LARmagazine 010

magazine

Publication by Living Art Room.

Non-capitals of art

No 010.october, november, december 2012

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Director Catalina Restrepo Leongómez catalina@livingartroom.com Editor Daniel Vega serapiu@hotmail.com Design Catalina Restrepo Leongómez catalina@livingartroom.com

Contributors

David Gremard Romero, The Manila Bride , 2012

Adriana Restrepo L. Joaquín Segura Leonardo Ramírez Cartier Bárbara Reyes Daniel Vega

Acknowledgements

Mónica Ashida Berta Cantú Laura Cantú Leo Marz Silvia Palacios Marcela Torres Ibarra Gonzalo Ortega

Photographs

Courtesy od the artist and contributors.

OMR galleryy Arena México gallery 2

CONTENT Editorial

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The non-capitals of the art INTERVIEW

About Skatepark at the MDE11

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Paulo Licona NEW ARTIST PORTFOLIO

Marcela Varela

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texto de Catalina Restrepo SPECIAL: Art in Guadalajara and Guanajuato

The Guadalajara Enigma

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A Trip to the end of the night?

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ByJoaquín Segura

By Leonardo Ramírez Cartier

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ARTIST PORTFOLIO UPDATES

Juan Carlos Delgado David Gremard Romero

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Jasper de Gelder

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Art from the province

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Rodrigo Facundo

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Pablo Cotama

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Marije Vogelzang

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About A Scene

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POLL

By Living Art Room RECOMMENDED at L.A galería at MUPO INVITADO ESPECIAL

By Adriana Restrepo L. MÚSICA

By Daniel Vega

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“ THE BUSINESS OF ART IS TO REVEAL THE RELATION BETWEEN MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT” ~DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE https://www.facebook.com/LARlivingartroom

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LAS NO CAPITALES DEL ARTE EDITORIAL

bright artist from Monterrey, who at her youthful age of 26 has already been involved in different local institutions. Today she is the exhibition and project coordinator at the Centro de las Artes de Nuevo León.

She knows perfectly well the wheeling and dealing of the art circles in Monterrey, and gives us a panoramic view of what’s going on over there, and how the socio-political environment has affected the scene.

This issue of LARmagazine is dedicated to the non-capitals of art. It is a topic that worries me a lot, more so since I’ve been living for the last two months in Monterrey, a city in the North of Mexico that possesses the country’s greatest industrial development. It is a great place where millions are invested in cultural spaces and initiatives, but with an art scene that still seems somewhat scattered.

For this 10th Edition, we use one of the most visionary events in Colombia as an example: the Encuentro Internacional de Medellín MDE07 and MDE11, which turns Medellín, the second most important city in Colombia, into an essential source in terms of contemporary art. Not even Bogotá, the capital city, has an encounter this size.

Of course the event got the people from the capital thinking and raised the mark for cultural institutions to start organizing themselves and try to reach it. For a better explanation of this point I interviewed Paulo Licona, who in the 2011 festival made one of the most risky projects regarding theme, approach and format. The project was named Skatepark, and you can read about the reactions from the Medellín audience and the government institutions as well in the interview.

Joaquín Segura, a well known Mexican artist, shares us his opinion about the artistic scene in Guadalajara, a city where he lived and produced for the last few years, before his return to Mexico City. He tells us how the city changed upon his arrival and subsequent departure.

Another Mexican province where interesting things related to art have been happening for a while is Guanajuato, venue of one of the most important festivals in Latin America: the Festival Internacional Cervantino.

Leonardo Ramírez Cartier, a well-known artist and current Visual Arts Coordinator in the Instituo Cultural de León, tells us what’s happening in this city, starting by the social context and enlisting a large number of outstanding local artists from different periods.

We invited Bárbara Reyes, a very young and 6

she achieves a true experience of change in the spectator: it triggers sensations, shoots up the memory, talks about politics, humanity, feelings. As she affirms in an interview, quoting Immanuel Kant, “those who brake bread together are less likley to break each other’s neck”. According to this idea she produces banquets that, more than a simple table served with food, are real happenings where I’m sure more people go out with eyes wide open, more than full stomachs.

This issue originated from a question that seemingly has an obvious answer, but which lives somewhat in the darkness: Is it possible, as an artist, to succeed and have international praise without going through the capital city, Mexico in this case? Is it possible for an artist to have professional success without living, studying, or having some kind of promotion in the capital first, working only from the province? Looking for the place of birth of each of the participants of the X bienal de Monterrey FEMSA and the XV Bienal Tamayo de Pintura, I realized that a lot of the answers given by these art professionals do not seem to match up with the statistics.

There have been many stories of provincial artists who succeed, but being objective, they are not so many if we compare them with those from the capital. Apparently it is still something hard in this cybernetic/ blog/facebook age, but before delivering any judgment I invite you to analyze and draw conclusions by yourselves.

Also in this issue we present the new portfolio from Marcela Varela, a young draftswoman from Colombia, and portfolio updates from Jasper de Gelder, David Gremard Romero and Juan Carlos Delgado. Our recommended events are Régimen de Luz y Sombra, an exhibition from artist Rodrigo Facundo, now showing in the L.A. gallery of Bogotá and “Súbito es el colapso, resurjo mutante y permanente” de Pablo Cotama en el Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños.

On the same subject Daniel Vega, our dear editor, talks us about the Seattle music scene in the 90s, a city in the corner of the U. S. where nothing was really happening, and that suddenly became the world capital of alternative rock and grunge, styles that dominated the music scene throughout that decade.

Adriana Restrepo presents us Marije Vogelzang, deemed by herself “designer not of food, but of the verb to eat”. Although she does not talk about her work as contemporary art, her proposal is one of the most conceptual, significant and aesthetical that I have ever seen. Using food as a tool,

Catalina Restrepo Directora Living Art Room www.livingartroom.com 7

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INTERVIEW WITH PAULO LICONA ON HIS PROJECT Skatepark PRESENTED AT MUSEO DE ANTIOQUIA DURING THE ENCUENTRO INTERNACIONAL DE MEDELLIN MDE2011.

COLOMBIA 10

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Skatepark, 2011

El Encuentro Internacional de Medellín (The Medellín International Meeting) (MDE07 and MDE11), developed by the Government of Antioquia and the Museo de Antioquia, gathers international professionals of the art world for a few months to share ideas; a forum to discuss, learn, work and debate. It is, without a doubt, one of the most visionary projects ever done in Colombia, and has already set a precedent for such events in Latin America.

