ORAL SADISM AND THE VEGETARIAN PERSONALITY

ORAL SADISM AND THE VEGETARIAN PERSONALITY

Thursday, December 12th, 2013.

I have been assembling an archive of 35mm slides since 2000.  All of the slides are photographs I took myself (usually on a copy stand) of images, texts, and objects, each of which becomes a "potential" drawing (the practice for which I am best known).  There are nearly 10,000 slides now.  About 6 years ago my assistant and I began to categorize them (there are maybe 200 categories and subcategories) and file them.  But I only recently realized that the slides kind of tell my story–as an artist, collector, editor, and even a lot about my personality.  I've attached the master list of categories and you'll see what I mean.  Reading the list sort of tells you what my concerns are, in a distanced and objective (and possibly funny) manner.  I think they also tell you something about navigating a messy world with too much information, and how one comes to make sense, and ultimately meaning, from it.  They transcend interest and likes, become about choices and values.  How we as a culture make meaning is at the center of my work, and this slide archive shows how over the past decade I have tried to do so myself.”

            

The show will consist of a dark room full of slide projectors (on stands, the floor, and ceiling mounted) on automatic advance mode. Each projector will show a "selected" loop of slides (each projector holds a loop of 80 slides) that will be drawn from my archive.  It will not be a random selection or a comprehensive selection, but instead an edited selection that attempts to draw connections between different types of categories or imagery.  So while there will not be an entire projector loop devoted to "Bob Dylan" or "Charlie Chaplin", both could be on the same loop with "boxers" "knights" and "politicians". So this loop, for example, would end up being something about masculinity, bravado, power, influence, and "dudes".  Or there might be a loop devoted to different types of texts, or one focused on materials and surfaces, or one that deals with history, etc., for a total of 14 projectors each with its own theme.   With 14 projectors each holding 80 slides, there will be over a thousand total images.   The advance of the projectors will not be syncopated (i.e., they will play at different speeds) so this produces over a million possible combinations of images, so the relationships will constantly by shifting.  Together it will be quite a jumble, but that is the point.  - Karl Haendel.

The MARTE Contemporary program is sponsored by Mario Cader-Frech and Contemporary MARTE Committee.

Crossed Effects

SANDRA MONTERROSO

Crossed effects

January 17th to March 17th, 2013

CROSSED EFFECTS

Does it all that is solid melts into the liquid?

"The only certain is uncertainty."

Zigmunt Bauman

With the Crossed Effects exhibit, the career of the Guatemalan Sandra Monterroso recognizes a point of arrival, but also an interaction of multiple connotations regarding her concerns and previous searches. If Sandra Monterroso communicative intentions have been recurring since the beginning of her artistic activity around the use of media such as performance, video and installation—but also the interest in drawing or in the broad chart presence—in Crossed Effects nearly all those languages ​​are present, but in a hybrid way as vindicating her presence; at the same time, it shows certain dissolution, very committed in keeping the same directions of the sample.

If the issues that Sandra Monterroso has addressed have been marked by the re games and negotiations around the identity and its determinants (from the feminine universe to the social and intimate side; from the cultural to the political; from the contemporary to the ancestral; from the memory to the desire), in the particular conditions of Guatemalan context; in Crossed Effects, without losing those necessary background conditions of in situ reflection. Her concerns are expanded into an area where the local interacts with the global; the personal with the social and the cultural; as well as moving to a more intimate space: to a more introspective place marked by uncertainties and questions rather than certainties or accurate answers.

The different symbolic and formal elements that Sandra Monterroso proposed to work on her exhibit have took her beyond that "liquid" character proposed by the philosopher Zigmunt Bauman, to emphasize that elusive, fleeting, ephemeral condition perceived in current social and human relations. Thus, the interaction of natural elements such as water and body with respect to other physical materials—wires, tubes and plastic—either industrial or artisanal, here are transformed under this "liquid" effect, at the very moment of assembling the exposure.

In the case of Crossed Effects, the fading-degradation processes refer to some spoliation, giving ambiguity in parts in terms of a violent cultural appropriation. In addition, presence of yellow represents south, while the ellipse expresses indirectly the geopolitical connotations of the sample.

Ernesto Calvo

Healer

Sandra Monterroso (Guatemala, 1974). She graduated with a BA in graphic design at the Rafael Landivar University (2000) and she obtained a Master degree in design processes in the Popular Autonomous University of Puebla in Mexico (2007). She has six solo exhibitions of her work and over thirty group exhibitions. She has received the following distinctions: 3rd. place in Latin American Art Auction Juannio (2011) and Honorable Mention (2006); Honorable Mention in the Art Biennial Paiz (2008) and the 1st. Glyph Gold Award (2006); she also received the 1st. Prize at the Central America Video Contest "Restless Image" at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Costa Rica (2004) and at the 1st National Exhibition of Prints of Guatemala (2005).

