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6/6/2012

Pinta London 2012

Earls court Exhibition Centre, London

In the midst of the remarkable boom of Latin American art in the context of international art collecting, Pinta London 2012 celebrates its third edition broadening its concept and scope. In this way it updates the historical, geopolitical and artistic past of Latin America and showcases the present horizon through curatorships, alliances and events that approach the field of modern and contemporary visual creation through an inclusive and visionary perspective.

Pinta London 2012 reactivates that moment of incomparable expansion of the territory of imagination derived from the encounter between the Old and the New World, incorporating in its prestigious exhibition of Latin American art modern and contemporary Spanish and Portuguese art.

Since its initial edition in New York in 2006, the fair has been instrumental in rescuing the contribution of works and manifestos associated to geometric or conceptual abstract art, among other movements which emerged in Latin America at the same time as or at an earlier date than similar European movements. Now Pinta London will be showcasing works that illustrate the history of twentieth and twenty-first century art in the Iberian Peninsula and its relationship with Latin American creation.

This encompassing view that Pinta London is constructing includes great pioneers of Surrealism in Mexico, such as Leonora Carrington, born in England, and Alice Rahon, born in France, but also the Spanish artist Carmen Calvo, whose work extends the surrealist legacy to contemporary art. Besides exhibiting Latin American masters representing the different currents of "cold" geometric abstraction − like the Argentine artists Julio Le Parc, Juan Melé or Marta Boto; the Uruguayan Carmelo Arden Quin; the Venezuelans Jesús Soto, Omar Carreño and Carlos Cruz-Diez; the Brazilians Waldemar Cordeiro and Waltercio Caldas; the Colombians Carlos Rojas and Omar Rayo; or the Cuban artists Loló Soldevilla and Carmen Herrera, among others − Pinta London includes the participation of Spanish artists from different groups who adhered to geometric art (termed "normative") moving away from the predominance of informalism.

Particularly noteworthy among the Spanish artists are those composing Equipo 57, who in the late 1950s addressed collective and anonymous creation as a way of connecting concrete art with participatory dynamics in the pursuit of social transformation, as well as figures such as Manuel Calvo or José María Labra, and Pablo Palazuelo, Eusebio Sempere or Jesús de la Sota. Several of them had close artistic exchanges with their contemporaries, not only in Europe but also in Latin America.

Faithful to the vocation of providing visibility both to periods and artists who, despite the fact that they are known, require to be better or more widely understood in the international market, this edition of Pinta also highlights the work of two artists whose legacy is invaluable. Although Lygia Clark (1920-1988) is a legendary figure without whom it is impossible to conceive Neo-concrete art in Brazil, the explorations which defined the ultimate meaning of her art, those participatory performances that generated unifying human networks, are less known. Alison Jacques Gallery will feature "re-performances" that constitute a healing collective experience.

On the other hand, with support from the Government of Chile, the fair will present a synthesizing vision of the work of Matilde Pérez (1916), who since the mid-twentieth century became oriented towards geometry and later, in Paris, became involved with the G.R.A.V. (Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel), exploring Op and Kinetic art. The exhibition "Open Cube" will include works in different media and a luminous volume that attains full existence through the perceptive experience of the public.

Touring the fair will make it possible to distinguish the intertwining of artistic views and practices of both continents in different decades: the explorations of territoriality of the Ecuadorian artist Manuela Ribadeneira and the Spanish artist Curro González's visions of the "nowhere man"; the works revolving around the veracity of photography by the Barcelona-born Joan Fontcuberta, and the conceptual fictions of the Argentine artist Liliana Porter; the different explorations based on information records by the Mexican artist Jonathan Fernández and the Portuguese artist Nuno Nunes-Ferreira, or the explorations of banality in the historical images of the Peruvian Fernando Bryce. His fellow-countryman João Penalva inquires into the way in which we culturally construct categories through which we see the world.

Disturbing artists born in the two continents reveal the heterogeneity of explorations often undertaken in both territories. This perception ranges from the case of Anita Payro, born at the end of the nineteenth century, to contemporaries born in the 1970s, such as Laureana Toledo, Jesús Bubú Negrón, Felipe Mujica − the three of them participants in Pinta 2012's Art Projects − or Abel Barroso, and a large group of emerging artists like Cristina Ghetti, an Argentine artist living in Barcelona, the Colombians Rodrigo Echeverri, Adriana Marmoreck, Manuel Calderón and Esteban Peña, the Chileans Pedro Tyler and Johana Unzueta, and the Brazilian Matheus Rocha Pitta, or the Mexicans Emilio Valdez and Oswaldo Ruiz.

The work of the two latter artists will also be shown in the Art Projects section alongside works by G.T. Pellizzi, in a neo-dada style that storms the social atmosphere; Vasco Araujo, who resorts to "materials" such as the opera to inquire into archetypal aspects like the wish for glorification; Pedro Terán, showing his way of eliminating the borders between the canvas and the artist's body; Nuno Sousa Viera with his geometry that invades everyday life, and the Bolivian Gastón Ugalde, with his conceptual works rendered in woven fabrics or coca leaves.

The fair will feature several other − incisive − modes of political art by different generations of artists, reflected in the recent work of the Spaniard Santiago Sierra, the Mexican Betsabeé Romero, the Brazilians Dias & Riedweig, the Colombian Miguel Ángel Rojas, the Guatemalan Regina José Galindo, the Cubans Tania Bruguera and Diango Hernández, and the Venezuelan María Fernanda Lairet, But it will also include new explorations of poetics of the form carried out by contemporary artists such as the Brazilian Carla Guagliardi, the London-based Chilean artist Francisca Prieto, or the Uruguayan-Spaniard Yamandú Canosa, and the Argentineans Graciela Hasper and María Noël with their artists' books.

In addition to this, the fair will showcase contemporary approaches from both of these worlds to the most ancient mythologies, as perceived in the works of the Valencian Anna Talens, or the Panamanian of French descent Isabel de Obaldía, and in a different way, in the iconoclastic sceneries by the Spanish artist Lluis Barba, or in the connections that the Chilean artists Teresa Aninat and Catalina Swinburg establish between their ephemeral actions and their scenographic installations. In a framework which also includes Botero's appropriations of the great classic works in a pictorial universe in which monumentality is rigorous, the sculptures of the great Spanish artist Chillida − who turned forms into places, as understood by Heidegger −; Armando Morales's landscapes, and the ludic conceptual art of Nelson Leiner, the founder of the "Rex Group" in Sao Paulo, and a pioneer in the critique of the art market system, this edition of Pinta will turn out to be revealing and will allow the public to explore the fertile territory of the interaction between movements and continents.

Also supporting this view are the institutions collaborating with the successful Acquisitions Program based on the matching funds system. This year, at Pinta London, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, MIMA, Tate Modern, and the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art will enrich their permanent collections through the incorporation of new pivotal works, not only from the modernist past in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, but also from their contemporary art under permanent construction.

Image: Patrick Hamilton, "Baldes", 2009, installation detail, concrete bucket / detalle de instalación, balde para cemento, duratrans, variable dimensions / dimensiones variables
Courtesy González y González, Santiago

Public & Media Relations:
Sarah Watson sarah.watson@fourcolmangetty.com
Rachael Young: rachael.young@fourcolmangetty.com

Earls Court Exhibition Centre
Warwick Road, Earls Court London SW5 9TA
HOURS:
Friday, June 8, 2012 - 11 am to 8 pm
Saturday, June 9, 2012 - 11 am to 8 pm
Sunday, June 10, 2012 - 11 am to 7 pm

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