Following this issue’s theme, “the non-capitals of art”, I talked with Paulo Licona about his experience creating one of the most prominent projects at MDE11.

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by Catalina Restrepo Leongómez

Cata:

Where did the project you made in Medellin come from?

Paulo: I went to Medellin because

of an invitation I received to make a Project related to a specific spot downtown in the city: Morabia, a neighborhood that stood out for having a mountain of trash.

What happened was people were being relocated to different neighborhoods. Many people had decided to live there, all the deployed from 1970 onwards. They used to arrive on the transport terminal which was just in front of this dump –it was Medellín’s dump for some time. Actually, those people had a relationship with Pablo Escobar.

The idea of the Project, called exsitu-insitu, was to see if one could intervene and see the problems caused by this relocation; they were taking people to different neighborhoods outside Medellín, to the periphery, even though the dump was only 10 minutes from downtown. They made their living from recycling.

of kids. I first invited them to do some piñatas. I asked them if they would miss their homes, since they were being moved to buildings. They had some nostalgia about it, but didn’t worry a lot because they could easily get comfortable. It all started with a reflection about the houses they were losing. We then built a home and a mountain of piñata and made a trip from the dumpster to their new place. We made a little movie about all this, then broke all the piñatas and shared the candies with all the children. The movie showed that same day and I made a song, called

I first decided to get together with a group 13

“La Morrompeta”, that had to do with that garbage “morro” (small hill).

The first day I went to Medellín to begin my research for the project, a fella guided me through the barrio and something curious happened: I found some kids that had been living in the garbage mountain but were now living in the new neighborhood; they were building a “club” with some cobblestones, and it resembled the dumpster more than their new place.

It was a club for children ages 6 to 12. I asked them to let some more children and me in, but they said they couldn’t, since the club was private. Then, with the other children, we gathered some materials and built another club as a way of challenging them. The idea of the club stayed in my head.

their homes back in the dumpster. I talked to them and started organizing a series of events. Besides, the construction was a copy of a cultural center in the same neighborhood, one of the last constructions made by Rogelio Salmona, an important Colombian architect. That

“children could go and play, but it had a number of rules and prohibitions that seemed to me hard and limiting” cultural center, the original one, seemed funny to me; despite of it being an open place where children could go and play, but it had a number of rules and prohibitions that seemed to me hard and limiting for the neighborhood. They were being contained.

I was later invited again to Medellín. I decided to start a larger project based on building another club (that’s where the relationship with “school” appeared, although it wasn’t meant to be called that way) just for children. They had to establish the rules themselves, and the main one was that no adults were to be let in; I was the only one, and was named janitor. The construction was made with all the demolished material left from

Our construction lasted two months and a great amount of events were held, such as drawing. They decided what had to happen.

Cata: And were those rules written? I

mean, they did a list of rules first?

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Paulo: No, everything was

very colloquial. There was a center in the club surrounded by stones that we painted, so we held meetings in front of them to discuss the rules and what was needed to become a member.

Kids talked about respect.

They also said that a club had to have a football field, a pool; that in a club you have to eat and exchange words. We then made parties. I bought pools that I installed above, in the dumpster (where there was no water) and I had to ask the firefighters to help me climb there to fill them. Another time, one of the kids told me that clubs had IDs, so they drew their faces themselves. It was a lot of fun.

had the energy to do it, they didn’t have to wait for someone from outside to do it for them. I thought about the kids, their strength, and asked them if they wanted more club. “ Yes, don’t go”, they answered. I told them I had to go on with my life, but also reminded them they already had 80 friends. I asked them to fight hard for it.

The end of the project was a decision I made with the children after discovering a project by Alfredo Jaar in Germany’s Paper Museum. Alfredo built a museum out of paper. In the end he asked: “do you want your museum?” He proceeded to burn it down and said “then build it”. What he meant was that it didn’t concerned him.

I wanted to let them know that if they

Cata: And they continued?

Paulo: I destroyed a large part of the

construction and they started doing things over the ruins. But there was no one in charge because their parents wouldn’t let them climb, so the thing started to

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dilute. I then designed some interactive posters; they were had to go on with my life, but also round, came in a tube and they already had had cutout pieces to assemble a club. I spread them 80 I asked them to through the nearby schools for it. in Comuna 4, between Aranjuez and Campo Valdés. authority such as “Shut up! Sit down!” I It was nice, since many children knew the believe a certain amount of authority is history of the club and started recognizing not bad at all, but this was more a showing and seeing themselves differently. The of authoritarianism that generated me a teachers were there while the posters were lot of questions. That is when the idea of distributed, but were imposing to them working with problem children came to all the time with expressions of fear and me.

“I reminded them friends.

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fight hard ”

Paulo: That’s exactly what I loved about

That was it for the Medellín thing. I distributed around 3000 posters in 12 schools, all grades; it was a big deal. I told them the same story and loved it because I really made it into every school.

I think what made this project sweet was that it needed no justification in the art world or guild, because I wasn’t planning to show it in a gallery; it was to remain in the community. I distributed posters elsewhere, always with the concern of really working with the people, since results are sometimes sad when one ends up stealing from the individuals. I liked it because it all went back to them. My only reward was experience, which led me – besides leaving me thinking about working with the people in Bogotá- to want to develop an interest for spreading seeds and creating devices for people to do things.

it. There are two things: one, you’re not making a project to justify it in the art world; and two, these kinds of projects are valued to a certain degree where they can receive funding. In my case, it was a governmental entity. Art is a very efficient weapon; you can do the most unimaginable things. Those who supported me had faith in art as a tool not only to generate a certain kind of knowledge, but to attain new ways to stimulate kids, make them experience new things. I realized I could enter many places without permission. The very fact of working with children gave me a very strong mental impulse on a different level, a creative force that can create, like the children, a simple

Cata: Talking about what you say

about art, specifically that you loved the fact that the project needed no validation from the art guild, I suppose you had some institutional funding, at least with the permits, be it through the Antioquia Museum or the Encounter itself, right?

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drawing. But you have to enter that experience so the kids can have the time of their lives, so they can somehow be free, and that is art’s incredible power.

