«concrete art is when taken to its logical conclusion the pure expression of harmonious measure and rule. It orders systems and with artistic means breathes life into these orders.» The standard that Max Bill (1908 – 1994) set out in his Manifesto for Concrete Art in 1949 is clearly absolute: Harmony and order become the guidelines for an artistic stance preempted decades earlier by pioneers such as Theo van Doesberg and Piet Mondrian. Max Bill raised them to the status of a programmatic agenda. Painting (and sculpture, too) was not supposed to arise for its own sake, but was to be produced in the service of a modern utopia, whereby following in the footsteps of Bauhaus the arts were meant to combine with architecture and the applied arts to form a modern gesamtkunstwerk. In line with this ideal, Max Bill took the stage not only in the field of fine art, but likewise as an architect, designer and university lecturer.
Born in 1908 in Winterthur, Bill first completed an apprenticeship as a silversmith and then studied at the Bauhaus from 1927-8 before returning to Switzerland in 1929, where he initially worked as an architect, and then later as a sculptor, graphic artist and painter. From the 1930s onwards this native of Winterthur emerged as one of the main champions and representatives of Zurich Concrete Art. As the founding director of the Ulm College of Design, he successfully ensured the renaissance of Bauhaus ideas in post-War Germany.
Kunst Museum Winterthur owns a major group of Max Bill works, and they are ideally complemented by paintings and drawings by his contemporaries Camille Graeser, Verena Loewensberg and Richard Paul Lohse. They show that Concrete Art is far more than a set of rules and order, forever breaking its own dogmas asunder with surprising images and colors that strongly appeal to the senses. The exhibition is rounded out with pieces by artists who in subsequent generations took up the traditions of Constructivist Art and reflected on it.
Marina Adams Donald Baechler Lee Bontecou Joe Bradley Cecily Brown Mary Callery Enrique Chagoya Chuck Close Sarah Crowner Amy Cutler N. Dash Jim Dine Carroll Dunham Marisol Mark Fox Sam Francis Helen Frankenthaler R. Buckminster Fuller Ellen Gallagher Orly Genger Fritz Glarner Robert Goodnough Maurice Grosman Jane Hammond Grace Hartigan Carmen Herrera Charline von Heyl Jim Isermann Bill Jensen Jasper Johns Jennie C. Jones Wyatt Kahn Joey Kotting Julian Lethbridge Alexander Liberman Jacques Lipchitz Rosa Loy Eddie Martinez Suzanne McClelland Jason Middlebrook Robert Motherwell Sam Moyer Elizabeth Murray Barnett Newman Amy O’Neill Ryan and Trevor Oakes Claes Oldenburg Nathlie Provosty Martin Puryear Robert Rauschenberg Larry Rivers Julia Rommel James Rosenquist Susan Rothenberg Ed Ruscha Edwin Schlossberg Joel Shapiro James Siena Kiki Smith Saul Steinberg Sarah Sze Martha Tuttle Richard Tuttle Cy Twombly Tam Van Tran Andrei Voznesensky Kelley Walker Max Weber Michael Williams Terry Winters Zachary Wollard Christopher Wool Lisa Yuskavage
June 7th, 7:00-10pm: Aluna Art Foundation cordially invites you to the opening reception of AMERICA WEAVES, an exhibition curated by Adriana Herrera, PhD, at the Coral Gables Museum (285 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, FL 33134). With invited artists (in alphabetic order): Miguel Aguirre, Luis Arroyo, Andrés Bedoya, Stella Bernal de Parra, Tatiana Blass, Liene Bosque, Pip Brant, Chiachio & Giannone, Ana Isabel Diez, Jorge Eduardo Eielson, Sonia Falcone, Gego, Alvaro Gómez Campuzano, Guerra de la Paz, Basil Kincaid, Magali Lara, Marcela Marcuzzi, María Angélica Medina, Aurora Molina, Juan José Olavarría, Raquel Schwartz, Carrie Sieh, Diana de Solares, Alex Trimino, Frances Trombly, and Guido Yianitto.
AMERICA WEAVES One hundred years after the founding of the Bauhaus, which considered the artist “an exalted artisan” and called for erasing the boundaries between art and crafts, America Weaves gathers a group of artists that expand the borders and possibilities of the action of weaving, embroidery, and interlacing throughout the entire Americas, from Argentina to the United States. Some works are formal inquiries into the possibilities of the medium; others merge different epochs, resorting to the technique of palimpsest; yet others pose critical and conceptual appropriations of different sorts. Making art with textile materials is, ultimately, a possibility that is as playful as it is culturally vital. Curated by Adriana Herrera, America Weaves shows how, since the times of prehispanic art, our continent has woven times, history, visions, and worlds.
