PRESS RELEASE
SERENDIPIA ˃ INSTALAR
On November 25, Espacio Monitor opens its new venue at Centro de Arte Los Galpones with an innovative exhibition proposal. It is Serendipia ˃ Instalar, the first module of its ambitious Serendipia project, with which it intends to develop a series of exhibitions and artistic experiences that trigger reflections and questioning around art and technology.
In this regard, gallery director Luis Miguel La Corte comments:
"Venezuela is a country traditionally open to the world, to contemporary thought and creation, which is why the emotional distance and even a certain prejudice that is maintained, both in the public and in the institutions, towards the manifestations that address the relationship between art and technology is striking. This, it is true, is not something that happens exclusively in Venezuela, but also in the world: it is known that Art and Technology (or Science) have always been intimately connected, but they tend to be seen as two different universes that must be kept apart on pain of contamination or denaturalization. However, we are now witnessing a contrasting phenomenon: from that prejudiced vision we are moving to a real worldwide frenzy with the so-called blockchain art and NFTs. Won't this phenomenon, I wonder, have exactly opposite features?"
This is precisely one of the reflections that the Serendipia project seeks to detonate, in whose successive editions it will be addressing different thematic axes always related to this issue.
"Beyond fashions -says La Corte- what I would like to do with this project (Serendipia) is to make known, in a series of successive exhibitions, genuine artistic expressions that emerge from the encounter of artists with the formidable repertoire of possibilities offered by new technologies. Of course, with emphasis on creation, on the artistic proposal and not on the show".
This first module will emphasize the referential with the intention of contextualizing its central theme within the Venezuelan and international art scene. Conceived as an installation, it will bring together the works of 36 artists who have approached, in different ways and in different temporal contexts, the finding, the code, the algorithms or any of the processes or procedures that somehow link art with technology.
As the first reference in Venezuelan art, pioneer of previous and precursor investigations of what will later be recognized as computer art, we find the master Carlos Cruz-Diez, who, thanks to that unexpected finding that revealed to him the creative power of the induction of color as an experience, was able to develop an investigation that has become a legacy of unquestionable value for the arts worldwide.
Another reference that will be present in the exhibition will be Nam June Paik, known as the father of video art. He was the first to introduce the cathode ray tube TV set into the exhibition space, thus inaugurating a series of questions about the meaning of the (inter)relationship that this medium established with the receiver, and the implications, in terms of control and communication, of what was beginning to take shape as globalized civilization.
Rolando Peña, with a long and consolidated career in the field of performance, installation and video art, will participate with his work “Homenaje a John Cage”, and Carlos Castillo will present his work “Intento de vuelo fallido”, thus giving continuity to Paik's significant contribution by including the unforeseen, from the aesthetics of super 8, as a detonator of possible and relevant questions.
Magdalena Fernández is another undeniable reference in this field of art. Her research on light, wefts and forms have served as the basis for the production of aesthetic experiences of high poetic intensity, based on installation, video and material work. On this occasion, works from her series “Pinturas móviles” will be present.
They will also be joined by “El reloj poético 3.0”, by Venezuelan artist Yucef Merhi, a pioneer of digital art in Latin America. His reflection on time, based on a convergence between natural language and programming language, with poetry as its foundation, will give visitors the chance to experience, in the present and in an unusual way, the dimension of their own passing.
Pedro Morales will be another of the artists who will be part of this group of reference in what constitutes, within Venezuelan art, the pioneering aspect of proposals that incorporate technological media.
It is, in general, a constellation of valuable artists' proposals, each one with significant particularities that give it relevance within the field in question.
Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck, Ivan Candeo, Luis Romero, Luis Molina-Pantin, Enrique Moreno, Luis Poleo, Emilio Narciso, Cipriano Martinez, Luis Arroyo, Vasco Szinetar, Isabel Cisneros, Ramses Larzabal, Alberto Cavalieri , Rodrigo Machado Iturbe, Muu Blanco, Gerardo Rojas, Pepe López, Dulce Gómez, Alexander Gerdel, Dianora Pérez-Montilla, Ana Mosquera, Jesús Moreno-Granados, Cristian Guardia, Rafael Arteaga, Efraín Ugueto, Salomé Rojas and Sebastián Llovera.
In this way, the exhibition is intended to promote the establishment of dialogues between different generations.
To this end, artists Elizabeth Cemborain and José Luis García R., together with Daniela Díaz Larralde as researcher, will speculatively assume the roles of curators, museographers and collectors with the intention of composing a large installation where the works of the invited artists will be integrated with part of the furniture and objects from their workshops, as well as with some of their own creations.
In this regard, Cemborain comments:
"We seek to integrate part of the furniture and objects from our workshops as a referential/relational exercise, which can be understood as a way of representing the usual scenario within which our creative processes take place. It is a challenge - even a playful one - to compose the installation with these considerations in mind: to generate this space of coexistence between objects and ideas".
The intention is that between the object and the work the limits become confused, diluted, so that it is that imprecise space between them that generates questions and activates in the spectator the need to explore possible delimitations that allow us to give some order to that chaos. Delimitations that will necessarily require paying unusual attention to each object, junk or work contained within that amalgam of forms.
The disruption, Garcia adds:
"will thus activate in the spectator the question, the questioning, the attention of the gaze that will be forced to discern both the edges of each thing and the possible relationships that their meanings, recognized or attributed, can provide as a guiding reference. In other words, it seems that what is intended is to activate in the observer not only his ability to see, but also to produce meaning from what he sees."
Cemborain and García are artists who have maintained, during the development of their work, a close link with the technological media and with the possibilities of creative exploration they offer, including different inquiries based on the glitch or technological failure.
From this arises the interest in opening together a space that allows to activate processes of convergence between their own practices, in constant dialogue with artistic references and the works of other artists who also share or have shared, at some point in their careers or in other temporal contexts, similar interests.
It is also intended that this on-site exhibition will coexist with a virtual platform created by the gallery itself, where this same group of artists, at the express invitation of the curators, will be able to host works created specifically for this parallel space, as non-fungible values, based on parameters that respond to the digital environment.
The intention is to bring these experiences closer, to see what these encounters, these dialogues detonate. A way to show, to represent what has been said through the materialization of a work, and also what the objects that produced it can say. Objects that are remains, junk, in close coexistence with the works that, in one way or another, they produced. And that coexist, at the same time, with the immaterial, intangible work, which thus coexists with the material state prior to its existence.
What is sought in this way is to propitiate unexpected significant connections between works and objects, which activate reflection or even bewilderment in the spectator as triggers for the desire to investigate, to decipher, to try to understand what is there and why and for what purpose it is there. What is it that is intuited, where is the work? Where is the work, what defines it, what is it saying, what is its value? Where is the limit between work and object, between object and junk? Is the work of art, perhaps, in the process of becoming junk itself?
This first module of the project, entitled Serendipia ˃ Instalar will have as its thematic axis the error, the unexpected, the finding. The inauguration will take place on Thursday, November 25, 2009 at 2021, in Galpón 7 of the Centro de Arte Los Galpones, the new headquarters of Espacio Monitor, and will be open to the public until March 2022. Within the framework of the exhibition, different events will be organized with the intention of enhancing its reflexive scope. It will be open from Tuesday to Saturday, from 11 am to 6 pm and Sunday from 11 am to 4 pm.
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