What happened in some schools was that some teachers said: “don’t give a poster to that kid cause he behaved badly”, as if the worse students couldn’t receive anything.

But I wasn’t rewarding anyone, and the teachers did not understand hose who me had faith that. Then I asked myself, why are in as a not only to generate a these students certain kind of but to attain not going to new school? Why do they behave this I decided to make a test –after being way? That led me invited to the MDE11- to see if there to think that the power was right there, was a stigmata, specially in Medellín, that these kids had a lot to say but were with the skaters. They were inviting me repressed or had issues. to do a project, but it had to be inside the museum. Besides, that MDE’s theme was They had to take it all out one way or another, but not by punishment or orders. the problem of teaching and learning in art places. I knew the museum’s type of That’s when the idea started to form that audience, but started to research among I wanted to create a school for quitters, the skaters anyway; to them, the museum vandals, dealers, etc.; in other words, was a boring place, and I thought that if the worst possible student population.

“T art

supported tool knowledge,

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ways ”

as: What does it mean for a blackboard to be on the floor so you can step on it? The blackboard has always worked vertically, and as a symbol of knowledge. Why can’t you step on knowledge and break it? I also made a number of chalk objects like a boxing glove and a punchball, what suggested an imminent break. Another piece was a bowling lane made with chalk.

All the pieces suggested an imminent failure. It was thanks to this project that I got invited to the MDE11.

the kids were carrying this stigmata, my goal was to make the museum a second home for them. I named it Little School of Evil, thinking of students with the stigmata of being bums –specially with the skaters-, since the majority were school deserters. For them, the skate park becomes a place where they can discharge all their hate, anguish, and a bunch of things. I made a ramp in the museum for the skaters to paint, plus some painting zones, and the cool thing was that the project activated by itself.

Kids controlled the space and there was no one who could tell them anything was wrong; they cleaned and mopped the place and took care of the small children, since the museum had disassociated from any responsibility.

Cata: So you made the skate track in the MDE11?

Paulo: Yes, I took a lot of chalk and had

many boxes left, that the skaters could use to draw over some paper boards (4000, approximately). Since not everyone could skate simultaneously, some drawed while waiting for their turn. Everything went on with independence and tranquility. Even the museum’s prevention towards the kid’s behavior was unnecessary since, thanks to the project, the museum had its higher attendance ever.

Cata:

Did you get invited to the MDE because of this project?

Paulo: : It was for a project I did in

2009 called Tizódromo, a sort of “sports complex” created from educational tools, materials as chalk and blackboards. The project gravitated around the absurd and failure, inverting the scholar elements. I was interested in making questions such

Cata: How did you perceive the

audience? Not the one you were working

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with, which of course attended massively, but the general public: art students or families attending the museum. How did they approach the project? What do you think about the Medellín audience?

Paulo: Young audiences suddenly wanted to learn to use a board so they could enter.

There was a part of the adult audience (not necessarily art scholars) that seemed fascinated with the fact that they could interact differently in the museum, since they approached it looking for workshops for children or ladies. But people could come and draw, it was an open space where they could say something else and they loved that.

The more professional audiences were asking if this was art. They also were asking things like: what’s the idea behind putting a ramp inside a museum and fill it with skaters? They thought it was too literal towards the education theme. If a person goes to a museum to skate, wouldn’t they prefer to see a painting? I mean, what gives value to a museum? Is it paintings and sculptures? Or maybe that isolation that people ends up taking. Education in a museum is something very strong that may inhibit many of the audience’s expressions.

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Tizódromo, 2009

weight is evident and that’s fine; but the conservative is afraid to be irreverent with his culture. Everything has a double meaning and it may seem a joke; it’s something that is blocked, something genetic. The conservative can not remove that stigma.

I loved the resolution of the Project, since the skaters themselves ended up walking and contemplating art pieces, something they had never done before. Obviously, any damage to the pieces was avoided while they skated. I think the devices I activated with this piece ended up taking a large part of the public; any person was able to take the board to their house and draw in it. There were no restrictions.

Cata: Do you think that institutions in

Medellín are more open than in Bogotá?

I mean, the MDE and the Antioquía Museum supported your project, even if it is not a conventional painting or sculpture. They have funded other projects with different formats like Hector Zamora’s, or Miler Lagos’. Is this a sign that they are being more receptive and have riskier, “out there” proposals?

Cata: Do you think the specialized

audience in Medellín needs to open their minds a lot more? I say this for the fact of questioning if this is art or not, something that is evidently generating processes and artistic thoughts.

Paulo: I think it is a bit more closed

Paulo: I think that result is generated on

because of their education, not for the fact that there are no spaces. The Museum is incredible, very big. The town hall actually has a great variety of programs to keep museums free. There are not a lot of galleries in Medellín, but there are five art schools. I mean, the aim of MDE is to open wider the art scene, however, I feel that the conservative spirit is a lot more powerful than the understanding of art. All that tradition, all that cultural

a curatorship level, which is the strongest thing the MDE ever had, in my opinion.

The perception is low, since they don’t stay long in Medellín, but the reading is made easily, since they are activating this kind of dislocations. Now, there is also a fight between curatorial idea and the project’s production, logistic and execution dilemma. The idea you have is one thing and the curators may agree with

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it, but the execution is a different thing. to do with ruins, working with residues I realized that when you put the artist’s and problem kids. I had all my material work in action, the curators approve, but and work from eight years stored in a the institutions restrict certain points workshop, and took it to the gallery of to take care of their backs, following a very classic idea of he aim of MDE is to protection. In the end, it was a little bit difficult to explain the art scen, however, I feel that the the production people –or is a the director herself- what was going on. lot more than the

“t

About what you say, I feel there are not many risks been taken in Colombia’s art. I’m not talking about political art, but about art where questions are raised. I feel a certain warmness in the scene, a fear of rejection. Artists find it hard to lose that ego. There is a lot of gentlemanship around. It’s like a scary ghost and I find it hilarious since, on the contrary, you should invite the ghost to eat, laugh your ass off and take advantage of it to be a bit more risky. That is what I’ve learned from the school.

open wider

conservative spirit powerful understanding of art”.

the Chamber of Commerce. I decided to use the money from the inauguration to buy more tools and materials to take ten kids in morning and evening turns.

