Norte del Sur : Venezuelan Art Today

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] Prnsentation Marcia Manhart Tradition us. Innouation Caresse Lansberg de A/cantara í 1 R Brief History uf Uenezuelan Rrt Phyllis Tuchman 6eog-raphic Compendium Luis Angel Duque 11

The Rrtists Special Guests

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Has been made possible by the support of

FLINT RESOURCES COMPANY OKLAHOMA

PHILBROOK CONTEMPORARY CONSORTIUM • UNITED ÁIRLINES

Marisol Jesús Soto

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Susana Rmundarain Rlexander Rpóstol Ricardo Rrmas 6enaro Bastardo fflilton Becerra maría Cristina Carbonen José Rntonio Hernández·Diez Rntonio lazo Diana lópez Osear machado Félix Perdomo mar1arita Scannont Carlos Sosa JauierTéllez

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Checklist

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Ilorte del �ur:

u�n�2u�lan Hrt Todag Philbrook Museum of Art Fundación Calara

Darle �el �ur:

llenezuelan Hrt Ioday nxrs

Luis Angel Duque Phyllis Tuchman Inés Riihl de Sosa (chronologies)

TRANSlATIONS

Inés Riihl de Sosa

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Pedro Quintero PRE-PRESS

Fotolito Digital® PRINTING

Arte-Tip, C.A. ISBN

980-07-4147-X Caracas. Venezuela. 1997

Presentation

This project is a first for Philbrook. lt is the first Latín American exhibition to ever occur in our exhibition history.

Conversations began in 1995, when Ben T. Windham, General Manager of Business Planning and Economics for CITGO Petroleum Corporation introduced us to Inés Rohl de Sosa, a native of Caracas and whose husband was associated with CITGO. lt seemed natural for us to enter into a cooperative venture, for TuIsa has strong relationships with Venezuela. Not only is CITGO owned by the Venezuelan Company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., we were also aware that the University of Tu Isa has the largest foreign alumni group from this northern South American country. Drawing from a rich cultural legacy, the artists represented in this exhibition are creating sorne of the most provocative and vibrant works in contemporary art today.

Together with the Calara Foundation in Caracas, we agreed to organize an exhibition that would survey the work of established artists as well as emerging ones working in painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and video.

This composite reveals the diversity and energetic nature of contemporary Venezuelan art for our audience.

We are extremely grateful to CITGO, Flint Resources Company, the Oklahoma Arts Council, and Philbrook's Contemporary Consortium for their most generous support of this exhibition and its presentation in TuIsa. We appreciate their desire to make this possible and for their commitment to bring Latin American art to Oklahoma. We have also sought out additional community involvement from the Hispanic American Society and the University of TuIsa.

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Iradition us. Innouation

Venezuelan art was less influenced by many of the factors which played a key role in the history of art of other South American nations. To begin with, its location sets our land apart: it is the only country on the continent with all its shores on the Caribbean Sea, thus being the gateway to South America.

Responding to the ways in which our society originated and developed, Venezuelan painters and sculptors created their own unique language and subject matter. Their chal­ lenges were different to those which faced artists from, say, Mexico or Argentina.

Not surprisingly, critics and art historians who study the art scene of the entire continent have failed to appreciate what sets Venezuela apart, and seem to have used the same criteria to evaluate it. Apparently expecting to find bright gar­ ish colors, clustered devotional images and/or political broad­ sides, they must have been surprised to find a more universal and multivalent art.

As the eminent Brazilian sociologist Darcy Riveiro observes in his book "El Proceso Civilizatorio" ("The Civilizing Process"). the nations of Latin America can be categorized in three ways: 1) transplanted nations, where the culture is Eurocentric as in the case of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay;

2) witness nations, where the culture is based on the great Pre-Columbian civilizations, as is the case of, among others, Mexico, Colombia and Peru; and 3) a group known as the

new nationswhere a state of "tabula rasa" is evident. This group includes Venezuela and the countries of the Caribbean, where there is a greater openness to innovation and outside influences. Belonging to this third category has obviously

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