Notes related to Spain

The trajectory of Barbara Brändli (Schaffhousen, Switzerland 1932 - Caracas, Venezuela, 2011) in photography requires a conscientious analysis of several points. Without stopping at them, it is very likely to miss the reason for her approach, her vision that transcends the documentary as a simple objective or her contributions to that world that she began to consolidate in that Venezuela of welcome on her arrival in South America from her native Switzerland.

The title of the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia, "Stranieri Ovunque", refers, in part, to foreignness as the inherent nature of the subject. Understood in this way, the national pavilions of Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom exhibit artistic proposals that develop the theme of colonialism and reconstruct histories, remedy ties between identity and territory, and explore the dramatic plurality of this potent historical axis. That said, this review does not intend to unveil or unpack the most unjust transcendental truths, but merely to reflect on the musings of others.

The powerful painting of Starsky Brines (Caracas, Venezuela, 1977) has in his most recent production the consolidation of one of the most intense expressions of the Latin American panorama. Collected under the accurate epigraph of Paisajes imposibles (Impossible Landscapes), the exhibition invites the spectator to let himself be impacted and submerged in a world as unreal and dreamlike as it is sometimes grotesque. These adjectives, more typical of the symptomatology of the society that underlies each of the Venezuelan's pictorial interpretations, seem to originate in the different angles that converge in Brines' universe.

Manifesta, the European nomadic biennial, as it is defined, returns to Spain after past editions in San Sebastian (2004) and Murcia (2010) and will hold its 15th edition in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona from September 8 to November 24. The multidisciplinary program of actions and exhibitions will be developed around the concept of place and time, focusing, through the exhibition venues chosen in the twelve participating municipalities, on the past, present and future of this region.

The world of Alfredo Castañeda (Mexico City, Mexico, 1930 - Madrid, Spain, 2010) is also the ours one. It can be said that, from his narrative poetry and his visual poetry, the Mexican artist accessed a universe that, although its protagonist might seem alien to us, is, in truth, the description through archetypes of a reality that surrounds us. The exhibition that Casa de America in Madrid dedicates to him can boast of compiling all those themes that give shape to those themes of mystical and surrealist character, of that fantastic touch that all life has and that passes through the filter of the experiences of each one and, in this case, of the language with which Castañeda captures it.

Widline Cadet (Pétion-Ville, Haiti, 1992) brings together in her life experience several of the aspects and themes that, perhaps, have inspired more production among all those curatorial lines with more presence. Her biography, constructed through childhood memories, the environment of a generation and a country marked by its own strong culture or the phenomena of emigration, constitutes the framework in which the photographer develops the practical integrity of her work.

Concrete Wounds/Herida concreta is the exhibition that the Canary Islands' Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM) is dedicating to Karlo Andrei Ibarra (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1982), one of the most promising and internationally renowned names of the Puerto Rican art scene.

The birth of a new collective is always good news, and it is so for several reasons. Firstly, because of the existence of collective dynamics that bring together different points of view and, second, because, in a didactic way, it contributes to illustrate and understand the current cartographies of art. For the Revolú collective, formed by Andrés Meléndez (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1996), Miguel Ángel Feba (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1994) and Marcos Daniel Vicéns (Bayamón, Puerto Rico, 1996), their first exhibition experience is the result of an artistic residency in which, almost blindly, they have been able to build those specific ties to start from the individual and reach the group identity.

The Mexican Cultural Institute in Spain hosts the group exhibition En el interior del cielo, a show that gathers some of the most prestigious Mexican artists from the collection of Lorena Pérez-Jácome and Javier Lumbreras.

Spanish-Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra Heshiki represents Spain at the Venice Biennale. It is the first time in 60 editions that an artist not born in Spain does so. Her project Pinacoteca migrante (Migrant gallery), questions colonial narratives and historical modes of representation.

Soy Palacio / Soy Establo is the proposal conceived by Ana Laura Aláez (Bilbao, Spain, 1964) for one of the spaces of the Balearic Museum Es Baluard and in which she proposes, as an intervention, an express dialogue with emptiness.

The international photography festival PHOTOEspaña proposes a program of exhibitions that evoke, both in concept and subject matter, a breadth and diversity that have led to its recognition for years. However, one of its most appreciated improvements has been the expansion of venues and cities, which allows for a wider and better offer.

The Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo (MEIAC) is extending until mid-September the exhibition Las líneas de la vida, by artist Pablo Reinoso (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1955), which deals with the concept of legacy.

