6 mar 2014

ERICK BELTRÁN Atlas Eidolon





















Erick Beltrán

ATLAS EIDOLON


Miércoles, 5 de marzo, 19.30 h
Museo Tamayo, México



Existe una tradición del pensamiento, emparentada con la historiografía, que explica las relaciones del universo a través de las imágenes. Mediante la lectura de las imágenes es posible visualizar las fuerzas que viven en la psique humana. Para comprender el mundo, el ser humano fracciona los hechos y las cosas en unidades, con las que comparamos y distinguimos con el fin de obtener un conocimiento.

Dicha tradición piensa que al realizar una combinación de imágenes o unidades es posible leer órdenes subyacentes en el mundo, por lo tanto, los significados se podrían agrupar en las diversas combinaciones o montajes de imágenes.

La psique colectiva de un país se puede medir por medio de su bagaje iconológico. ¿Cómo hacer un catálogo de estos iconos? ¿Cómo presentarlos en sus posibles combinaciones? ¿Cómo hacer una máquina de lectura combinatoria para visualizarlos? ¿Cómo visualizar nuestra memoria pública?

El problema de la interpretación del presente a través del pasado nos conduce inevitablemente a preguntarnos por la existencia de un narrador. ¿Quién es y de dónde proviene esa voz omnisciente?

La pugna por encarnar esa voz es la lucha por el consenso colectivo: medios de comunicación, políticos, la policía, sensores, educadores, religiosos, defensores de intereses económicos y el individuo mismo están en esta centrífuga que trata de dar sentido a una narrativa. Todos luchan por definir la memoria, por ser la voz del narrador, ya que la memoria –a fin de cuentas- define lo visible. Si algo no está dentro de esta pugna social, no existe.

¿Por qué si en México tenemos una memoria llena de tragedias, corrupción e incongruencia, se repiten los modelos de aparición en lo público (políticos) e inclusive adquieren más fuerza? ¿Por qué si ciertas imágenes aparecen como pesadillas recurrentes, se instauran definiendo el presente, dando la impresión de ser parte de una realidad inamovible? ¿Por qué si reconocemos a los personajes, su función, y lo que representan, los resucitamos con otros nombres y otros actores?

¿Por qué si nuestra historia ha sido una lista de saqueo que beneficia sólo a un pequeño grupo, hacemos que esas imágenes regresen? ¿Por qué las figuras se niegan a dejar su lugar, y los patrones se vuelven a imponer? ¿Por qué la fascinación hacia esas imágenes y su reproducción infinita? ¿Qué tipo de vínculo estamos estableciendo con esas imágenes?

21 nov 2013

ALEKSANDRA MIR The Space Age. M - Museum Leuven


Aleksandra Mir, "Astronaut," 2008. Paper collage on
gold-leaf frame, 31 x 24 cm. Courtesy of the artist.



ALEKSANDRA MIR 
The Space Age
November 28, 2013–February 16, 2014

M – Museum Leuven 
Leuven, Belgium














 The Space Age is an exhibition by Aleksandra Mir (b. 1967, Lubin) concentrating on a body of work about space exploration the artist has developed over the past 15 years. Based on a number of historical events, such as the discovery of the laws of physics, the early experimental spaceship launches, and the first successful moon landing, Mir's public events, films and works on paper investigate the complex relationship between science and religion—an ambivalence underscored by her interplay of facts and fiction.

Mir uses science fiction to metaphorically reflect on life on earth. What is the purpose of leaving and going so far away? How far away from home can you go, and still be relevant to the people you left behind? What happens to the ego when tangible references vanish? Is the risk worth it? Is scientific discovery a way to meet or to challenge God? And is extreme solitude a path to self-realization or simply a process to verify one's existence among others? 

The exhibition at M – Leuven brings together for the very first time Mir's early work First Woman on the Moon (1999) with Gravity (2006), The Dream and the Promise (2008–09), The Seduction of Galileo Galilei (2011) and the more recent Satellite Crashes down in Porto Alegre, Brazil (2013).

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated poster book with an essay by Martin Herbert published by Sternberg Press.

Curator: Eva Wittocx

Aleksandra Mir lives in London. Recent solo exhibitions and projects include Discoteca, Magazzino, Rome; Visionaries of St. Pauli, Betongalerie, Hamburg (2013); Justice, Triple A, Los Angeles (2012); The Seduction of Galileo Galilei, Mercer Union, Toronto and Whitney Museum, New York (2011); Triumph, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2009); Switzerland and Other Islands, Kunsthaus, Zurich (2006). Group exhibitions include Energy and Process, Tate Modern, London (2013); 9 Bienal du Mercosul, Porto Alegre (2013); Monuments, Lismore Castle (2013); Pursuit of Perfection, South London Gallery (2012); ArtandPress, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (2012); Once Upon a Time, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2011); Plus Ultra, MACRO Testaccio, Rome (2010); 53 Venice Biennale (2009).