The objective was for them to take my work, boards, chalks, sculptures, and to create whatever they wanted with it. There were no rules. Again, I took the job of janitor, the one who simply taught them how to use the tools, without any kind of interference at all. I only named the project: The Scholastic Hell. I was lucky to have the kids collaborating thanks to an educational program from the Chamber of Commerce. I had a great surprise when, in the end, the kids didn’t want to leave.

Santiago Rueda invited me to the exhibition space in Bogota’s Chamber of Commerce and I had this idea circling my mind since the Medellin Project. It had 22

when we encouraged them to materialize their ideas, their hate disappeared. That is exactly the power that we must take advantage of, and direct it towards generating mobile schools. That’s what I want to do right now, to make the school move around, almost as a hot dog cart with a blackboard.

There was no conflict, no rules, not even language rules. I mean, they had to respect each other, but could express themselves any way they wanted and it was curious since, among the “son of a bitch, gonorrhea, bitch”, the bad words started to take a tender tone. One gives category and weight to the language. It was very rich because I felt that, apart from getting the weight off from all I had in my workshops, kids were liberating themselves too, were getting loose and making incredible things like coffins, crosses, a little car, a fake guitar, football fields and dolls.

Something I was thinking, that you rightly called “out there”, was to put the carts in front of public schools for all those kids that are always late and waiting there to punch the others. That way we would show those schools that you can do schooling differently, thinking about what is needed to do about the kid’s knowledge.

There was another condition, that eight days after a group finished came another one. I said: “look, the next group could come and destroy what you’re about to do”, Cata: That’s incredible! Is that what to what they answered: “doesn’t matter!” you’re planning for next year?

But when the other group came, knowing they could do whatever they wanted, Paulo: No, I’ve already started. I’m they turned out to be the most respectful reflecting on the experience: what the heck people. Everything we believed about happened? What is the solid aspect of it? the stigmata of these boys was false, and I’m starting to design the cart and doing tests, planning to mong the , go out with it one day and stand in front of a school, gonorrhea, bitch”, the someplace where I can do started to take a something with the kids.

“a

“son of a bitch bad words tender tone”.

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I think we are in the phase of doing things, not just sitting and talking. I want to show the kids that there are tools, and they can do what whatever they want with them. I believe in their intuition, I want to encourage them to lose that fear.

A thing you were asking, that has always been said, is that fear of approaching a museum. It’s true, some paintings are intimidating, but the problem is the fear before approaching and standing in front of them.

“Everything we believed about the stigmata of these boys was false” Cata: There is also this ambient in

the museums (although maybe this belongs to a different discussion) that draws people away because it makes them feel stupid, a lack of knowledge to understand the absolute grace and genius of the exhibited artists. Seldom there is a text at the entrance of the exhibitions –an almost insulting one- that recurs to affected words and concepts such

as “abstract post minimalism” or “the yuxtaposition of I-don’t-know-what”. All of this makes a person think: “I am the fool, not the curator”. That makes people stay away forever.

Paulo: Well that’s the idea. What I was 24

Cata: Schools generally have that

attitude. These two institutions that teach and supposedly transmit knowledge, they scare with their methods and language. A student who’s not doing very well may think that if he does not understand the lesson, he is dumb, not that the teacher is wrong. That’s the interesting part of the project, since it doesn’t part from pointing at the bum, the stubborn, the dumb, the one who needs to be expelled, but it analyzes how that education may be understandable to everyone for them to take something valuable from it. I was the typical bum, every year, so maybe that’s why I feel identified with the project (laughs).

When are you planning to show it?

Paulo: Next holidays I’ll be making the

Skatepark, 2011

pilot, the car and all the designs. The idea is for it to start moving in early 2013, probably doing the first trials in January, when school is in.

trying to say is, at the end of the project I realized that it can almost run by itself, provided there is a pilot and it can be reproduced. Not that I’m the professor, but that they themselves assume an attitude towards what they want. The idea is that, in the end, they are open and conscious so the school can grow by itself.

There is a great advantage: I love teaching.

I considered myself a son of a bitch teacher: rude, imposing and grumpy: I’m a contradiction. But I have a lot of 25

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art students and I love that they can link to the project to set it out as a chained problem. I proposed my students to go and talk with the kids from those schools, since I discovered the trick was to collect different spheres of education: from the youngest student, the medium one, and then the grown up, so we can erase the idea that only when you are “grown up” you can make something. Yes, there can be differences in knowledge, but what I find interesting is that a kid that is out of school can, immediately, share a lot of knowledge with another one who is still studying. The same happens with the college student.

It’s hard for education to change on a governmental level and sure, teachers sometimes go on strike and fight for a better situation, something I find great.

But what I learned through my studies is that you should not expect anything from anyone. If you keep waiting for the teacher to teach, you will not learn. And that is the greatest of all rules: don’t expect, ever.

Inferno Escolástico, 2011

Cata: Wow, that’s really incredible. I’ll be on first row to see the project when you finish it.

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NEW ARTIST PORTFOLIOS Marcela Varela (Colombia)

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Drawings HPF, kuskus 2011 2010

MARCELA VARELA

www.livingartroom.com/marcela_varela

Searching for familiarity

by Living Art Room

Marcela Varela conceives drawing as a tool to rebuild the past and to remember situations stored in her head. Her memories are always filled with people, animals and objects she was once emotionally linked to, and that now have become agents of nostalgia. Drawing has helped her satisfy the need to re-visualize the past, a need that we all have.

Marcela’s drawings can be described as manifestations or alterations of her alter ego, her appearance and temper. The act of drawing entails to draw oneself, to project herself through her characters in a symbiotic way. Through this symbolic and “loving” act (according to her own words) comes an existential reflection that allows her to 31

relocate her being, sometimes within the paper, sometimes outside of it, a constant movement between a here and a there.

There is not a specific style that defines her; on the contrary, there is a qualitative search that makes her modify her traces each time.

That search -and that premeditated effort to change his drawings and renovate his technique- is owed to a constant digging about her own identity. Where does she belong? Maybe that is why she often draws families, as if she would like to be part of them. But the families she chooses are from other cultures and countries such as Congo, Greece, India or Kazajstan. Suddenly, Marcela appears as another member of those families; she “inserts” herself in the groups of people in the scenes.

What is familiar to us shortens the anxiety of looking for our place; we find tranquility when the day-to-day surrounds us. For Marcela, her “today” are her objects, her cats and her partner. Her work reflects that familiarity.

