in Europe, the United States and Latin America, he is now the new head of the MUN's artistic strategy together with Teresa Lasheras, artistic director of performing arts and music.
ENCAPSULADOS, BY SANDRA GAMBOA, IN VALLADOLID
The Patio Herreriano Museum hosts the recent proposal by Sandra Gamboa (Bogota, Colombia) in which she outlines the necessary arguments to be able to analyse mental health, especially anxiety and depression. In Encapsulados, the Colombian-Spanish artist invites us to carry out this exercise of understanding, rapprochement and empathy with those who suffer from one of the great plagues of this century through the different related iconography that fills the exhibition hall of the Castilian institution.
REGINA JOSÉ GALINDO AND HER DECOLONIZING VISION AT LA PANERA
La Panera Art Center of Lleida presents in its exhibition Descolonicemos el mundo(Decolonize the World) a conceptual tour through the production of Regina Jose Galindo (Guatemala City, Guatemala, 1974) in which a decolonizing approach prevails. Although in some cases of her work this process is not so evident, this view can be traced from the geographical experience of the artist's country of origin and its process of colonization and independence.
BARBARA BRÄNDLI, FROM THE OTHER SIDE
The trajectory of Barbara Brändli (Schaffhousen, Switzerland 1932 - Caracas, Venezuela, 2011) in photography requires a conscientious analysis of several points. Without stopping at them, it is very likely to miss the reason for her approach, her vision that transcends the documentary as a simple objective or her contributions to that world that she began to consolidate in that Venezuela of welcome on her arrival in South America from her native Switzerland.
THREE PAVILIONS AT BIENNALE 2024 THAT EXPLORE THEIR OWN COLONIAL PASTS
The title of the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia, "Stranieri Ovunque", refers, in part, to foreignness as the inherent nature of the subject. Understood in this way, the national pavilions of Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom exhibit artistic proposals that develop the theme of colonialism and reconstruct histories, remedy ties between identity and territory, and explore the dramatic plurality of this potent historical axis. That said, this review does not intend to unveil or unpack the most unjust transcendental truths, but merely to reflect on the musings of others.
HYBRID IDENTITY AND SOCIETY IN STARSKY BRINES
The powerful painting of Starsky Brines (Caracas, Venezuela, 1977) has in his most recent production the consolidation of one of the most intense expressions of the Latin American panorama. Collected under the accurate epigraph of Paisajes imposibles (Impossible Landscapes), the exhibition invites the spectator to let himself be impacted and submerged in a world as unreal and dreamlike as it is sometimes grotesque. These adjectives, more typical of the symptomatology of the society that underlies each of the Venezuelan's pictorial interpretations, seem to originate in the different angles that converge in Brines' universe.
THE METROPOLITAN AREA OF BARCELONA HOSTS MANIFESTA 15
Manifesta, the European nomadic biennial, as it is defined, returns to Spain after past editions in San Sebastian (2004) and Murcia (2010) and will hold its 15th edition in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona from September 8 to November 24. The multidisciplinary program of actions and exhibitions will be developed around the concept of place and time, focusing, through the exhibition venues chosen in the twelve participating municipalities, on the past, present and future of this region.
THE DREAMLIKE SYMBOLISM OF ALFREDO CASTAÑEDA
The world of Alfredo Castañeda (Mexico City, Mexico, 1930 - Madrid, Spain, 2010) is also the ours one. It can be said that, from his narrative poetry and his visual poetry, the Mexican artist accessed a universe that, although its protagonist might seem alien to us, is, in truth, the description through archetypes of a reality that surrounds us. The exhibition that Casa de America in Madrid dedicates to him can boast of compiling all those themes that give shape to those themes of mystical and surrealist character, of that fantastic touch that all life has and that passes through the filter of the experiences of each one and, in this case, of the language with which Castañeda captures it.
MEMORY AND DIASPORA IN WIDLINE CADET
Widline Cadet (Pétion-Ville, Haiti, 1992) brings together in her life experience several of the aspects and themes that, perhaps, have inspired more production among all those curatorial lines with more presence. Her biography, constructed through childhood memories, the environment of a generation and a country marked by its own strong culture or the phenomena of emigration, constitutes the framework in which the photographer develops the practical integrity of her work.
THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL MEANINGS OF KARLO ANDREI IBARRA AT CAAM
Concrete Wounds/Herida concreta is the exhibition that the Canary Islands' Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM) is dedicating to Karlo Andrei Ibarra (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1982), one of the most promising and internationally renowned names of the Puerto Rican art scene.
GENESIS AND BORICUA RESONANCES IN REVOLÚ
The birth of a new collective is always good news, and it is so for several reasons. Firstly, because of the existence of collective dynamics that bring together different points of view and, second, because, in a didactic way, it contributes to illustrate and understand the current cartographies of art. For the Revolú collective, formed by Andrés Meléndez (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1996), Miguel Ángel Feba (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1994) and Marcos Daniel Vicéns (Bayamón, Puerto Rico, 1996), their first exhibition experience is the result of an artistic residency in which, almost blindly, they have been able to build those specific ties to start from the individual and reach the group identity.