PARTICIPATING CREATORS

 

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Jose Vera Matos

Fabiano Gonper

Ruth Quirce

Hendrik Kerstens

PSJM

Sergio Sotomayor

Augustine Nunez

José Luis Serzo

louis quintero

Nicola Constantine

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Jose Vera Matos

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The democratization of symbols, the indeterminacy and the consumption of the ephemeral, represent some of the main characteristics of the contemporary world. These particular characteristics, in turn, are generated by the mismanagement of technology, the absence of coherent discourses and the exacerbated search for pleasure.
Faced with these phenomena, José Vera recognizes himself as an active and constitutive part of this reality. In this work, he shows us close-up images, which mostly include representative symbols of Western culture.
To do this, he uses drawing, -in some cases accompanied by pamphleteering and biblical texts- and the installation of an instrument. This is complemented, in turn, by a text that runs through the entire room and that lists the musical genres that appeared from the seventies until today.
Thus, The Life of Animals reproduces and explores the main narratives of a fragmented culture, also raising the question of the existence of a permanent meaning of things.
However, we should not look in this exhibition for a taxonomy or an articulated classification, much less a critical position rooted in an ideological discourse. On the contrary, the work requires the viewer to establish their own order and relationship between the various images, which help us to recognize the determinations that we create, despite the fact that these are irremediably vulnerable.

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Fabiano Gonper

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In the construction of his work, Fabiano Gonper addresses, from personal experiences, questions about the subject in the individual and collective instances.
Power, politics, art, the subject, society, the art system (the categories, the museum, the gallery, the collector,...) are issues addressed by the artist in his drawings, sculptures, photography and facilities .
He attended the Funesc sculpture courses in 1989-90. Also in 1989 he entered the Federal University of Paraíba to study civil engineering. In 1992 he disconnected from the civil engineering course and dedicated himself to artistic activities. Between 1995 and 2002, with some intervals, he works as a graphic designer in advertising agencies. Between 1996 and 1999 he participates in workshops and workshops with Brazilian and foreign artists in João Pessoa. In 1999 he was artist-in-residence at the Higher School of Visual Arts in Geneva (Switzerland) with a scholarship granted by the Pro-Helvetia Foundation. Between 2003 and 2007 he was director of the Archidy Picado Art Gallery (Funesc João Pessoa) and in 2003/2005 he was one of the coordinators of the OZ - Experimental Art Space and Artist Residency also in João Pessoa.
He has participated in exhibitions in Brazil and abroad.
Lives and works in São Paulo SP.

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Ruth Quirce

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This time his work revolves around the idea of chaos, "Little Apocalypse" that recalls those moments of fragility, those small limits, explosions that unbalance a calm situation; in short, small outbreaks of chaos that disturb the apparent tranquility of all things.

Ruth, starting from her own sensation as a silent element and from her immobile position, is a spectator of everything that happens around her. Everything around her is moving, spinning; the closest and the farthest, beyond the limits of the universe. In the artist's own words: "I am speaking from my own space, calm, controlled and protected. A small "redemptive" space that, like the sun, looks at everything from a certain distance."

"Little Apocalypse" presents paintings where geometry contributes to stability and disorder at the same time, with planes, lines and energetic elements with a robust metallic appearance like this mountain / pyramid / ziggurat that acts as a source of energy, "light as atmosphere, as a statement means where things, reality appears ".

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[1] Reference to the exhibition “Night Journeys of the Sun” carried out in Blanca Soto Arte in 2004

[1] Man and the divine. Maria Zambrano.

 

Hendrik Kerstens

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The photographs of Hendrik Kerstens (1956) are reminiscent of the paintings of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). Both portray women in everyday situations. Measured, dedicated, serene. These images are intimate genre pieces, without anecdotal or symbolic elements. Both artists demonstrate their mastery of lighting control, with a scrupulous eye for the subtle expressions of materials. This focus on a realistic version infuses his work with poetic qualities.