THE CORAL GABLES MUSEUM (Fewell Gallery) America Weaves June 7th – Nov. 10th, 2019 285 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, FL 33134 (305) 603-8067 Hours of Operation Museum Hours: Tuesday-Thursday 12:00 – 6:00 Friday 12:00 – 6:00 (Later on Gallery Nights) Saturday 11:00 – 5:00 Sunday 12:00 – 5:00 Monday closed Business Hours: Monday-Friday 9:00 – 5:00
Aluna Art Foundation
Aluna Art Foundation is a non-profit organization created to promote a wide range of dialogues among artistic practices.
Aluna Art Foundation is a non-profit organization created to promote a wide range of dialogues among artistic practices through a continuous and open invitation for artists to engage in its projects. As an alternative space, Aluna Art Foundation offers Miami’s artists the possibility of participating, together with those from other regions or countries, in curatorial projects whose aim is the production of creative visions of the context we live in.
Considering that Miami is an epicenter of Latin American art in the world, Aluna Art Foundation strengthens our understanding of the past and the present of this art through formative and sensitizing strategies of knowledge and participation. Forming institutional and organizational alliances serves as a platform for artists that are not represented, promotes exchanges between established and emerging artists, and offers a space for those projects that can’t find a place within the mainstream.
Aluna Art Foundation’s vision is to provide the community of Miami with curatorial projects that involve a dialogue between the local and international art scene, conducting its mostly collective inquiries around the connection between art and society. The foundation will continue to serve as an ever-expanding platform for the introduction of Miami artists in galleries, organizations, and institutions in a changing and mobile context.
Our vision includes the possibility of crossing the abysm that has been separating the general public from contemporary art. Through our curatorial practice, and our diverse strategies of interaction, we will construct awareness of contemporary art in general, and of Latin American art in particular. These efforts will not only strengthen our vision of art history, but our outlook on the present. The processes of dialogues will allow the people to experience the artworks, and to participate in their practices in a transformative way, living an experience capable of mobilizing ideas and social imagination.
Aluna was founded in April 18th, 2011 under the laws of the State of Florida (501-C-3 application in process).
1393 SW 1st. Street, Miami Fl 33135, is an alternative and provisional art space.
Aluna Curatorial Collective (Adriana Herrera and Willy Castellanos) is the curatorial instance of Aluna Art Foundation.
Join us on June 1st for a First Saturday Reception and view: “The Power of Print: Iconic Images of the American Landscape” by Jennifer Basile and “Ongoing Highlights,” featuring works by Carlos Alfonzo, Anish Kapoor, John Bailly, T. Elliot Mansa, Mario Bencomo, Tim Buwalda, Copper Inch, Jessie Laino, Gabriela Noelle, César Trasobares, Reynier Ferrer, Dayron Gonzalez, Jake Fernández, Arturo Rodríguez, Trek6, Sinuhe Vega Negrin, William Osorio, Natalia García Lee, Yomarie Silva-O’Neal, Tony Vázquez-Figueroa, and more.
Un trabajo que tomó más de seis años de estudio, hasta que el artista, Rafael Montilla, pudo sentir que finalmente había logrado llenar sus expectativas sobre cierta figura geométrica
A propósito de la exposición “Kubes in Action – Personalidad”
En un tiempo –el actual– donde todo parece vaciarse de contenido, donde la inmediatez de las redes sociales deja a un lado el reconocimiento de la interioridad propia y ajena, donde la mentira y el encubrimiento obscurecen cualquier camino hacia la verdad, conforta toparse con la obra de Rafael Montilla, fotógrafo y artista visual caraqueño que comenzó su andadura creativa a mediados de los años setenta y que, desde la tradición de la abstracción geométrica, ha concebido obras con una poderosa carga de espiritualidad.
Una espiritualidad que Montilla ha expresado desde que era un niño de siete años, cuando en las portadas de sus libros escolares dibujaba y pintaba el símbolo de la “cruz swastika”, no la que utilizaron como emblema los nazis, sino la que la proviene de las imprecisas tinieblas de la prehistoria, la que en la cultura hinduista se asocia al dios Ganesha, la que para el Budismo simboliza la eternidad…
Rafael Montilla en la exposición The Big Bang
Kubes in action – Personalidad
Para Montilla aquella cruz con sus brazos doblados en ángulo recto era un mandala cuadrado. Esa fue la dimensión que el artista le aportó luego de vivir algunos años en la India. Una dimensión filosófica y religiosa que se sumó al estudio que el artista hizo de El Árbol de la Vida y del metatrón, cuerpo geométrico compuesto por trece círculos directamente obtenido de la Fruta de la Vida. Hablamos, entonces, de una geometría sagrada.