The program  MARTE Contemporaneo is sponsored by

Mario Cader-Frech and MARTE Contemporaneo committee

Museo de Arte de El Salvador (MARTE)

MARTE Contemporáneo

Presents:

"Sacral" 

by Nadie (nobody)

September 7th to October 14th, 2012

With cuts of football players silhouettes taken from posters and photographs of the newspapers sports sections, Nadie creates a mural of collages in which the accumulation of these figures further evoked a fresh Baroque religious art. From this idea, similarities are found (very obvious and commented) between religion and football fans: both massive, multitudinal passions aroused. Thousands of people gather in one location and create rivalries between opposites. In the iconography field, both figures are suspended in the air (either by divine grace or to prevent a goal); faces with intense expressions; limbs in angular poses, folded clothing in primary colors; a possibility for erotic readings by interactions are presented, among others. In this comparative exercise, it is curious to observe how the players are attributed with extra-human abilities, almost with super powers a little more credible than those attributed to the saints who are depicted in Catholic art.

Nadie is Javier Ramirez, El Salvador, 1985. Writer and visual artist. He has published the poetry collection "Even voided spaces have air," winner of the literary contest Tapado Gallo from the Cultural Center of Spain in El Salvador (CCESV), 2009. He won the third place in the XI Young Artists for the Still Life work, created in conjunction with Ephraim Caravantes; he participated in Managua and San Salvador at the 2010 Poets per km² - Poetic festival organized by Arrebato Libros of Spain and had a solo exhibition of Nadie photography, part of the festival Esfoto 10, at La Rayuela coffee shop, 2010. In 2011, he obtained the Art Residency for Latin American and Haiti Creators at the Mexico's National Fund for Culture and Arts in the field of Words. In 2012 he was part of the sample This is not a de-generation: young art in El Salvador? restored by Ernesto Calvo and held at La Casa Tomada. 

The MARTE Contemporary program is sponsored by Mario Cáder-Frech and the MARTE Contemporary Committee.

The Burial of Count Orgaz

Museo de Arte de El Salvador (MARTE)
MARTE Contemporáneo
Presents:

"The Burial of Count Orgaz" 

by Mario Santizo

September 7th to October 14th, 2012

Mario Santizo (fragment).

Stage is one of our best qualities. We naturally perpetuate what the Baroque artists did: To decorate graves and churches regardless of their creed. We staged banquets, dresses, hairstyles and cakes 15 years as ritualistic activity. The rhetoric of politics and poets of the national landscape ever reach tones and decorations similar to those of cold meat dishes. If we envision a modern or a postmodern project, it is impossible to imagine it without the religious frenzy effect, the crucified bodies, the apocalyptic drama and the counting our up and down passions. They say that where there is nothing, nothing can be wasted.

All the description above is the best framework for positioning a work like Mario Santizo’s. This horrifies, crucifixes removed or moral discomfort all colors. It alters goog people’s consciences, which is usually a step of their fascination. Or because, coming into face to their spectacular digital montages, is like watching a Japanese version of the Passion of Christ without any subtitles.

Rosina Cazali

Mario Santizo, Guatemala, 1984. Bachelor in arts with a major in painting. In 2004 he participated in the first group exhibition Meat, Soup and Cookies. One year later he made Baroque Father and Phlegmatic Man Band in the Guatemalan American Institute (IGA) and participated in two acts of the play "Part" in the The Penthouse gallery. In 2006 participated in the contest organized by Helvetas, where he obtained an honorable mention the following year he held his first solo exhibition at the Gallery Boxes attic and in 2008 obtained the Recording Artist Mention under 25 years old at the Second National Exhibition of Printmaking and third place in the Juannio Competition. In 2010 he participated in the X Biennial of Cuenca in Ecuador, the Bienal of Arte Paiz and Photo 30. He is the founder of the collective Mala Vibra Social Club. 

Flowers and Thorns

Museo de Arte de El Salvador (MARTE)
MARTE Contemporáneo
Presents:

"Flowers and Thorns"

A kiss from the heaven to the vicious gardens

April 19th to June 17th, 2012

Flowers and Thorns is an exhibition that comes from an invitation to decode, to investigate and to comment on eternal issues. Here, artists are involved with their work—not as spectators but as actors—within the space offered by the French-Salvadorian artist Ahtzic Silis and the Museum of Art in El Salvador.

Within the invitation to participate in this exhibition, Salvadorians artists and from other nationalities were invited to enrich this chapter Flowers and Thorns, by giving them a complete aesthetic, technical and discursive freedom in their approaches and interpretations on the issues surrounding the exhibition.

A requirement of the call is the following format for the pieces: 7 x 7 cm and to deliver the amount of at least five of them. If the participant works with more than five pieces, the amount should correspond to a multiple of five, all of these are displayed with the original series.

After the exhibit, works will be shown in other spaces that welcome them as an integral part of themselves and as a record of the established dialogue, also be exhibited, permanently, in Silis Ahtzic gallery in the city of Lyon (France) and on the website dedicated to the project.

Silis Ahtzic was born in El Salvador on November 20, 1972. He met the ignominy of the civil war that undermined his country and then the fragile peace that continues disjointed. He left his country because of the lack of cohesion by the artists and the lack of initiative by Salvadoran institutions, so he decided to go to meet other people, other cultures, and other techniques. He began his journey through Central America, after Mexico, Turkey and finally France, where he lives and works for some years now.

