CROSSOVER TRAVELING EXHIBITION by PROYECTO ACE

CROSSOVER

Kansas City,USA > Buenos Aires-Argentina llnternational Project & Traveling Exhibition

Fundación'ace para el Arte Contemporáneo

info@proyectoace.org

www.proyectoace.org

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CROSSOVER is an on progress collaborative international printmaking project between artists questioning the established norms of the original production and authorship of artistic work, leading to the collaborative work between artists from around the world. In this project one’s work, property and egos became irrelevant, as artists have to trust each other allowing themselves and their counterparts to place their hand-‐marks, images and matrixes on one’s previous works. The collaborating artists aimed to evolve in their own practice by finding common points of view and theoretical discourse. The most recent CROSSOVER session took the format of an international project at Proyecto’ace/Artist-‐in-‐Residence International Program in Buenos Aires Argentina, from February to June 2013. Alicia Candiani as Proyecto‘ace director and Adriana Moracci as ‘ace studio manager created a new version for CROSSOVER, which included work in collaboration in a micro-‐residency format, an exhibition in Buenos Aires and a traveling exhibition through the United States. Artists Cara Jaye and Miguel Rivera created CROSSOVER as an experiment in 2003 while Cara was visiting Mexico. It culminated in a formal goal oriented project in 2006 in the USA and in Mexico, with Cara Jaye working in Bellingham, Washington and Miguel Angel Rivera in the historic city of Guanajuato, Mexico. Both artists traveled between their home countries to create these layered Works on paper, which use multiple processes to create works on paper. After having two successful shows in Guanajuato and Seattle, a continuation of that initial project became necessary after Rivera moved to Kansas City. This new body of work included a broader range of artistic practices using the immediate dialogue among artists. This new group included its two initial artists in addition to Patricia Villalobos Echeverria, a Nicaraguan-‐American artista working in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Melanie Yazzie, a Navajo artist working in Boulder, Colarado, and Michael Schonhoff, artist and curator from Kansas City, Missouri.

Sol Massera (Argentina) . Several embosses from an engraving wood plate (detail) on paper cut as a pop-‐up. 22” x 30”, 2013

While Rivera visited Projecto’ace in June of 2011, he worked in collaboration with Alicia Candiani. Then he donated several engraved plates to ‘ace. Images in these plates were part of his personal narrative dealing with invisible threats, social unrest and a concern towards means of domination. These plates included images illustrating viruses, geometry used in defense structures and torture devices respectively. Moracci proposed collaboration as a call for entries open to emerging and professional artists worldwide. The poll of applicants included Argentinian and international participants from Mexico, USA, Canada, South Africa, England, Colombia, Germany and South Korea.

Each participant chose one or two images from pre-‐printed matrixes originally created by Rivera leaving them with the challenge to create a “bridge” between the concepts of the original image(s) and the transformation into their own studio practice and ideas. Initial discussions and closing statements took place via Videoconferences during three months with Rivera in KC and the participants in Buenos Aires. Social media and email file transfers were instrumental to review initial stages and Project progress. Facebook took a different approach as it enabled all the participants to keep updated with other artists’ works after they had finished their own pieces and time line. Due to space issues and studio assistance, this project was divided into three separate groups.

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Alejandro Thornton (Argentina). “Tierra-‐Casa” (Land-‐ Home). Engraving wood and letterpress on paper. 30” x 22”. 2013

Alicia Candiani, as Buenos Aires director of the project and Adriana Moracci and Valeria Zamparolo from ‘ ace team coached artists to develop their own ideas and execute their expanded print media versions as not all participants had a printmaking background after the initial interviews with each artists. Participants adopted images with an initial conceptual understanding of their cultural experience. Ideas of beauty in viral imagery were turned into landscape and urban decay by Alejandro Thorton (Argentina), where as Sara Aimee Verity (South Africa) decided to print a similar image to merge the political unrest for unsafe coal and gold mining practices in her native South Africa. Yoon Kim deconstructed viral images by locating angles, drawing straight lines between these points and creating geometric substructures from their original source. Images were rich and complex since they all were created using different processes such as printmaking, drawing, video, painting, blind embossing, stencils and painting. Alicia Candiani was instrumental helping artists to create pieces beyond the confinements of process learning and embracing unknown risks to expand the matrix substrate and the necessary approach the embody the final result in the form of 2D surface or time base images.

Most of CROSSOVER artists portrayed in the exhibition opening at Proyecto’ ace. May 15, 2013. Foreground from left to right: Alicia Candiani, Miguel Rivera and Adriana Moracci

Crossover KC-‐BsAs presented artists with options to broaden their practice. For some, the idea of working in collaboration was a new concept; others were not familiar with the apparently troublesome willingness to receive images by inheriting Rivera’s authorship. All of these works were unique in the sense that they could not be reproduce as editions and the fact that the final images resulted in a shared conceptual ownership. CROSSOVER exhibition was opened on May 15th, 2013 at the Central Hall Gallery in Proyecto’ ace and will be on view for two months before it travels to the United States. (If you are interested in host this project in 2014-‐2015 please send mail to alicia@proyectoace.org)

Alicia Candiani, Proyecto’ace founder and current director, Buenos Aires, Argentina Miguel Rivera, Kansas City Art Institute Printmaking Department director. Kansas City, USA

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Maren PRESTON (USA) Woodcut printed on canvas, painting. 30"x44". 2013

