Versos Americanos
In Collaboration with Sicardi Gallery
Curated by Mary Magsamen and Camilo Gonzalez
Artist Miguel Angel Rojas in attendance
Saturday, January 18th, 7:30PM
Location: Aurora Picture Show, 2442 Bartlett
Aurora Members Free, Non-Members $10
Aurora Picture Show and the Sicardi Gallery present a screening of Contemporary Latin American Video Artists on Saturday, January 18 at Aurora Picture Show. These artists have unique voices that express ideas about war, politics, identity and landscape with a poetry that can be meditative, expressive or humorous. Aurora Curator Mary Magsamen and Media Arts Education Manager Camilo Gonzalez co-curated this program, and also collaborated with Sicardi Gallery to gather some of the most engaging artists working today.
The selection encompasses the different views of established artists like Juan Manuel Echavarria with his recognized piece Bandeja de Bolivar and Miguel Ángel Rojas which includes his landmark video, Caquetá, featuring a soldier shown washing his face with his arm stumps, the result of an explosion in the Caquetá region. Both artists live and work in Bogotá and are considered two of the most influential in Colombia. In addition, pieces from Mexico City like Manimal, by Carlos Amorales are great examples of the high quality animation being crafted as an art form and the work of Argentinean Liliana Porter depicting playful vignettes that make our minds wonder in between the gap of object and meaning.
The showcase will bring even more voices to the mix with cutting edge artists from all over latin America like Sara Ramo (Brazil), Miguel Angel Rios (Mexico), Oscar Muñoz (Colombia), Melanie Smith (Mexico), Francis Alÿs (Argentina/Mexico), Ícaro Zorbar (Colombia) and Julian Santana (Colombia).
Works Included in the program:
Miguel Ángel Rojas (Colombia), Caquetá, 7:40
Caquetá features a soldier shown as he washes camouflage paint from his face, a task complicated by the loss of his arms in an explosion in the Caquetá region of Colombia.
Miguel Ángel Rojas (Colombia), Corte en el Ojo, 6:48
A video made from the artist’s surreptitious photographs of encounters between gay men at B-movie theaters in Bogotá in 1979. The resulting images are ghostly records of a mostly invisible community.
Miguel Angel Ríos (Argentina/Mexico), Return, 3:30
Return uses the childhood game of spinning tops to consider the transience of life and the mechanics of power.
Miguel Angel Ríos (Argentina/Mexico), The Ghost of Modernity, 5:00
The Ghost of Modernity series takes the viewer through the borders of the peripheral landscapes of Peru, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, using the glass cube (an indicator of the Modern), to contrast the geography with the iconography of the art world in the First World.
Miguel Angel Ríos (Argentina/Mexico), Rooom Rooom, 6:20
Standing in a single file line, Ríos’s childhood friends re-enact a children’s game, in which a spinning a cord is attached to a small wooden tablet. In the video however, each wooden tablet marked with a date on which a city experienced a terrorist attack. The lingering echo suggests the repercussions of past traumas.
Oscar Muñoz (Colombia), Hombre de Arena, 3:00
A figure arises out of sand and is washed back out to the ocean.
Oscar Muñoz (Colombia), La Linea del Destino, 2:20
Water in hands calls attention to the precarious nature of human life, narcissism, and altruism.
Melanie Smith (Mexico), Parallax of Failure, 2:48
This is a four-part split screen video projection originally recorded in Super 8. A diffusely painted neutral canvas takes up the entire space on the monitor screen and zooms out with increasing velocity. The viewer watches a cyclist who rides his bike on a country road towards the horizon. He falls down and then continues cycling. This is where the film ends and begins anew.
Sara Ramo (Brazil), Planos Móveis, 5:41
Lane ropes in a swimming pool slowly move with the water, creating an abstract movement of lines.
Carlos Amorales (Mexico), Manimal, 5:26
By combining three-dimensional animation techniques with two-dimensional drawings of silhouettes, the artist produces the effect of a virtual shadow theater. In a post-apocalyptic landscape dominated by barren trees and two glowing moons, a pack of wolves migrates from the wilderness to an urban environment by crossing an abandoned airstrip where several passenger planes are positioned.
Ícaro Zorbar (Colombia), Algún día te Diremos Adíos, 3:05
Raindrops make a mesmerizing and playful dance on glass.
Juan Manuel Echavarría (Colombia), Bandeja de Bolivar, 3:14
A historical artifact disintegrates into dust, referencing war and the country’s long battle with drugs.
Liliana Porter (Argentina), Matinee (Excerpts), 5:28
Excerpted from the full version of Matinee (20 minutes), these short vignettes of carefully chosen small figurines and other objects in monochromatic empty backgrounds, address larger philosophical questions and emotional states.
Francis Alÿs (Mexico), Children's Game #13: Piñata, 8:16
From his series Children’s Games, this piece is simultaneously playful and poetic sparking childhood memories.
Julian Santana (Colombia), TRANSFERENCIA DEL GEN R A UN CEREAL COMUN, 2:49
How to transfer the 'Revolutiuonary' gene to a common cereal takes place.