14 nov 2013

CAIO REISEWITZ AT PARIS PHOTO 2013



Looking at cities – São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília
An exhibition presented by Instituto Moreira Salles at Paris Photo 2013
Grand Palais, Paris
14 – 17 November 2013

Photography arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1840, when most Brazilian cities were small rural villages. Since then, we have seen megalopolis spring across the country. Some of them, like São Paulo, with around 25,000 inhabitants at that time, is now home to 20 million people. And the capital, Brasília, strategically located in the heart of the country, was built just sixty years ago where there used to be only retorted trees and shrubs.

Urban and natural landscapes, and its transformations, have been one of the main subjects of Brazilian photography and of Instituto Moreira Salles’s photography collection of 900,000 images. This exhibition shows how Brazilian cities have been pictured by photographers and artists while changing and expanding in new and interesting ways.

The growing economy of the last decades has intensified these changes, asking artists to search for new visual practices to represent their surroundings. The time frame also coincides with the new status photography has achieved on the art market. The exhibition presents classical, modernist and contemporary approaches. One of the new acquisitions, the work of Mauro Restiffe on the Luz neighborhood in downtown São Paulo show recent urban transformations with very large analog prints to represent decay and question renovation. Caio Reisewitz’s recent works, large and small, investigate the boundary where constructed and natural landscape (and imagery) meet, the same boundary that seduced Marc Ferrez since his early works in the 1860’s. Photographer Marcel Gautherot, – who was for Oscar Niemeyer’s work what Lucien Hervé was for Le Corbusier’s, documented the construction of Brasília in the late 1950’s. Some years later his formal, tectonic images would be echoed by the then young photographer and would be film-maker Jorge Bodanzky’s cinematic approach of the new capital, produced on the same year Brazil submerged under twenty years of military dictatorship (1964-1985). Other artists, like Rosangela Rennó, use the book form to investigate photography as history, as art and as value, in a country where less than two-hundred years of incommensurable change have transformed the historical photographic legacy both in objects of knowledge and also of desire and greed.

Since its foundation in 1992, IMS has been a cultural institution dedicated to the preservation, research and interpretation, through critical thinking, of Brazilian culture. In keeping with this mission, it has elected photography as its priority field of activity. In 2011, IMS launched ZUM, a contemporary photography magazine, and started collecting Brazilian contemporary photography on a regular basis.

Sergio Burgi – Photography Coordinator
Thyago Nogueira – Contemporary Photography Coordinator, ZUM Magazine Editor

25 oct 2013

MUNTADAS Entre/Between. Vancouver Art Gallery















MUNTADAS: ENTRE/BETWEEN – Lectures and Talks
Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada


Saturday, November 9, 2pm
In the Gallery
Muntadas discusses the research processes of his practice. Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Director of the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, follows with a talk about the artist’s Subsensorial works.
Free for Members or with Gallery admission.


Tuesday, November 12, 6pm
In the Gallery Library
One week prior to a lecture by Mary Anne Staniszewski, the Gallery is holding a reading group focusing on Muntada’s Between the Frames. Resulting from ten years of research and personal reflection, Between the Frames is an installation comprising eight sections—dealers, collectors, galleries, museums, docents, critics, media and artists—that taken together serve as a metaphor for the art system on which it is based.
For more information, and to join the reading group, contact the Gallery Library at library@vanartgallery.bc.ca.


Tuesday, November 19, 7pm
In the Gallery
Curator and art historian Mary Anne Staniszewski talks about her research into the history of display and the structures of the art world in a presentation that deals with Muntadas’ Between the Frames.   
Free for Members or with Gallery admission.


Tuesday, December 3, 7pm
In the Gallery
Hank Bull addresses aspects of his collaborations with Muntadas’, particularly in relation to a coproduced work, Cross Cultural Television. A screening of the video will accompany his presentation.
 Free for Members or with Gallery admission.


Tuesday, January 28, 7pm
In the Gallery
Writer, art historian and journalist Robert Atkins speaks about Muntadas’ works and aspects of his practice that address the nature of the “media landscape.” 
Free for Members or with Gallery admission.



http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/
www.galeriajoanprats.com