Natalio ALTUBE (Argentina) Woodcut collage, painting. 30" x22".2013

Artists reviewing the work at Proyecto ‘ace

Carla PERRI (Argentina) Photolithography, monotype and cut outs. 30" x22". 2013

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Natalio ALTUBE (Argentina) working at the Proyecto’ace studio

Carolina ROGÉ (Argentina) Woodcut intervention w/acrilic-‐collage 30" x22" 2013

Cristina SOLÍA (Argentina) Digital print. 22" x30". 2013

María José SÁNCHEZ CHIAPPE (Argentina) Woodcut and intervention w/ chinese ink,own. Dyptich: total 30"x22"; each panel 15"x22". 2013

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Jennifer PICKERING (Canada) 1/2 Woodcut, drawing and watercolorunfolded. 30 " x 44". 2013

Master-‐printer Adriana Moracci (Argentina) reviewing Natalio Altube’s work.

Paula NAHMOD (Argentina) 1/8 Acrilic on canvas. General: 28"x21 " 2013

Gabriela ALCOBA (Argentina) Woodcut, monotype, chine collé. 22"x30". 2013

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Magui MOAVRO (Argentina) Digital print, embossing 30"x44" 2013

Paz JOVTIS (Argentina) Photolithography, embossing and stickers 30" x22". 2013

Artist’s meeting Artist Alejandro Thornton with Master-‐printer Adriana Moracci

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Felipe GARCÍA (Colombia) Stencil-‐Woodcut. 30"x44". 2013

Alejandro Scasso (Argentina/Germany) at Proyecto ‘ace workshop

Adriana MORACCI (Argentina) Embossing, woodcut, chinese paper, drawwing w/graphite, photolithography. 30"x22". 2013

Video-‐conference with Miguel Rivera

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Gabriela ZELENTCHER (Argentina) Woodcut on fabric, collage. 30"x22" . 2013

Sonia SANCHEZ AVELAR (Mexico) Woodcut-‐Stamp. 22"x30". 2013

Sara Aimee VERITY (South Africa) Photolithography. Chine Colle, Screen printing unfolded 44"x22". 2013

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Yoon KIM (South Korea/Argentina) Collage, frottage, hand drawing Dyptich; total 30"x44"; each panel 30"x22".2013

Simon HALL (England) Photolitho/stencils. 16"x44". 2013

Artist’s meeting at Proyecto ‘ace studio

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Bárbara VINCENTI (Argentina) Woodcut, photolithography. 22" x30".2013

Alejandro SCASSO (Argentina/Germany) Woodcut and láser print on chinese paper collage. Dyptich : total 30"x44"; each panel 22"x30". 2013

Viviana SIERRA (Argentina) Woodcut, drawing. Dyptich: total 30"x44"; each panel 30"x22". 2013

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Carla BERETTA (Argentina) Digital print, fabric collage and dropping. Dyptich: total 30"x44"; each panel 30"x22". 2013

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Valeria ZAMPAROLO Relief printed, embroidered fabric. 23.6" x 23.6". 2013

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Critical text on Crossover [KC-‐Bs.As.] by Daniela Ruiz Moreno* To work in collaboration means to unite, merge, and contrast diverse ways of seeing and thinking. It implies openness to receive others expressive languages, allowing it to penetrate and challenge our own language. In Theory of Modern Art, Paul Klee, reflects upon human’s creative strength and states “it is necessary to reveal this strength, its functions, in the same way it reveals in ourselves, this strength together with the matter, should embody, become shape, reality”. Is because of this that I believe that working in collaboration means to reveal and to force the emergence of the creative strength inside the others work. This is only achieved by activating one’s own strength. Following this it is interesting to note the variety of “crossings” and overlaps, the different levels of permeability explored and revealed by each artist. In some cases each ones images suffered mutations, established dialogs in which each issuer maintains some distance, they relate but avoid infection (Viviana Sierra). Images crush or become flatten with the presence of the other, but at the same time a level of merging is achieved (Natalio Altube, Sol Massera, Paula Nahmod). In other case, both languages relate organically (Alejandro Scasso). Artists appropriate the original for their own work (Alejandro Thornton), or use it as an impulse or stimulation to explore questionings already present in their search (Cristina Solía). Even chance was present in a piece in which a strong syncretism between Judaism, Muslim and Catholicism was achieved (Gabriela Zelentcher). In other works, the link between the two expressions was documented in a video. This resource allowed registering the randomness and importance of the entailment as one expression was not perceptible without the other (María José Sánchez Chiappe). The virus, fundamental concept in the previous editions of CROSSOVER was interpreted in multiple ways in this session. In one case, the work focused in rats, essential actors and victims of the experiments to resist and battle viruses (Sonia Sánchez Avelar). In other, the artist was interested in the reproductive capacity of the virus, finding in its embryonic state, formal similarities with other beings (Bárbara Vincenti). The duality life/death that the virus holds was explored (Maren Preston), also the social danger and horror that epidemics produce. Infection, destructive in the case of viruses was founded in other human expressions such as laughter, in this case as something positive and empowering. Infection could be related also with colonial processes, where not only physical destruction is implied but also cultural, social and religious (Jeniffer Pickering). Crossover [KC-‐Bs.As.] is a project in which each artist had the opportunity to explore in a creative environment. Individual expressions became challenged, stimulated and embraced. Each artist, free to invade and to be infected by others creations, achieved in this way new languages. *Daniela Ruiz Moreno studies Art Theory and History at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and is Proyecto ‘ace Coordinator.