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www.livingartroom.com/marcela_varela

Self-portrait 2010 33

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Familia, 2010 35

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www.livingartroom.com/marcela_varela

Familia, 2010 37

Cinderella Ending, 2011 38

www.livingartroom.com/marcela_varela

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Self-portrait 2010

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www.livingartroom.com/marcela_varela

Novios, 2010 41

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www.livingartroom.com/marcela_varela

Novios, 2010 43

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www.livingartroom.com/marcela_varela

Novios, 2010 45

“ART IS NOT

A STUDY OF POSITIVE REALITY, IT IS THE SEEKING FOR IDEAL TRUTH. ”

~JOHN RUSKIN https://www.facebook.com/LARlivingartroom

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http://trifora.com/

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GUADALAJARA JALISCO MEXICO

Guadalajara is a place that generates more questions than answers, as almost everything that is worth noticing. I arrived there three years ago, in October 2009. For reasons that do not matter here, a stay originally planned for two months ended up extending in an almost unnoticeable way –I have to admit I did little to shorten it. I can simply say that what I found upon my arrival was far from the stagnant image of a conservative and stiff city, perpetually gravitating around Mexico City and its entropic visual arts circuit. In other words, the possibility of an unsuspected and defying alternative, which is a lot to say by itself.

The Guadalajara Enigma

In perspective, it was the right time to discover what that city had to offer then: some independent spaces with a diverse and somewhat risky schedule, a certain institutional openness towards all kinds of emergent creation –good and bad, to honor the truth-, a very high quality and amazing specialization in local handcraft, just as a privileged network to access materials and traditional techniques from artists interested in exploring this production alternatives. This outlook was completed with a fistful of active collectors, even in an international level, and a very rudimentary circuit of commercial galleries that, if careful, would have learned

by Joaquín Segura

Originally published in Letras Explícitas http://letrasexplicitas.com/ 49

Jorge Méndez-Blake.

Cortesía del artista y OMR. México

The most valuable active was constituted by the creators, naturally. Of course, the generation from Guadalajara –by birth or adoption- that moves freely in the great global circuits and among who are Gonzalo Lebrija, Eduardo Sarabia, Fernando Palomar or Jorge MéndezBlake. But behind them came younger artists with solid, fresh and congruent productions, some even with an incipient international projection like Edgar Cobián, Cristian Franco, Cynthia Gutiérrez and Emanuel Tovar.

the mistakes of our always crumbling Mexico city Mecca and avoided the senseless and directionless crowding that distinguishes a large amount of Distrito Federal’s gallery offer, specially in the more recently opened spaces. In my optic as a privileged intruder, the outlook was inspiring and open, perfect for experimentation and generation of new proposals that could very well compete against Mexico City’s supposed ruling as an axis of contemporary creation in our country. All of that happened just a few years ago.

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Gonzalo Lebrija.

Cortesía Arena México. Arte contemporáneo

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Today, however, is 2012. Practically none of the relevant conditions that made that effervescence possible remain; spaces are controlled by artists who extinguished or recessed, the institutional crisis worsened due to a disastrous cultural administration from the local authorities –together with an opportunist work from managers and improvised “artists”-, the surviving gallery options work with a sporadic exhibition program, not to talk about the exhibition spaces controlled by the state.

From that moment that I remember, only the individuals remain. I now share with them the uncertainty of a vague question, although some local actors say it’s a recurring situation: what happened, if everything was going the right direction? There lies the enigma, after the hangover. I sincerely hope that we can altogether find a way of not having to return to this questioning again and again.

Trinidad, 2009.

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Estudio para monumento No. 1, 2010.

JoaquĂ­n Segura (Mexico City, 1980) Visual artist. Lives and works in Guadalajara, Mexico. His action, installation, intervention and photographic work has been extensively shown in solo and group exhibitions in Mexico, USA, Europe & Asia. Some spaces that have featured his work include La Panaderia, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Centro de la Imagen and Ex-Teresa Arte Actual in Mexico City, along with El Museo del Barrio & apexart, New York, NY, LA><ART & Outpost for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia and Palace Adria in Prague, Czech Republic. joaquinsegura.net 53

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LEÓN GUANAJUATO MÉXICO

In recent years, the State of Guanajuato has based its economy in product manufacturing for transnational corporations that have found favorable growth conditions and cheap workforce. Provinces like San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato live from tourism, the academy, and cultural festivals of different sort, while others keep agricultural, farming and industrial activities. Among the heads of state, León has the largest growing economy, which holds numerous industries such as leather and footwear, besides construction, transportation and primary materials for multiple industries.

Trip to the end of the night?

by Leonardo Ramírez Cartier

For some years now, State Government initiatives have favored the growth of cultural infrastructure in the city of León in a very unorganized matter, but warranting a large number of activities and cultural spaces focused on simple recreation, without being clear about what to show and to what kind of audience. The creation of a Bicentennial Park in a central point of the industrial corridor, or the opening of the Guanajuato Cultural Forum –a building complex that houses the Museum of Art and History, The Central State Library and the Bicentennial Theatre55

Gilberto Esparza, Plantas Nómadas, 2010

have finally made the people consume the offered Alfaro Siqueiros, and has been venue of interesting products, beyond the failed government politics initiatives such as the Kusnthaus Santa Fé Gallery, a space directed by Lothar Müller, that has allowed and cultural programs. the development and international positioning of The artistic communities concentrate in 3 state a series of local artists like Daniela Edburg, Ana provinces: Guanajuato, León and San Miguel de Quiroz and Rocío Gordillo.

Allende, each region with defined features.

The City of Guanajuato is a fundamentally student San Miguel de Allende has for a long time community that has many options of international functioned as a kind of retirement home for foreign exchanges and events, besides an ancient Plastic artists, who have obviated their relationship with Arts School with important educational variables. the Mexican society. It has also accommodated The city is full of scarcities for infrastructural and national figures such as Rufino Tamayo or David conservational reasons, and for the hazardous 56

politics of cultural bureaucracy. It has important records regarding important native and adopted artists such as Diego Rivera, Olga Costa and José Chávez Morado, who have been parameters from where some of the city’s current cultural politics are moved. Other important artists that lived in the city at some point, like Michael Tracy or Alberto Gironella, helped establish a series of international collaborative projects that intensified the city’s cultural life. There has been two major initiatives for the contemporary art scene: Project Antipasto from Ana Montiel, that promotes sonic and electronic art exhibits, workshops and bibliographic materials, and Las Muertas Special Projects, that since 1998 has created curatorial projects, trying to position the works from young and emerging artists with that from already consolidated ones, while facilitating an interdisciplinary dialogue between cultural manifestations such as art and design. Besides, the project allows creators not from Guanajuato to become part of the local community and to get linked with cultural spaces and managers from other cities.