Whereas Vermeer had several different women to pose for him, Kerstens focuses on just one person: a five-year-old girl, whom we witness as a woman over the years, and whose physical changes can be traced in detail. What remains is the omnipresent examining gaze. Adjustment in Kerstens' photos has been kept to an absolute minimum, drawing attention to the subject's face and expressive eyes. His unfathomable and fixed eyes search without blinking for contact with the camera and the viewer.
None of Vermeer's models have ever been identified with certainty, including 'The Girl with a Pearl Earring', who critics believe was Vermeer's eldest daughter Maria, who was twelve or thirteen at the time. With Kerstens, there is no doubt about his muse: his daughter Paula. Since birth, he has been fascinated by her expressive personality and recorded the major and minor events in her life. A dedicated chronicler and caring father who watches his son grow to adulthood. A man who wants to stop the passage of time and keep his daughter with him forever. We see her bathing, soaked in the rain, with her face made up, with braces, crying or sunburned. All ordinary, everyday things.

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PSJM

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PSJM is an artistic team made up of Pablo San José (Mieres, 1969) and Cynthia Viera (Las Palmas, 1973), who are working in Madrid. PSJM works as a commercial brand of outstanding art, its actions and works speak about works of art and its place in the market, communication with the art consumer and the function as an art theme, using resources and elements of communication capitalism and the society of the spectacle to find the paradoxes that are produced by its chaotic development.
PSJM has had shows in places like New York ("The Real Royal Trip. By the Arts", PS1-MOMA. In collaboration with El Perro and Aitor Méndez.), Miami ("Deluxe", Casas Reigner gallery), Colonia (KunstKöln04 ), Blanca Soto Gallery) or Berlin ("Shopped till Death", Tuteurhaus) and many individual and group shows in Spain.

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Sergio Sotomayor

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Feminine, the origin, probabilities, perception as the limit of our consciousness...

"Quantum" raises a reflection on life within an infinite environment as a matrix charger. Within this habitat  there are probabilities that favor the construction of new realities that materialize at the will of the individual and their inherent attraction of said possibilities. The quantum potential depends on the interactions between the "particles" of the system and the context, so any event, no matter how unreal it may seem, has a probability of happening.

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Augustine Nunez

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He studied at the Prilidiano Pueyrredon School of Fine Arts; and a degree from the National University Institute of Arts (IUNA). in Bs.As., Arg. He studied with the artist Sergio Bazan; and contemporary art theory and criticism with Dr. Hugo Petruschansky.

He exhibited in several individual and group shows, both in Argentina and abroad.

Among his most recent individual exhibitions, the following stand out: “Little Polymorphous” at Diversworks, Art Space, in Houston-USA, “Memoria Selectiva” at the Leme Gallery, in São Paulo-Brazil, “Canto Primero” at MACRO, with interventions in the facade of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rosario- Arg.

He participated in various collective exhibitions such as "Artists From Argentina: Works on paper", at Kentler International Drawing Sace in NY Brooklyn- USA, co-curated by R. Bueno and A. Carrera; “El Fulgor” at the Blanca Soto Gallery, curated by A. Azar, in Madrid- Spain; “Wonderful Amnesia”, curated by L.Spivak at the CCEBA, Cultural Center of Spain in Bs As-Arg.

Selected to participate in the awards: Petrobras-Arteba Third Edition '06 with the mural work “Música de Cañerias”; and the Curriculum Cero '06 Award, with the series of drawings “Serie Rosa” at the Ruth Benzacar Gallery, among others. In 2008, she was selected to participate in the LIPAC- Research Laboratory in Contemporary Artistic Practices- Coordinated by Alicia Herrero; at the Ricardo Rojas Cultural Center, Bs.As., Arg.

Since 2005, he has carried out wall drawing interventions in various public and private spaces. Several of them were recently carried out for the Architecture Studio of Arch. Arthur Casas in São Paulo, Brazil.

