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LEFT TO RIGHT : Regina José Galindo, America’s Family Prison, 2008 (performance image) ; Rodney McMillian, Untitled, 2008; Margarita Cabrera, The Craft of Resistance, 2008.

NEW WORKS: 08.1
On View Through May 11, 2008

Artpace
445 North Main Avenue
San Antonio, Texas 78205

http://www.artpace.org

Artpace San Antonio announces the opening of new projects by 08.1 resident artists Margarita Cabrera (El Paso, Texas), Regina José Galindo (Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala), and Rodney McMillian (Los Angeles, California), selected by Franklin Sirmans, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Margarita Cabrera’s sculptures explore the political and social dichotomies that emerge as a result of the U.S./Mexico border relationship. Her Artpace project, The Craft of Resistance, is exhibited in two parts, the first of which is a working maquiladora set up in her Artpace studio. With its makeshift structure and bright fluorescent lighting, the 12-step assembly line is identical to countless factories found throughout Mexico. During Cabrera’s residency, volunteers worked with the artist at the mock factory to produce 2,500 small copper butterflies, the wings of which were imprinted on one side with a monarch butterfly pattern and on the opposite with an impression of the American penny. Thousands of the delicate butterflies were then installed in a private home in a neighboring San Antonio suburb. The beautiful, yet plague-like installation covers the interior of the home, swarming on the ceiling, curtains, chairs, tables, and appliances. Separated from the studio w
here they were produced, the location of the butterflies emphasizes the disparity between the sights of production and consumption of Mexican-made products in the United States.

Regina José Galindo’s performances and poetry address social injustice, gender discrimination, and racism, often focusing on the governmental atrocities of the Guatemalan dictatorship. Her Artpace project, America’s Family Prison, responds to the United States’ booming industry of private prisons, and in particular, to a family detention center in Texas authorized to imprison families of men, women, children, and babies. José Galindo rented a prison cell from Sweeper Metal Fabricators Corp, which she and her family occupied for a performance that lasted a limited period of time before and during the exhibition’s opening reception. The cell remains at Artpace and is open for public viewing.

Rodney McMillian’s multimedia installa-tions recycle remnants of everyday life into objects that deconstruct the tenets of historical interpretation. At Artpace, McMillian’s Untitled comprises a group of five paintings draping from ceiling to floor, vertical columns of anonymous photographic portraits found by the artist, and a ragged chair and rug coated in red paint—all situated beneath a vaulted makeshift paper cathedral ceiling. The sound component, “Pelicans in Texas” by musician Stefan Tcherepnin, is a synthesizer-based minimalist composition, which further contributes to the meditative space. Seen as a unit, these works form a constellation that situates paintings adjacent to sculpture in an exploration of themes related to the landscape, church, and home.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Franklin Sirmans is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas. He has curated numerous exhibitions including Lessons from Below: Otabenga Jones & Associates, Menil Collection (2007); and Basquiat, Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (2005-06), co-curated with Marc Mayer, Fred Hoffman, and Kellie Jones. A former U.S. editor of Flash Art and editor-in-chief of ArtAsiaPacific, he has written for publications such as Art in America, The New York Times, Essence, and Newsweek International. Sirmans was named the 2007 recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize, awarded by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA.

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

New Works: 08.1 is made possible by the Linda Pace Foundation; City of San Antonio’s Office of Cultural Affairs; Nimoy Foundation; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; and Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy; with additional support from the Texas Commission on the Arts.

ABOUT ARTPACE

Artpace San Antonio serves as a laboratory for the creation and advancement of international contemporary art. Artpace believes that art is a dynamic social force that inspires individuals and defines cultures. Our residencies, exhibitions, and education programs nurture the creative expression of emerging and established artists, while actively engaging youth and adult audiences.

Artpace is located downtown at 445 North Main Avenue, between Savings and Martin streets, San Antonio, Texas. Free parking is available at 513 North Flores. Artpace is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday, 12-5 PM, Thursday, 12-8 PM, and by appointment. Admission is free.

For press inquiries, please contact Celina Emery at cemery@artpace.org

Americas Society

Graciela Iturbide
El General Torrijos en una de
las visitas al campo panameño, 1975
Pigment on archival rag paper
Courtesy of the artist

Panel Discussion:
Iturbide in Context
Thursday, March 27, 6:30 pm

Americas Society
680 Park Avenue at 68th St.
New York, NY 10021
T: (212) 249 8950
F: (212) 249 5868
Free Admission

http://www.americas-society.org

Panel Discussion: Iturbide in Context
Thursday, March 27, 6:30 pm

Moderator
Anna Indych-López, Assistant Professor, Art Department, The City College of New York, (Ph.D. Institute of Fine Arts, New York 2003).

Speakers
Robin Greeley, Associate Professor of Latin American Art History, University of Connecticut, (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 1996).
Lynda Klich, Adjunct Lecturer, Art Department, Hunter College, The City University of New York, (Ph.D., Institute of Fine Arts, New York, 2008).

Greeley addresses the relationship of photography to political action - a relationship that has a troubled history in Latin America of this period. The lecture discusses Iturbide’s photographic engagement with two very different forms of political mobilization: the inclusionary authoritarianism of the Torrijos regime in 1970s Panama, and the grassroots politics of the COCEI (Coalition of Workers, Peasants, and Students of the Isthmus) movement in 1980s Juchitán.

