Reviews

Internally, the Chilean art scene often falls under the stereotype of a cold and academized conceptualism. Some artists, on the other hand, have shown an interest in “refreshing” the atmosphere through aesthetic warmth, a certain humor, and urban culture.

Cristóbal Lehyt positions himself very well in large and reduced contexts

Impossible to ignore and really impressive, the four artistic interventions featuring gigantographs of works by up-and-coming contemporary artists on the façade of the Del Plata Building managed to transfer images which are habitually viewed in more intimate venues, such as museums and private collections, to the public sphere.

A great success of attendance, the traveling exhibition Andy Warhol. Mr. America, at Malba-Fundación Costantini, coincided with the sale of 200 One Dollar Bills (1962), auctioned by Sotheby’s for 43 million dollars; a smaller, cross-shaped version of the same work was featured at the Buenos Aires show.

Galería Vermelho, Sao Paulo, inaugurated its 2010 exhibitions program with three excellent solo shows: “Universe”, work by the collective Detanico Lain; Ana María Tavares’s “Paisagems perdidas” (Lost Landscapes); and the recent work of the Portuguese artist Gabriela Albergaria.

Independently of the pleasure or the gratification that we have always obtained from viewing Guillermo Trujillo’s works, he has not ceased to amaze us with his capacity to offer us new emotional experiences in each of his incursions in the world of creation.

After a long wait, Venezuela witnessed the first solo show of Arturo Herrera (Caracas, 1959), an artist trained in the U.S.A. and currently living in Berlin.

The sensation of color exerts an influence on and affects our everyday life. The lay person simply does not perceive it. Man shows more interest in form than in color. However, he experiences color in his daily life. To understand this we must analyze “the problem of color” and become aware of the fact that perception of the harmony of colors is part of an individual’s culture.

Ana María Nava’s (Venezuela, Edo. Zulia, 1962) work is featured as a fresh proposal related to the use of glass in art.

As part of the development of the theme of assemblage, Oscar d’Empaire (Venezuela. Edo Zulia, 1930) is featuring his most recent show, where he exalts the use of iron and welding.

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.