En el video Kubos in Action. Secrete geometry, publicado por el artista en la plataforma de YouTube, se resume de manera precisa y clara el proceso por el cual ese mandala cuadrado se transformó en “kubo”. Una investigación que le tomó más de seis años de estudio y que el artista hizo pública una vez que pudo darle “una perspectiva que movía mi interior. Sentí que finalmente había logrado llenar mis expectativas sobre esta figura geométrica”, confiesa Montilla.
En el video mencionado, el artista aporta una definición de mandala cónsona con sus necesidades expresivas: “Mandalas es donde todas las religiones, filósofos, científicos, sabios, buscadores de sabiduría y buscadores espirituales se encuentran”. El auto reconocimiento y el conocimiento del Otro.
La obra de Rafael Montilla no puede, así, ser cabalmente entendida si se le despoja de su componente introspectivo, existencialista, del alma que él vuelca en ella, más allá de sus características formales. Su obra trasciende de lo que el espectador puede ver físicamente para mostrar lo que hay dentro de él y, por añadidura, dentro de nosotros mismos. “Los mandalas son una llave a nuestro subconsciente, tal como lo dice Carl Gustav Jung: ‘La mente no está en el mundo, el mundo está en la mente’. El ‘kubo’ representa nuestro subconsciente”, asegura el artista.
En su más reciente propuesta expositiva, Kubes in Action – Personalidad, que se presenta en la DATG Concept Gallery, de Miami, Rafael Montilla va más allá en su exploración de los “kubos”, pues integra a su trabajo parte de los postulados teóricos del artista Josef Albers acerca del color o, más bien de la interacción del color, según la cual “un mismo color permite innumerables lecturas”.
La idea del artista es que partiendo de la figura que ha desarrollado en los últimos años, cada color represente una personalidad definida. Así, y como bien lo explica la investigadora y curadora Anny Bello, Montilla “elabora convenciones para catalogar las personalidades, en este caso, basadas en el anaranjado, el rojo, el amarillo, el púrpura, el azul y el verde”. Y agrega el artista: “Todo lo externo fue eliminado”.
Todo lo externo ha sido eliminado. Quiere decir esto que las obras recientes de Rafael Montilla apelan a la introspección, a lo no verificable en el mundo material. Al contenido más que a la forma. A los sentimientos, sin más. Y también exigen de quien las observa, completar esos “kubos” de bordes blancos, invisibles, rodeados de colores que armonizan hasta establecer un perfecto equilibrio entre las caras de esas figuras geométricas en las que su creador vierte su “yo”.
Rafael Montilla
Kubes in action – Personalidad
Un “yo” que insiste en aparecer, en revelarse, en un mundo desprovisto de contenidos significativos, sobresaturado de superficialidad. Cada uno de los “kubos” que se exponen en DATG Concept Gallery muestra la parte interna de su autor y su preocupación por una sociedad en la que toda aspiración se limita a lo externo. “Nos olvidamos de crecer internamente”, dice Rafael Montilla. “Nadie sabe qué hacer con su vida. Jóvenes, adultos y mayores sufren de soledad. Necesitan de algo o de alguien para ser supuestamente felices y buscan un intermediario para llegar a Dios, ignorando que pueden conectare con él directamente”.
En definitiva, Rafael Montilla crea para sí mismo, en el sentido de que su obra es una clara proyección de su espiritualidad, una permanente exploración de sí mismo. “Los ‘kubos’ pueden mostrar que yo soy mi mejor amigo y que el Paraíso está donde yo vivo. Mi paz interna es lo más importante”, concluye el artista.
Juan Antonio González
Editor de Arte y Entretenimiento Diario El Universal Caracas – Venezuela Octubre 2018
The55project | Art Exhibition: “What I really want to tell you..”
Public · Hosted by The 55 Project
Friday, May 10, 2019 at 6 PM – 9 PM
Atchugarry Art Center 5520 Northeast 4th Avenue, Miami, Florida 33137
The55project is thrilled to invite you to the exhibition “What I really want to tell you…” presented at Fundación Pablo Atchugarry in Miami.