Such is the case of Marcela Armas, Gilberto Esparza and Iván Puig who, not being from the city, started and developed there a large part of their professional careers.

On one side are the groups of producers who can live from their “craft”, but have little interesting proposals and satisfy the local market only. On the other we have constantly innovative creators with quality and a serious reflection in their works, each on their respective discipline. In drawing, for example, we have Julián Sánchez Sauceda, Hugo Ordón, Zarci, Isidro Martínez, Juan Jorge Prado, Mario Méndez, San Gil and José Luis Pescador, a draftsman and painter that has developed a series of historical and literary projects using the graphic novel format, in collaboration with the Colegio de México. Talking about artists who work

The city of León houses many cultural agents that, unfortunately, can rarely agree on their initiatives and articulate them successfully on their reflections about art. The disassembling of the local artistic communities is not the result of a lack of talent or effort, but of the shortage of enough professionals who can bring interesting and forward-thinking products that can compete among them.

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Ramsés Ruiz Don Miki, 2008

with 3D or structural pieces we can highlight the works of Ramsés Ruiz, with various national prizes; Miguel Ángel García Padilla, Mario Plascencia and Sebastián Beltrán, who mix industrial and interior design in their artistic processes; Francisco Aguilar, a skillful sculptor of deliriums in epoxic materials; and artists Jorge Ortega del Campo, Vanessa Salas and Patricia Andrade, who tackle 3D from bland structures, either embroidered or sewn. Many photographers who cover imminently commercial necessities have found a market to promote their personal reflections, such as Carlos María Flores, Gerardo Jacques, Diego Torres, Mabel Gutiérrez, Juan Carlos Zermeño, Poncho Plascencia, and video artists Eugenio González and Horacio Quiroga.

Many of the youngest local artists work in different disciplines without following any particular technique, names like Daniel Aguilar, Antonio Tuun Naal, Omar Hernández, Juan Arreguín come to mind, or the sonic experiments with an important link to independent producers from Transistor, Manuel Neztic, Francisco Rangel, Vladimir Ibarra, Lalo Padilla or Javier Compeán.

If there is a constant theme in local artistic productions it’s that they are not activists, revolutionaries or politics. Artists from León develop their works from aesthetical discourses born from their interest in design, local references – contemporary or not-, personal attitude and cultural influences such as movies and contemporary culture seen from the periphery. The result of all this is pieces with enormous formal beauty and quality. From my perspective, this line of work has developed due to market needs. The majority of artists I’ve mentioned are involved in design –be it architectonic, industrial or graphic- projects. Surely that experience has established as a stamp in the way of technically solving their pieces. Right now, in the State of Guanajuato –particularly in León-, there is an anxious interest towards contemporary practices. I trust that new actors and initiatives result in forward-looking projects that can be completed despite the conflicts between the rusty institutional and social machinery, with the creative potential of a community of creators that seek integration to a more cosmopolitan artistic community.

Ana Quiroz, Misery, 2006

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villasana - plascencia, Minotauro

Leonardo Ramirez. (Guanajuato, Gto 1969) has been Director of art spaces in the University of Guanajuato (1992-2004), curator and advicer in Visual Arts International Festival internacional Cervantino(1996 -2009), (2002-2003) Curator contemporary art gallery art 3, Leon, Guanajuato, Museum exhibitions coordinator at Gil Carrillo (2004-2008) since July 2008 serves as General coordinator of Visual Arts ICL, in the city of Leon, Guanajuato. He has spoken at various top of the line academic forums in MĂŠxico such as: V International Forum of Visual Arts and Contemporary Art Research (2008) at the University of Estado de MĂŠxico and to an overview of the Visual Arts junior conference (2009) at the University of Guanajuato. He has published several texts on contemporary art exhibitions in catalogs, leaflets and periodicals. Since 1992 he has conducted more than 100 exhibitions curated by merging various topics in their projects so important to support emerging contemporary art. lasmuertas.blogspot.com, artesvisualesicl.blogspot.com, veryramirez.blogspot.com 59

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ARTIST PORTFOLIO UPDATES Juan Carlos Delgado (Colombia)

David Gremard Romero (United States) Jasper de Gelder ( The Netherlands)

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Untitled, 2011

Juan Carlos Delgado www.livingartroom.com/juancarlos_delgado

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Untitled, 2011 65

Logs, 2011

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Untitled (detail), 2011 Logs, 2011

Untitled (detail), 2011

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Bird, 2011

DAVID GREMARD ROMERO www.livingartroom.com/david_gremardromero

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Tonalamatl Ollin, Work in progress

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Tonalamatl Ollin, Work in progress 75

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Tonalamatl Ollin (detail),work in progress 77

Tonalamatl Ollin (detail),work in progress 78

My Monsters 2010

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Tonalamatl Ollin (detail),work in progress 79

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Tonalamatl Ollin (detail),work in progress

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Tonalamatl Ollin (detail),work in progress

JASPER DE GELDER www.livingartroom.com/jasper_degelder

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Series Vulture Portaits, 2009- 2012

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Series Vulture Portaits, 2009- 2012

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Series Vulture Portaits, 2009- 2012

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sex, 2012

LARmagazine past issues

www.livingartroom.com/larmagazine

009

Artistic References and Processes

http://www.issuu.com/livingartroom/docs/larmagazine009

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Celebrating 2 years.

Success Stories

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http://www.issuu.com/livingartroom/docs/larmagazine-008

007

Political Art. Now and Before

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Educatiorn, Mediation, and Language

http://www.issuu.com/livingartroom/docs/larmagazine007

http://www.issuu.com/livingartroom/docs/larmagazine006

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POLL

Is it easy for an artist to achieve international success and recognition without living/studying in the capital of his/hercountry?

120 professionals of Latin American art scene responded:

no 47.09%

52.91%

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YES

Some respondents commented that: Oops! I think it’s not impossible, only very difficult”.

