Reviews

Although presented with great irregularity, the Muestra Nacional de Arte de Puerto Rico (National Art Exhibition of Puerto Rico) is an event that is enthusiastically awaited and welcomed by the lovers of the visual arts of this island, since it gives them an idea − sometimes whimsical − of what is taking place in those complex and always changing/controversial creative spaces.

Tony Bechara (Puerto Rico, 1943) is an interesting combination between an icon of New York’s Hispano-American society.

From the end of November, 2009 to the end of February, 2010, the exhibition spaces of the French Embassy in the Colonial District of Santo Domingo remained open to the public to feature the group show “Intersections/ Kréyol Factory”.

“Nothing is more disquieting than the ceaseless movement of that which appears to be motionless”. The phrase belongs to the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995). Julio Suárez (1947) rediscovers it on his clear and vertiginous mirrorlike compositions.

The traveling retrospective of Betsabée Romero, curated by Julián Zugazagoitia, is an impeccable show in terms of the balance between the challenging baroque style of this Mexican artist who appropriates the rituals of popular aesthetics or combines the traces of pre-Hispanic iconography with participative forms of social irony, and a mise-en-scène that does not fear the void of space.

To a great extent, the safeguard for attempting the use of a lan- guage that represents the feminine has been the aggressiveness of proposals which, due to their strong content of emotional or social violence, cannot be considered “weak”.

The exhibition Migraciones: Mirando al Sur Arte, organized by the Spanish Cultural Center in Miami and curated by Rosina Cazali, inverted the perspective of the migratory movement in the continent that involves multitudes moving northward, and performed a sort of cultural investigation of these crossings looking southward, to the artistic practices of Central America.

In its Miami venue, Durban Segnini Gallery presented “ALE’YA” (book of the principle of written truths), the solo show of Venezuelan artist Milton Becerra (Colón, 1951), who has been liv- ing and working in Paris since 1980.

Ideobox Art Space has brought to Miami a retrospective exhibition of the work of Eduardo Costa (Buenos Aires, 1940) which, under the title “Mid Career Survey - Fashion Fictions, Names of Friends, & The Painting/ Object”, offers the viewer a summary vision of the prolific artistic production of the past forty years of this important and sui generis Argentine conceptualist.

Beyond the Daily Life, the exhibition curated by Julián Navarro and held at the Center for Visual Communication in Miami from 5 December 2009 through 16 February, 2010, gathers together the work of Guerra de la Paz (the artistic duo formed by Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz) and Teresa Diehl.

So Quiet in Here was a memorable installation by Rubén Torres Llorca at El Museo del Barrio in New York in 1998.

Pablo Bronstein, (b. 1977, Buenos Aires, currently London-based) is the six artist to participate in a series of solo shows of young artists presented annually by the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

The title of Lydia Rubio’s exhibition at the Beaux-Arts des Amériques, L’Étrangère (The Foreigner), evokes the title of Albert Camus’s famous book, although the artist obtained inspiration from a poem by Marjorie Agosin.

With the strength of an atavism that brings intense emotions to the imaginary of contemporary art, the violence that pervades the history of Argentina seems to resurface in the work of artist Nicola Costantino.

When I asked Luiz Hermano what he thinks about while weaving his complex threads of wire that bind together all sorts of prosaic objects, his answer was that he meditates.

The Mexican visual artist Betsabeé Romero1 expresses herself through different artistic mediums – painting, photography, collage, serigraphy, sculpture – but her favorite material is the car and all the parts and accessories that constitute it.

Based on the most traditional photography techniques and devoid of any kind of theatrical trick, the images portrayed by photographer Javier Silva-Meinel (Peru, 1949) manage to convey a powerful emotional and aesthetic energy.

The exhibition presented at Fundación Telefónica in Madrid, in conjunction with the Fundación Cultural Hispano-Brasileña, is the well-deserved tribute to one of the most influential architects in the international context.

The always interesting proposal of Limber Vilorio (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 1972)

Dolores Zinny (Rosario, Argentina, 1968) and Juan Maidagán (Rosario, Argentina, 1957) have been invited to explore Zollamt.

How difficult it is not to feel impressed by the work of Norton Maza-Lautaro (Chile, 1971 -). An oeuvre reflecting a personal life of exile and travels.

The Steps Gallery presented the first solo show in London of Atelier Morales.

Marta Minujin interview by Philip Larratt-Smith

MINUCODEs, the Americas Society’s current exhibition of archival materials and a multimedia environment related to participatory works by Marta Minujín in the late 1960s.