DUCHAMP IS INNOCENT.
Exhibitions and discussions regarding contemporary art photography.
12/18/13
Galería Sin título & Gaston Ugalde.
The inaugural show featured 2002 Konex award recipient Bolivian artist Gastón Ugalde. (Also known as “the Andean Warhol.”)
6/17/13
Bogota Fotografica 2013 (1)
Bogota Fotografica 2013 (1)
During the months of May and July Bogota held international photography
festival Bogota Fotografica. This edition of the festival included a set of
conferences with international artist and curators, as well as workshops and
more than 20 independent exhibitions featuring the work of more than 100
artists focusing on contemporary landscape photography.
The following few articles will revolve around some of the
exhibitions and artists who I got to see during these past weeks as part of
Bogota Fotografica 2013.
MAV UJTL.
Museo de Artes Visuales featured the work of Chinese artist Cui XiuWen, this was by far the exhibition I liked the least -from a photographic standpoint.- the body of work shown is entitled Existential emptiness and revolved around the idea of being a woman in contemporary China. The photos are panoramic black and white metaphorical tableau landscapes that at first (and far) glance look like very Zen-like landscapes, but when looked at from a closer distance they appeared to be poorly executed and printed.
MAV UJTL.
Museo de Artes Visuales featured the work of Chinese artist Cui XiuWen, this was by far the exhibition I liked the least -from a photographic standpoint.- the body of work shown is entitled Existential emptiness and revolved around the idea of being a woman in contemporary China. The photos are panoramic black and white metaphorical tableau landscapes that at first (and far) glance look like very Zen-like landscapes, but when looked at from a closer distance they appeared to be poorly executed and printed.
Biblioteca Nacional.
Colombian artist Santiago Harker La otra Orilla. A conceptual series that advocates against documental objectivity in photography. Harker makes a case for photography as a subjective and distortive treatment of reality. The work is very pictorial and appealing with very saturated prints of multiple and parallel “realities” within the frame, the work distances itself from Harker previous more documental works towards a more conceptual and pictoric world.
Colombian artist Santiago Harker La otra Orilla. A conceptual series that advocates against documental objectivity in photography. Harker makes a case for photography as a subjective and distortive treatment of reality. The work is very pictorial and appealing with very saturated prints of multiple and parallel “realities” within the frame, the work distances itself from Harker previous more documental works towards a more conceptual and pictoric world.
Despite being a world wide renowned artist I had never seen
the work of Italian Franco Fontana and it was my personal favorite discovery
from all the artists I saw in Bogota Forografica. Franco Fontana makes beautiful
urban landscape photographs in a very minimalistic way. The work is colorful
and geometrical, its impossible not to be reminded of the work of Mondrian but,
it also made me think about Hopper. Very pictorial, esthetically solid and
unpretentious work.
Assaf Evron Exhibited a very abstract series entitled Cars. An
interesting approach of space and human realtionships depicting the prints of
human interaction with the surrounding landscape. The work also has a meta-photographic
aspect to it challenging the photograph
as a symbolic print.
3/21/13
Emerging art photography in Colombia.
During the last few weeks Galeria Mu and
photography school Zona Cinco, celebrating the gallery’s second anniversary,
organized a set of fine art photography conferences featuring a few
distinguished upcoming artists who have been making interesting work for the
past years in the very narrow and relatively “new” context of Colombian fine
art photography. It was a bold and great initiative with intentions of
approaching a wider audience and familiarizing them with the current state of
contemporary photographic art practices in the Colombian context. The event was
relatively successful, the attendance was higher than expected and the public
seemed to be eager about the subject. The conferences were mainly personal
retrospectives by the Authors talking about their background, experience, approach
and showcasing their work. Sadly the discussions that followed the individual
conferences were frivolous and trivial at the most. I do not blame this on the
artists or the organizers, I believe it has more to do with the little previous
exposure and understanding the audience had of the subject matter as most of
the public seemed more interested with the technical details and other
superficial aspects of the photographs, instead of inquiring about the real
substance of the art work. It’s only natural for this to happen in a context where
art photography is a relatively new and unfamiliar concept to the general
public. I also believe that this kind of events will grow in number and also in
quality in the near future with the further democratization of information and
the inclusion of new art venues that help make art more accessible to everyone.
I would like to feature three of the
artists who I thought had some of the strongest and interesting works.
Juanita Carrasco
Juanita’s work revolves around accumulated memory through the deconstruction and latter reconfiguration of urban landscape through both digital and plastic means. Her work challenges the conventions of “normal” format within photographic presentation often making asymmetric, polygonal and three-dimensional pieces that borderline between prints and installation.
Juanita Carrasco
Juanita’s work revolves around accumulated memory through the deconstruction and latter reconfiguration of urban landscape through both digital and plastic means. Her work challenges the conventions of “normal” format within photographic presentation often making asymmetric, polygonal and three-dimensional pieces that borderline between prints and installation.
Javier Venegas.
Javier is a very young artist who works with a diverse number of subjects and media. The work that really caught my attention was an installation piece entitled Postmodern Portrait. The piece explores the digital dematerialization of photographic representation as well as the sociological conventions of social and familiar photography in the last decades in Colombia. It reflects on how digital display systems have become memory vessels replacing material photography and frames.
Javier is a very young artist who works with a diverse number of subjects and media. The work that really caught my attention was an installation piece entitled Postmodern Portrait. The piece explores the digital dematerialization of photographic representation as well as the sociological conventions of social and familiar photography in the last decades in Colombia. It reflects on how digital display systems have become memory vessels replacing material photography and frames.
Diana Beltrán.
Diana’s work “Technological Transformation” Is both strongly conceptual and quite poetic. The work revolves around identity transfigurations through technology. How mass media and technology change our perceptions and relations in both life and identity.
Diana’s work “Technological Transformation” Is both strongly conceptual and quite poetic. The work revolves around identity transfigurations through technology. How mass media and technology change our perceptions and relations in both life and identity.
3/11/13
Sandy Skoglund.
Sandy
Skoglund.
American artist Sandy Skoglund may be one of todays most visually stunning tableau photographers. Her color-drenched images are reminiscent of artist such as Magritte, Dali and even Jeff Koons or film maker David Lynch, but these incredibly surreal prints are not more than just a mean to a much richer aspect of the work.
American artist Sandy Skoglund may be one of todays most visually stunning tableau photographers. Her color-drenched images are reminiscent of artist such as Magritte, Dali and even Jeff Koons or film maker David Lynch, but these incredibly surreal prints are not more than just a mean to a much richer aspect of the work.
With a background in painting and sculpture Skoglund does not define herself
as a photographer; photography does play a key aspect of her work but not the
main and central one. She paints and sculpts all elements in her sets and then
photographs them, the final outcome is not just the photographic print but also
the three-dimensional installation, both works presented in the same hierarchic
level.
The artist always felt bored by direct classic photography and felt fascinated with the anti esthetic the work of Ed Ruscha. What she basically values in photographic creation is the calculability and manipulability of the end product, also the contradiction between being and seeming, reality and artificiality. Although Skoglund’s oeuvre appears to be deeply referential to surrealist and Dadaist painting it also reveals the inspiration of much more trivial influences. Disneyland and the color of American West-Coast photography have left a mark in Skoglund's work. It also presents traces of American horror films and, naturally, the anxieties of middle-class America, which Skoglund handles with ironic flair.
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