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José Luis Serzo

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 In his work he acts as a narrator of fables, presenting other possible universes and building worlds that transcend reality. These worlds, far from being a refuge from a hostile panorama dominated by pessimism and violence, try to be a positive alternative, a hopeful platform from which to approach and transform art and even life.

Starting from technical virtuosity, Serzo seeks to give shape and life to a careful staging, where there is room for all kinds of disciplines (painting, drawing, photography, literature...) to narrate stories where reality and imagination go hand in hand in a aesthetic universe loaded with a very personal symbology.

His work must be understood as a full-time cultural exercise. His particular technique and his message, full of symbolism, is just one part of a larger set, which is completed with texts that narrate each of his series. These are explicit stories that introduce us to a series of surreal stories, where the artist leaves us his particular vision of reality.

He divides his work into different projects: Post Show, The Fantastic Flight of the Comet Man, The Welcome, The Dreams of I Ming or Familasia. His characters, often drawn from the people around him, transport us through strange worlds full of color and a dark dreaminess to which magic and humor are added.

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louis quintero

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As usual in his work, Luis Quintero presents on this occasion a sculptural work of classical tradition and great workmanship that mixes different materials such as ivory, wood, bronze, terracotta, etc..._cc781905-5cde-3194- bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ Materials that he deals with as a craftsman at the service of knowledge, a fundamental principle in his work. A knowledge that is identified with life and that symbolically resides in the head (receiver of both knowledge and the human soul) hence the important presence of that significant part of the human body in the sculptural production of the artist from Cádiz._cc781905-5cde- 3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ Examples of this are: Maeternity, BORN, Death ahead, remembering Magritte,  etc...

Quintero, in the same way, ironically and relentlessly addresses aspects and human attitudes through fables and symbols; this is the case of Oedipus and the Sphinx, Contraesop, the deluded, table for princesses, etc...  This use of symbolic language allows the artist an ingenious communication that invites the viewer to inquire into the work looking for the vestiges of its meaning, on many occasions polysemic, which invites reflection and attention.

The use of acrostics in a large number of pieces gives the artist the possibility of giving each work different readings, through a simple and direct game with whoever faces his sculptures.  This mix of games , irony and references to other sources of knowledge such as science, religion, poetry, etc... makes Luis Quintero's work attractive and disturbing, biting and forceful. 

In the words of FM Cano: “Luis's work is not transitory, he does not speak of the instant but of general laws of a global moment, of what is valid forever. It is a thoughtful and meditative work.  Without doctrinal preteritions because it brings us closer to both the definitive finding and the eternal doubt.” _cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad91_5cf -5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_  

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Nicola Constantine

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Nicola Costantino (1964) was born in Rosario, Argentina,  where she studied Fine Arts with a specialization in sculpture.

Cochon sur canapé (1992), his first solo show, is considered a precursor of contemporary Latin American art. In 1994 he entered the Fundación Antorchas Barracas workshop coordinated by Suárez and Benedit and moved to Buenos Aires, where he lives and works. In 1998 he represented Argentina at the Sao Paulo Biennial, and since then he has participated in numerous exhibitions in museums around the world, including Liverpool (1999), Tel Aviv (2002) and Zurich (2011). In 2000 he held a solo show at Deitch Projects (New York) and his Corset made of human fur entered the MOMA collection. In 2004 he presented Animal Motion Planet, a series of orthopedic machines for unborn animals, and Savon de Corps, a work that had a great impact in the press. The meeting with Gabriel Valansi in 2006 meant his entry into the world of photography, with more than 30 works in which his leading role is constant, embodying different personalities of art and photography. Her interest in video performance led her to create the self-referential work Trailer (2010), her first cinematographic production, and to approach a paradigmatic female historical figure such as Eva Perón in Unfinished Rhapsody (55th Venice Biennale, 2013).

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