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5x5 Acarigua-New York
Gerardo Mosquera has observed that the age of globalization is also the age of movement, if so, the "5 x 5" exhibition is a product of its age. The initial seeds for this project were planted two years ago in the form of an exhibition of young graduates from Bard College, most of them "New Yorkers" who nevertheless hail from regions as far-flung as Los Angeles, Colombia, Connecticut and Berlin. The exhibition "4B" was serendipitously seen at The Annex, a gallery in downtown New York City, by Alí Cordero Casal the director of the Venezuelan American Endowment for the Arts. "5x5" is the product of the dialogue that ensued between Cordero Casal and the curator of the initial exhibtion, Juana Valdes. An exhibition of artists working in Acarigua-Araure, Venezuela, New York City, and Berlin, "5 x 5", now brings together this larger group of artists who are challenging ideas in contemporary art, exploring the boundaries of painting, and bringing together different cultures and aesthetics. The "5x5" exhibition is scheduled to open in February of 2004 in Acarigua-Araure, Venezuela.
A by-product of globalization has been the development of new spaces for creative exchange. The confluence of internet communication, digital technology, and perhaps the invention of express check-in at hotels and airports, has altered the conventions of artistic communication, creating an environment where what once seemed impossible is now a project. The artists, curators, writers and directors of this exhibition are dispersed throughout the world in California, New York, Miami, Berlin, Caracas and Acarigua-Araure, but have come together to share ideas, opinions, and visual images to explore the promise of unhindered dialogue. Artists have long used new means of communication and technology to share their work and exchange ideas. While we are still separated by borders, language, and ideology, the aspiration to somehow create and share by passing over (or traveling over) these elusive markers of place and difference persists. For most artists, the initial method of making art is a personal experience but the final objective is one of interaction with the public.
The beginning stages of this exhibition were made possible through the generous support of the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela. In May 2003, Teresa Wilkin, Cultural Ambassador for the U.S. Embassy, accompanied the curator of the "5x5" exhibtion, Juana Valdes, on an excursion to Acarigua-Araure to meet with the artists and the president and vice-president of the Museo de Arte de Acarigua-Araure. During this trip, Valdes visited the studios of a diverse group of artists, made an initial selection of artists to participate in the exhibition, and artists and curator began to conceive of means of communicating and sharing across borders with the other participants in the exhibit. Exhibitions of this kind-bringing together heterogeneous modes of modernity and a variety of traditional forms-promise to increase in number as channels of communication between various points on the globe multiply, producing a new assortment of ideas and visual images that will broaden the language of artistic expression.
This exhibition is not the first to bring together the local and the cosmopolitan, the traditional and the digital; however, it reaffirms that these are not incompatible characteristics-the differences are not so great as to prohibit discussion. In the artwork of Gregson Zambranon and Anja Brogan, the materiality of paint and landscape are used metaphorically and instinctually to reference "place," in this case seen as a subjective location. The paintings of Victor Azuaje and Robert Gray use line and color to suggest and underline the meaning of what is being represented. The line and its contours become as important as the color it represses and contains. While Austin Shull is working in sculpture and Benjamin Arenas is primarily a painter, they are both conceptually examining the mechanisms that provoke questions of desire, anxiety and success, basic feelings of the human experience. The work of Tulio Diaz and Jessica Hankey is, perhaps, the least visually analogous in the exhibition. Nonetheless, both are working within a conceptual framework that challenges the Manichean expectation that the relationship between individual and society is ultimately repressive, searching out finer nuances and oddities produced by this relationship. Diaz's cut-out images of children born from genetically engineered trees are more beautiful than grotesque and in Hankey's work the process through which society document's history, repressing some narratives in favor of others, is transformed into a subjective, melancholic tale. Through the documentation of a museum that no longer exists Hankey traces its natural process of extinction. The artwork of YaQin Betty Chou and Engelbert Peña cannot be viewed without first knowing the amount of labor and time that each work required to be made; it is within the process of making that the artist reveals his/her intention. Using personal and local vocabulary to address broader social themes, Chou and Peña defiantly reject the notion that one must use an objective or universal rubric to discuss larger issues of identity.
The sponsorship of this exhibition will enable this group of artists to continue making art in their own place of origin and allow them to enter into exchange with one another, within a greater dialogue on an international scale with other artists, curators and publics. This exhibition is organized by Ali Cordero Casal founder/president of the Museo de Arte Acarigua Araure with support of the Venezuelan American Endowment for the arts, ( a New York State 501-3C not for profit organization). The Venezuelan American Chamber of Commerce of the United States will publish an article detailing the progress of this exhibition in their newsletter, magazine and website. Since its initial conception the artists have been able to meet virtually and communicate via phone and internet sponsored by ECI Calleci Teleconferences to keep abreast of the exhibition and to share information. Join us for this upcoming exhibition in February of 2004.
Credits:
Artists: Victor Asuaje, Benjamin Arenas, Anja Brogan, Betty YaQin Chou, Túlio Díaz, Robert Gray. Jessica Hankey. Engelbert Peña, Austin Shull, Gregson Zambranon
Curator: Juana Valdes
Museum: Museo de Arte Acarigua-Araure.
Co-organized: The Venezuelan American Endowment for the Arts, Inc.
Museographer: Ivan Correa
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