Save the date: May 10, 6-9pm
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Curated by Jennifer Inacio with Flávia Macuco this exhibition explores the cultural, social and political histories of Brazil. The participating artists question these issues and externalize their examinations through art that impact, inspire and engage, becoming their own manifestos of exploration, interrogation, and change. While responding to our contemporary moment, the exhibition highlights ways in which art stimulates and inform new ideas in times of divergent realities.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀The exhibition features 14 Brazilian artists:
Almandrade • Jonathas de Andrade • Liene Bosquê • Paulo Bruscky • Anna Bella Geiger • Rubens Gerchman • Ivan Grilo • Randolpho Lamonier • Vanderlei Lopes • Gabriela Mutti • Paulo Nazareth • Regina Parra • Rosana Paulino • Mano Penalva
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Hosted by: Fundación Pablo Atchugarry
Produced by: The55project
Sponsored by Fedex
Supported by Consulate of Brazil in Miami, FedEx Express, Leblon Cachaça, Piero Atchugarry Gallery and Fundación Pablo Atchugarry.
Public · Hosted by The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU
Saturday, June 8, 2019 at 3 PM – 7 PM
The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU (Miami)10975 SW 17th St, Miami, Florida 33199
Art Museum (305) 348-2890
Join us for an Artist Conversation and Exhibition Opening for two new exhibitions, Cut: Abstraction in the United States from the 1970s to the Present and Spheres of Meaning: An Exhibition of Artists’ Books.
Artist Conversation (3-4pm)
Join Chief Curator, Amy Galpin Ph.D., for a conversation with Miami-based artists Loriel Beltran and Carol Todaro. In anticipation of the opening celebrations, Beltran and Todaro sit down with Galpin to discuss their rigorous practices. A new large-scale painting by Beltran will be featured in Cut: Abstraction in the United States from the 1970s to the Present. Todaro completed a new installation for Spheres of Meaning: An Exhibition of Artists’ Books. Beltran and Todaro are long-time Miami residents with distinctly different practices. Both artists contributed critical ideas to the formulation of these exhibitions.
Seating is limited. Please arrive on time to secure your seat.
Exhibition Opening (4-7pm)
The exhibition opening is free and open to the public. Members of the museum gain exclusive access to our Members’ Reception with refreshments and drinks. Not a member? Click here to join today and gain access to this exclusive perk or purchase a $15 reception ticket at the door.
Metered parking is available in the Blue and Gold Garages.
Image Caption: Sam Gilliam, b.1933, Tupelo, Mississippi, Of Yellow and Gingers [detail], 1979, Acrylic on Canvas, 80 x 300 inches, Courtesy of the artist and N’Nmandi Contemporary, Miami, Florida
Join us to learn more about Miami’s visual arts awards, which will offer up to $500,000 to the city’s visual artists!
This is our second year offering The Ellies, and we’re excited to see what ideas Miami’s artists are ready to create with the proper support
Bring all your questions this evening and our Oolite Art staff will answer them. Lock in your perfect application to submit ahead of the 6 p.m. May 20th deadline for the Creator Award and the Teacher Travel grants.
For more, including a list of FAQ’s, visit TheEllies.org.
Visual Arts Conference by The55project + Focus Brasil Presents
Hosted by The 55 Project
Wednesday at 12:30 PM – 3:30 PM
Broward Center for the Performing Arts201 Southwest 5th Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33312
# Panel 1 | 1pm
Multiplicities in Feminist Art & Artists: Dilemmas, Contradictions and New Visions
Adriana Herrera, PhD | Independent Curator (Moderator) Speakers: Silvana Soriano (Visual Artist, Illustrator and art teacher) Karla Caprali (Visual Artist, Illustrator and art teacher) Ibett Yanez (Curator, Former Dir. De La Cruz Collection, Ground Control Mia ) Leslie Gabaldon (Visual Artist, Wynwood Edtions)
# Panel 2 | 2:15pm
Gisela Gueiros | Independent Curator, NYC correspondent for both Vogue and GQ Brasil, as well as a collaborator at NaturaBrasil blog.
“Current state of the arts” After NYC and São Paulo, the seminar arrives in Miami + Fort Laudardale.
Information: [email protected] | www.the55project.com Spaces are limited. Registration is mandatory.
Focus Brasil and The55project | Visual Arts Panel: “Current state of the arts” By Gisela Gueiros.
Gisela is art historian, art advisor and educator, NYC correspondent for both GQ and Vogue Brasil, as well as a collaborator at NaturaBrasil blog.
The55project’s mission is to promote Brazilian visual artists and cultural projects in the united states through art events.
En este vídeo tratamos de conocer un poco mejor el nacimiento del videoarte y cuales fueron los primeros artistas que practicaron este estilo. Nombres como Nam June Paik o Wolf Vostell son esenciales para conocer el desarrollo de esta disciplina artística. Al mismo tiempo tratamos de dar a conocer algunos de los principales artistas contemporáneos de vídeo que pueden ser de interés para el público y que quizás son más desconocidos que otros que practican disciplinas más populares como la pintura o la escultura.