Klich considers the nature of Iturbide’s portrayal of Torrijos as a revolutionary hero by placing her photographs within the visual legacy of Mexican post-Revolutionary culture (specifically the photographs of Tina Modotti). Also, by contrasting Iturbide’s photographs with public images of other populist leaders from Latin America, Klich’s aim is to demonstrate that Iturbide established, with Torrijos’s help, a pictorial construction of him as a man of the people rather than a political icon.

In addition to introducing the panelists and serving as moderator, Indych-López will very briefly place the Torrijos: The Man and The Myth, Photographs by Graciela Iturbide exhibition in the context of the Americas Society’s history of exhibitions of Mexican Art and Latin American photography.

This public program accompanies the Torrijos: The Man and The Myth. Photographs by Graciela Iturbide currently on view at the Americas Society’s gallery.

In this exhibition, artist Graciela Iturbide explores in an intensely personal homage an era of contemporary Latin American life through the persona of a single man whose changing role in that history is emblematic of the times. She establishes both place and identity not only of her distinguished subject but the context of country, the land itself, in aesthetic and vernacular style alike. Presented for the first time, this complex body of work redefines the photographic image of General Omar Torrijos by looking at it as a document and metaphor, often deconstructing and reconstructing Iturbide’s own personal intersections with her subject. The symbolic and expressive imagery of the works, produced three decades ago, offer a visual paradigm that calls on memory, and a re-presentation of facts that conjure an emotional bond between subject and viewer, whether affirmative or oppositional.

Torrijos was a charismatic populist military leader who died in a 1981 plane crash. The Torrijos legend is of a man of action, yet an idealist strategist and a polemic figure. The recent populist shift in Latin America recalls an examination of this earlier period of history, making the personality of Torrijos newly relevant. Iturbide provides an insightful portrait of Torrijos as a popular myth that blends tradition
and modernity.

This exhibition is curated by Nan Richardson and is organized by the Americas Society in conjunction with Umbrage Editions. Americas Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Galería Emma Molina, Graciela Iturbide, the Bruce T. Halle Family Foundation and La Fundación/Colección Jumex. Additional support has been provided by the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York.

The listed event is free, open to the public and will take place at Americas Society.

We are located at 680 Park Avenue at 68th Street, in New York City.
For wheelchair access, kindly call in advance.

Reservations are mandatory, so please RSVP to: (212) 277-8359 or culture@americas-society.org

For more information, visit http://www.americas-society.org . If you have questions or comments, please email us at culture@americas-society.org

MiArt 2008

Latin American art at MiArt 2008

MiArt 2008: 4 -7 April 2008
Opening: 3 April, on invitation

http://www.miart.it

MiArt’s Guest Nation project in 2008 is featuring Latin America, a group of countries going through a period of enormous cultural change and perennial transformation in which art is playing a major role in defining the political and cultural identity of each nation.

The Anteprima section of the exhibition will feature a series of international galleries, selected by curator Omar-Pascual Castillo, that, through the works on display, will present an overview of Latin American art today.

Titled En el posterior de las American, the project boasts the participation of over 20 important international galleries that exhibit Latin American artists. The galleries include Iturralde Gallery of Los Angeles with a solo show by Oscar Munoz, White Box Gallery of New York with an exhibition of works by Teresa Margolles, Alejandra Von Hartz Gallery of Miami with a solo show by Eugenio Espinoza, and EDS Galeria of Mexico City featuring the artist Emilio Chapela Perez.

Castillo says that the selection criterion hinges on the idea that “the Latin America of today goes beyond Latin America, that is, it exists wherever there is a Latin American person. People are constantly on the move, without being limited by geography and, in most cases, out of purely personal interests.” Starting from this premise, the curator has set up a dialogue between Latin American and European galleries and artists who work with contemporary artists who, while they have Latin American roots, are very international. The goal says Castillo, “is to create a dialogue between artistic personalities who trace out an outward and return journey.”

The invited galleries and artists are therefore attempting to showcase Latin American creativity, a panorama of art that continues to be kaleidoscopic, exciting, irregular and difficult to sum up with generalities. The displayed works demonstrate an interesting variety of languages that the artists use to go beyond traditional techniques in favor of extra-pictorial media. These are the tools the artists use to tell the stories of a great region that is looking for a model for autonomous development. The emergencies of social disintegration and exclusion that the various democratic governments are facing come alive in the region’s artworks, in which the urban space – as the focal point of change and contradiction – is often the central theme.

Each artist has been selected for having pursued a coherent line of experimentation based around an idea art for art’s sake and without regard for today’s cynical marketing of culture.

According to Castillo, the Latin American art Project Room will navigate “a world in which an encyclopedic approach is not possible and the maps are part of process whose ending you cannot guess. The decision to focus on the subject is the best, since it corresponds to the interpretation of the continent in which we are located as mere observers.”

MiArt 2008: 4 -7 April 2008
Opening: 3 April, on invitation
Fieramilanocity, Milan, pad. 1-2-4

MiArt - Fiera Milano International
Via Varesina, 76 - 20156 Milan - I
Tel. + 39 02 485501 / Fax +39 0248550420
e-mail miart@fmi.it
http://www.miart.it

Press Office
Maria Grazia Vernuccio:
Tel: +39 02 48550474 / Mob: +39 335 1282864 / E-mail: press_miart@fmi.it

Equipe Milano – Olivia Spatola & Valentina Sartorio:
Tel: +39 02 34538354 / Fax: +39 02 34538355 / E-mail: olivia.spatola@equipemilano.com & valentina.sartorio@equipemilano.com