ALEJANDRA BALTAZARES~México

“My country has a political capital far from the rest. For long, we’ve had two culture capitals, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which has made it very difficult to survive as an artist away from Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Today, things have decentralized a bit more, and there are now ways to live in a small town without disappearing from the cultural scene ”. ROCHELLE COSTI~Brasil “Well, many artists have left my country. There is no art or art schools here. The only way to do well nationally and internationally is by leaving”.

ALEJANDRA ALARCÓN~Bolivia

“Yes, indeed often being outside the capital generate a particular interest to see what occurs in the periphery. In Mexico in particular, besides the capital, Guadalajara and Monterrey are pillars of artistic production in the country.”

MÓNICA ASHIDA~México

“Despite not having developed their careers living in the capital of their country, many artists have achieved recognition from some international capitals of art such as London, Berlin, NY, and Mexico City or Sao Paulo in Latin America. I would find it very interesting to see some cases of artists who achieved international recognition from a location outside of their map”. GONZALO ORTEGA~México

... Now, using the example of two of Mexico’s most important biennials,we realized that: 97

... Participation of artists from Mexico City is almost equal or greater than the total participants from all other of the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cities.

xv bienal tamayo de pintura others* 14.7%

province 47.05%

MEXICO CITY 35.9%

OTHERS* equivalent to the foreign and Mexican artists whose information is not online at both coincidentally the percentage represents 5 names.

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x bienal MONTERREY FEMSA others*

10%

province

MEXICO CITY 46%

44%

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According to the answers we got, these are some of the artists who began their careers in the province and are now recognized internationally.

Marepe [Santo Antônio De Jesus, Brazil]

Kcho[Nueva Gerona, Cuba]

Pablo Cardoso [Cuenca, Ecuador]

Efrain Almeida[Boa Viagem, Brazil]

Oscar Muñoz [Cali, Colombia]

Fernando Botero[Medellín, Colombia]

Jesús Rafael Soto [Cd. Bolivar, Venezuela]

Wilson Díaz [Pitalito, Colombia]

Marco Mojica [Barranuquilla, Colombia]

Asdrubal Colmenares [Trujillo, Venezuela]

Jorge Méndez Blake [Guadalajara, Mexico]

Teresa Margolles [Culiacán, Mexico]

Demián Flores [ Juchitán, Mexico]

Saturnino Ramírez [El Socorro, Colombia]

Rochelle Costi [Caxias do Sul, Brazil]

Rafael Coronel [Zacatecas, Mexico]

Francisco Narvaez [Porlamar, Venezuela]

William Bahos [Popayán, Colombia]

Francisco Toledo [ Juchitán, Mexico]

Nadal Antelmo [Cárdenas, Cuba]

Tercerunquinto [Monterrey, Mexico]

Alejandro Otero [El manteco, Venezuela]

Antonio Paucar [Huancayo, Ecuador] Rubén Gutierrez [Monterrey, Mexico] Raúl Cárdenas [Mazatlán, Mexico] Francisco Larios [Monterrey, Mexico] Marcos Ramírez Erre [Tijuana, Mexico] 100

These are some key spaces or initiatives for the development of artists in the province.

Arena México [Guadalajara, Mexico] Museo Amparo [Puebla, Mexico] Lugar a Dudas [Cali, Colombia] Kiosko galería [Santa Cruz, Bolivia] La Parota [Colima, Mexico] Cuadrante Creativo [Culiacán, Mexico] Laalvaca [Puebla, Mexico] La Curtiduría [Oaxaca, Mexico] La Fototeca [Guatemala, Guatemala] NoMínimo [Guayaquil, Ecuador] Obect Not Found [Monterrey, Mexico] La Casa Tres Patios [Medellín, Colombia] Micromuseo [Nómada, Peru]

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RECOMMENDED RECOMMENDED RODRIGO FACUNDO www.livingartroom.com/rodrigo_facundo

RÉGIMEN DE LUZ Y SOMBRA L.A galería

Bogota, Colombia Until 03.12.12

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LARtv www.livingartroom.com/lartv

NEW VIDEOS

FABIOLA- FRANCŸS ALYS MUSEO APMARO PUEBLA, MEXICO

MINERVA CUEVAS MUSEO DE LA CIUDAD MEXICO, D.F

LORENA MAL BORDER MEXICO, D.F

PABELLON ECO EL ECO MEXICO, D.F

EMILIO RANGEL TERRENO BALDÍO MEXICO, D.F

ALEJANDRA ESPAÑA DISTRITO 14 MEXICO, D.F

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Sharing dinner, 2005 123

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How many stories can you tell?

Think about apples…

Do you prefer them red, green or yellow?

Do you bite them, or are you one of those that cut them to little pieces before putting them in your mouth? Do they remind you of children games in grandma’s garden?

Have you ever given one as a present? Do you know their origin?

Think about apples…

That –to tell stories that sometimes seem invisible or left to oblivion- is the specialty of Marije Vogelzang, a Dutch woman obsessed not only with flavors and the colorfulness in the presentation of a dish just as a chef would do, but also with the rituals around a table.

She named her work Eating Design and the explanation is clear: food is perfectly invented by nature –a pear has the ideal color, shape and smell-, so what she designs are different experiences when taking that food to the mouth. “Food is only a tool that creates bonds between people. What is more intimate than the act of feeding someone?”

Under this philosophy, Marije –who also writes books, dictates lectures, designs product packages and serves as consultant for restaurants- started in a small restaurant/lab in Rotterdam which she subsequently enlarged in Amsterdam, and ended up selling. There, named Proeff by her, she created her first food experiments, which she has been taking little by little to different museums and institutions around the world.

In New York, for example, she presented the project Sauna Pasta with which she was looking to go back to an idea captured in the Italian Kitchen Manifest, La Cucina Futurista, written in 1932, which affirmed 125

eating on the beat

that pasta generates a sensation of calmness and pleasure on those who eat it. To represent this thesis, Vogelzang built a space where visitors could enter to try a delicious plate of pasta, but also found bowls with boiling water around them, producing the same warmness of a sauna. To increase the lethargic sensation on the scene, pasta machines were at the same time music boxes.

Another time she decided to create a musical piece with food. She named this interactive performance Eating on the Beat, which consisted of delivering a series of dishes/music tabs to various diners. Each time the sound of the drum boomed, they had to take a bite of the food in the plate, thus creating a sort of symphony.

