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.