The MARTE Contemporary program is sponsored by Mario Cáder-Frech and the MARTE Contemporary Committee.

Museo de Arte de El Salvador (MARTE)
MARTE Contemporáneo
Presents:

"Scale of Values"

by Walterio Iraheta

January 26th to March 8th 2012

The development of Walterio Iraheta’s piece has been focused, almost from the beginning of his career, to work with new languages. Belonging to the first generation of Salvadorians artists that called themselves as "contemporary," certainly has given a sense of responsibility as an actor in a new regional scenario. This sense has promoted and allowed him to experiment with new forms of expression. This is not the first time that this artist reinvents himself, and we are positive it will not be the last.

Walterio's work reflects on some essential aspects of our society, of our daily lives and what appears to be the immanence of unavoidable and threatening situations that affect us.

The aesthetic factor, the order and the cleaning have been characteristic of his work. Now the artist wanted to enter the numeric item, the account idea, the measurement and calculation, somehow referring to statistics related to violence, but also to how difficult it can be to change patterns of antisocial behavior. As a medium, he uses everyday objects carefully arranged, that acquire new meanings when context is altered.

His pieces with tonal degradations, either in colors or monochrome, can be read as metaphors of tolerance: a reflection about the respect for the ideas, beliefs or practices that may be beyond us. In a society that has been polarized for too long, it seems that the new speeches want to opt out of certain patterns and take alternative paths better suited to the realities of our time.

Rodolfo Molina

January 2012

The MARTE Contemporary program is sponsored by Mario Cáder-Frech and the MARTE Contemporary Committee.

Mesoparasitio

Museo de Arte de El Salvador (MARTE)

MARTE Contemporáneo

Presents:

“Mesoparasitio” by Patricia Villalobos

July 21^st through September 25^th, 2011

Mesoparasitio <13 ° 41’ 33”N 89°14’30”W> is part of a series of onsite installations that invade the exhibit space with multiple elements adhered to the walls. The title combines two words: mesoparasite and site. The first word refers to the type of parasite that lives partially embedded in its host or in between two spaces. The second one makes reference to the action of surrounding or beseeching. The title also points out to the general coordinates for the Museum of Art of El Salvador as the exhibiting space, simultaneously functioning as the host to these camouflaged elements.

The art installation consists of hundreds of polystyrene sculptures and an audio composition. The sculptures make reference to outbreaks or rashes of different sizes and forms; some hybrid and unsual and others more familiar. The audio is composed of environmental and digital sound recordings - its origin oscillates between abstraction and representative sounds such as shots, helicopters, etc., that have been altered to create a contemplative space, along with the sculptures. The piece, thus, moves in between the interior and exterior, the unusual and the familiar, the visible and the invisible.

This art piece examines different situations and elements that appear to be harmless but are actually not; empowered-subordinate relationships, as well as latent motion systems that go unnoticed, and that gradually transform a whole entity. To a certain extent, the walls turn into the infection or contamination sites, where the concept of the noxious and besieged agents becomes abstracted and questioned. The sculptures have been arranged and grouped in a way that they reflect the current global conflict patterns; it suggests a continual state of transition, malleability and constant movement, echoing our contemporary condition.

Patricia Villalobos Echeverria

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Patricia Villalobos Echeverria was born in Tennessee, from Salvadorian parents; raised in Managua, Nicaragua. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Louisiana (1988) and her masters at the University of West Virginia (1990).

Recent individual exhibits include Outbreak at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh (2010); Aguasmalas (Blackwaters) at MediaNoche, New York (2008); Aflujo-Afflux at Artist Image Resource, Pisttsburgh and Laura Mesaros Gallery, Morgantown, West Virginia (2006); Alamar (Asea) at PROYECTO’ACE, Buenos Aires (2006) and Hoverings at Artist Image Resource, Pittsburgh.

Her work has been included in several exhibitions, some of which are: the VII Biennial of Visual Arts of Central America in Managua (2010): I International Triennial of the Caribbean (2010); IV Splitgraphic Biennale, Split, Croatia (2009) ; Gestures 13 at the Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh (2009); Transfer Lounge of Forge Contemporary Art, Valencia and SPACE Gallery, Pittsburgh (2009); Ecological Havoc at the Universidad Centro Americana-UCA-Managua (2009), Imprint 2008 : International Triennial of Graphic Arts, Warsaw, and the 3rd International Artist's Book Biennial, Alexandria, Egypt (2008).

The hybrid practice of engraving, photography, video, multiples and an installation that is developed by the artist explores reproducible forms of representation that alter our notions of singularity. Her art installations play with the tension between the three-dimensionality of the sculpture and the architecture, and at the same time, explore the ephemeral nature of the video and the sound. Her work examines power and dependency relationships through the sculptures that invade the architectural space, just as in videos that position the body within a political and transnational context. In this way, her work questions our sense of stability and how time can appear to stop when one enters or exists spaces in state of fluctuation – some may be geographical, others virtual, but they all point towards a concurrent state of dissolution (dissociation) and hyper-incarnation.

The MARTE Contemporary program is sponsored by Mario Cáder-Frech and the MARTE Contemporary Committee.