For the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the artist/designer built a sculpture that 126

Ham man

was halfway between a man and an animal.

Just like the carnivals where sculptures are dressed with flowers, 800 roses made of Spanish ham were nailed to the body of this 2.5 meter height Ham Man. “To me it’s important that the public not only sees my art, but that they also eat it and carry it inside their bodies. I’m even amused to know that, at some point, my design will be ejected into the WC”, she affirms.

But for her it’s not only about creating playful moments or interacting with the audience. For her, the important thing is to go back to the origins of food, to the usings of towns. She is sure that food affects not only the stomach, but activates the brain and revives a series of memories and emotions. That way, every time she thinks about her projects she is careful of having eight points: senses, nature, culture, society, technique, psychology, science and action.

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Eat Love Budapest

Eat Love Budapest project is a good example.

It was a three-day-performance inside a boat on the Danube river. There were 10 small tents adorned with photographs and images of children and families. In each of them, a gypsy woman was feeding a guest without showing her face, only her hands were visible.

While serving the food that were part of their culture or that was very present in their memories, each woman was telling the guest her story calmly, lovingly, in the same way that a mother would do it.

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Eat Love Budapest

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Another of her masterpieces - and a clear example of how a meal can stimulate our memories- was a series of snacks created from original World War II recipes, borrowed from the Dutch Resistance Museum and meticulously cooked by Marije. Small portions were served on cardboard plates to original men of war, veterans who after 65 years believed they had forgotten those flavors. Immediately, their mouths and minds were filled with sad memories from those years.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Food is the essence of life. She allows us to exist. â&#x20AC;&#x153; Think about apples ...

What do you remember now?

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About a

scene

“What happened was, people in Seattle started wearing flannel. As they did in Minneapolis. When that all happened, that’s when I decided I was going to start wearing a dress. And the only thing I could do to worsen that was wear a flannel dress. Then I’d be accepted in Minneapolis and Seattle. I figure there are just as many heroin addicts in Minneapolis as Seattle.

If not more. I think that actually improves most of those boring bastards there. You wanna improve something, develop a monstrous heroin habit. That’s the way to do it.”

by Daniel Vega

–Buzz Osbourne, Gimme Noise interview, September 2012.

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I know few people that don’t feel some kind of strong emotion about a specific music genre.

Some more radical than the others, but it’s a clear fact that music has a very important role in our lives. The reasons can be plenty: the pleasure that instruments playing in harmony give to our ears; the relation we can make of a certain song with an important moment in our lives; the identification we can feel with a style, be it the specific sound, the music’s mood, or the fashion related to it; music as a complement for social movements; the programming of the mass media, who through constant bombarding and the simplification of musical movements, create almost indestructible figures designed to be adored by uninterested audiences.

Although I have not traveled around the world, I don’t doubt every city and town of every country

has talented musicians –local or internationalwith faithful followers. Music is created every moment. It’s an old chair’s squeal, the tapping of a pencil, the whistle of a cauldron. It’s impossible not to feel the rhythm, be it refined or vulgar.

Music is generated spontaneously, and that’s the way it happens all around the globe.

I’m not gonna dwell in the profound reasons, but the first important event I see in the Washington State music scene happened in 1942, with the birth of a baby named James Marshall Hendrix.

Although he would eventually find his fame a thousand miles from there –first in London and from there to California-, he surely was an important seed for the state, specifically for the city of Seattle, although the movement created a couple of decades later was not exclusive of it. Hendrix died as the sixties waned, exactly around the time the first members 133

of the generation that would eventually make a lot of noise were born.

The reasons for the explosion of the Seattle music scene can be enlisted, and have been to the point of tiredness: the feding up towards the ultra-polished hard rock from the late seventies and eighties, criticized for its manliness and sexism and its gradual dissolution, which took it from being an original movement in the late sixties, to becoming washed out and processed by the great record companies, turning it into music for massive enjoyment: arena rock, radioready rock –curiously the same destiny the alternative movement would face in the nineties-;

the crumbling of the American middle class in the Reagan era, an economical and social crisis where the values of the ruling class were being questioned; the isolation of the Washington scene, for years ignored by a music industry that was finishing its draining of the London, Los Angeles and New York rock wells, and that in 1990 turned as a hungry animal looking for its next meal; the already existing “alternative” movement, whose origin is usually related to the Sex Pistols –a prefabricated band, ironically- explosion in 1977, and that would spread among specialized audiences through college radio in the eighties.

But, as many times happens, the definitive factor was not something on such a large scale.

The piston that activated the huge machinery was the most famous indie label in the history of music, Sub Pop, who had the wittiness to identify what was going on in Seattle, and the vision and skill to project the scene’s strongest features 134

Nirvana

The Melvins, imagen saada de http://www.chichemetralla.com

towards the national and international spotlight.

I don´t think it’s necessary to name the bands, since those who care know the names and who did it real and who faked it, and those who don’t know just need to google the word “grunge”. But it was there, in those offices, where a couple of guys, almost inadvertently, propelled a movement that, for a brief period, would give voice and face to something created with honesty and freshness.

And I’m not saying it was pure or sacred, since these things always come with blood, tears and

heroin. Is it necessary to mention the cold and “ruthless” way the scene would be whored in the subsequent years? In the end, that’s the destiny of every important artistic movement. That’s the only way we know to enjoy something, it seems.

Nobody questions the quality of the music created in that time, and it surely defined the lives of many, even those of us who were not there to see it closely and only received the last splashes of the huge waves it created. The judgments have already been made by the different important 135

publications through the years, and in the end, the only judgment we should care is the one we make about what we like or not. And that is if one becomes picky because who can tell us we can’t enjoy this or that melody because the band that created it “sold out”.

I remember two things of when grunge was hip, the only two things I can tell about that time.

The first one was when I was nine years old, I was riding in the car with my dad and the radio gave the news about Cobain’s death. I didn’t know who he was, and my dad reminded me he was the one with the song I liked from his exercise tape (which I recall, also had some Twisted Sister and U2). The second was some months later, I was at the mall with my mom and a friend of hers. There were washed flannel shirts and ragged jeans in the shop windows, and I remember the ladies talking about how tasteless fashion had became, and that they would never pay such amounts of money to buy broken apparel.

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