It is with great enthusiasm that we announce the inauguration of a new section in our magazine, dedicated to the fascinating and dynamic art market. This section is designed to serve both experts and news collectors  as well as enthusiasts who wish to enter, participate, and better understand this exciting world. The section benefits from the guidance and advice of María Sancho-Arroyo, an expert in the field.

The exhibition Alfredo Castañeda, painter of poetry at Casa de América offers a journey through the Mexican artist's work from a more poetic point of view. In this way, Castañeda's paintings are shown accompanied by his poems, where a dialogue is generated between the artist's two vocations.

The Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM), located in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, is hosting the exhibition Toda utopía pasa por la barriga, a tour through the work of Carlos Garaicoa (Havana, Cuba, 1967) curated by Lillebit Fabraga that best connects with architecture, the natural order and the location of the human being in the system.

The CAC Malaga hosts Milagro, the first solo exhibition in a museum of Mario Ayala (Los Angeles, USA, 1991), son of a Mexican-American mother and Cuban immigrant father, whose production reflects his personal experiences and artistic concerns of the world of garages, truck drivers and mechanics of Fontana.

The exhibition Territorios: Latin American Contemporary Art in the Jorge M. Perez Collection shows a selection of works by more than 50 contemporary Latin American artists at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC). It is curated by Jimena Blázquez Abascal, director of the CAAC.

Austrian-born artist Eva Lootz (Vienna, Austria, 1940) has been living in Spain for more than half her life, where she has established herself not only as one of the great names of contemporary art in the country, where she was awarded the National Prize of Plastic Arts, but also in the whole international European panorama. A regular in exhibitions and public interventions, she now assaults Madrid with a double institutional presence with two large-format exhibitions at the Sala Alcala 31 and the Reina Sofia Museum.

Haitian photographer Wildline Cadet's exhibition Take this with you at Casa de América portrays the longing for the lost home. It is curated by Nanda van den Berg, Widline Cadet and Désirée Kroep.

There is something structural in the Museo La Neomudéjar that allows plastic initiatives such as those of Heriberto Nieves (Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, 1957) to acquire greater meaning thanks to the dialogue with the space offered by this Madrid institution.

Carolina Caycedo’s (London, UK, 1978) Tierra de los amigos (Land of Friends) arrives at the IVAM in Valencia after its run at the Artium museum in Vitoria.

Freedom First is the first solo exhibition that Fernando Bryce (Lima, Peru, 1965) presents at 1 Mira Madrid and is practically a declaration of intentions.

"If you hear a voice within you say, "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced".Vincent Van Gogh

The Green Havana project is a captured sample of a time and an attitude, the same one that transits between evasion and hedonism and the social reality of the Cuban capital, a unique and referential site of that almost isolated Cuba and of a popular culture grown in the shadow of political influences.

Delcy Morelos (Tierralta, Colombia, 1967) lands at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC) in Seville with Profundis, an exhibition that gathers the spectacular intervention she has made ex profeso in the monumental areas of the Sevillian institution and that focuses on revitalizing the ancestral link of man with the earth, as well as capturing, through botany, the symbolism of the relations between Europe and America.

Standing before the expressive forcefulness of Mexican-American Robert Nava (East Chicago, USA, 1985) can be risky. At first glance, the primitivism in the technique used in his canvases is shocking in the conversion of the strength of the stroke and the basics of the gesture into a language that agglutinates a brute force. Perhaps for that reason, the usual tendency of those who face his work is to quickly pigeonhole it out of the academic, out of that refinement that is presupposed -although less and less- to those who fill the room of a museum, to let themselves be carried away by the urgency of expression in front of that pretended good taste.

For some time now, the Inéditos program carried out by La Casa Encendida -an institution of the Montemadrid Foundation- has become a more or less reliable thermometer of the emerging curatorial scene that has Spain as its epicenter. As a result of that consolidation, within that faithful reflection, the Spanish social and artistic structure itself plays a very prominent role.

Included within the activities of the program Transcultura. Integrating Cuba, the Caribbean and the European Union through Culture and Creativity, an initiative coordinated by the European Union and implemented by UNESCO in Havana, fifteen young Caribbean photographers between the ages of 18 and 35 will participate in PHotoESPAÑA 2024 with the presentation of their recent work, in addition to being able to interact professionally with cultural agents and the sector.

Patricio Reig (San Juan, Argentina, 1952) exhibits at the Centre Cultural La Mercè in Girona Anatomía de la mirada, a proposal that deals with the dissection of the act of looking and its individual and subjective approach.