Reviews

The geometry in Jorge Cabieses' (Lima, Peru, 1971) usual outline is broken with the action of the spontaneity of the curved and almost organic stroke in his second solo exhibition in the Spanish capital. The Lima-born artist thus proposes, in a certain way, a dialogue between the artificial of the synthetic and the atavistic through the incorporation of those more spontaneous brushstrokes over the usual framework of rectitude that the artist usually presents.

Two decades after Miguel Ángel Rojas (1946, Bogotá, Colombia) conceptualized in his project David Quiebramales his denunciation of violence and the use of education as the most efficient vehicle towards a catharsis for those who suffer it, the Madrid headquarters of La Cometa revisits his most emblematic work and reinterprets it as the framework for a kind of thematic retrospective. This commemoration of that first David Quiebramales reinforces a view that is still difficult to overcome and that, even today, serves to trace those harmful social dynamics that are created between society and war, the institutional and the political systems.

Until this April 2024, one of the recent galleries of the Pinacoteca Contemporânea - the new annex of the traditional and active Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, which opened in 2023 - has become a special locus, where past and future, tradition and modernity, nostalgia and dazzle, fortress and ruin, among other poetic axes, present themselves to a visitor who is between perplexity and fascination. The author of this suspension of time is the Chinese artist Cao Fei (Guanghzou, 1978), one of the key artists of the contemporary world, who has her first solo show in South America, after (more discreet) appearances at the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010) and the 9th Mercosul Biennial (2013), in Porto Alegre, in the south of the country.

MIAMI

ROSAS Ek Balam gallery, based in Buenos Aires, presents works by Vicente Grondona and Max Gómez Canle in the RADAR section of Pinta Miami. Entitled Épica del paisaje (Epic of Landscape), this exhibition invokes the fragmentation of reality.

El Dorado: Myths of Gold is an extensively researched, impeccably installed exhibition featuring one-hundred objects and artworks from the Pre-Columbian period to the 21^st century by sixty artists.

MIAMI

Amazonia is a Pinta Miami project curated by Félix Suazo that proposes a visual expedition through the Amazon, crossing countries, cultures and ecological identities. As a Special Project, Amazonia emphasizes Pinta's commitment as an international platform for Latin American art.

Based on futuristic tales, Guadaloup Vilar created an entire universe where life and art are supported by death. Completely functional to organic and cohesive development, Guadaloup’s artworks and installations reshape the notion of expiration.

The experience proposed by Martina Servio Olavide is composed of two parts, one that invokes dying and the other, as an organic counterpoint, living. The first, "dying", is represented by a non-naturalistic play, while the second, "living", manifests itself as an exhibition in an art gallery. Through these two dimensions, the artist challenges the viewer to question their understanding of self and others, and to explore a wide range of interpretations.

From September 13 to November 15, 2023, Venezuelan artist Pedro Medina inaugurated his first solo show in Spain, with Cerquone Gallery, at its headquarters in Madrid. Entitled Gran Turismo: Simulaciones Simultáneas (Big Tourism: Simultaneous Simulations), the exhibition is conceived as an exhibition of recent work on a process of observation of speed and resistance in painting.

In the eclectic and vibrant universe of Edgardo Giménez, the exhibition There Will Be None Like Him at Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) emerges as an unforgettable journey through more than sixty years of artistic production.

The experience of visiting the exhibition of Martín Reyna (Buenos Aires, Argentina) at the galerie Bessiere called Fluides is truly captivating. To achieve this, the artist took full advantage of the topographical qualities of the exhibition space. Fluides is an installation that maps the artist's work including a selection of paintings, many of them in large format on paper as the main support.

With the third act dedicated to the memory of Abdias Nascimento (1914-2011), an exhibition focused on the work of Mestre Didi (1917-2013) and a large installation by the emerging Mônica Ventura, Inhotim is consolidating an important change in the profile of its collection and in the commissioning of new works.

The Villa Datris Foundation for Contemporary Sculpture, created by Danièle Marcovici and Tristan Fourtine, presents each year a thematic exhibition that offers an original and committed reading of the creation of its time.

The exhibition Claro que sí (Of course it is) by Mariana Ferrari (1975, Tucumán, Argentina) is on display at Tomás Redrado Art.

Fundación PROA presented a reflection on the myth of "El Dorado" in the American continent, with a selection of works by artists from different countries and times to rethink the impact and meaning of one of the most influential legends in history.

Mateo Lopez (b. 1978), a Colombian artist with an outstanding career, has his first solo exhibition in Lima. Pasado futurista (Futuristic Past) is the title of his exhibition, curated by Maria Wills and Julien Petit, and comes with the Miguel Urrutia Museum in Bogota's seal.

Ser Pallay is a "collaborative textile project'' that bet on an artistic praxis that critically responds to the ambivalent valuation of the extraordinary Andean textile tradition in the art narratives of Peru's cultural history.

In March 1985, a breakthrough in filmmaking was released in United States’ theaters. Signed by Woody Allen and titled "The Purple Rose of Cairo", the search for the purple rose is nothing more than a way of approaching the impossible.

"Judith Lauand/Walking into the future". In that way Profilograma Judith (2000), by Augusto de Campos, one of the main names of concrete poetry in Brazil, celebrates the art of Judith Lauand (1922-2022).  The São Paulo artist, a female figure almost isolated in the country, was given a long retrospective with 124 works and extensive documentation, opened before her death at the end of last year, at São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP).

The first part of an essay by Adriana Herrera Téllez on the tradition and heritage of textiles in Latin America and its impact on contemporary art.

As a way of closing 2022 and give a way to 2023, Rolf Art, curated by Francisco Medail, presented Eso que estalla no es el sol, a group show in which several artists talk about the conjunction nature-humans.

This is one of the unique moments of the most recent contemporary art in Brazil. The final tracking shot of Olho da Rua, a video by Jonathas de Andrade now on display at Inhotim, one of Brazil's leading visual arts centers, is one of those happy moments in which the artist manages to capture with such precision the zeitgeist of his country (in this case, on a continental scale).