LUIS ROLDÁN. Eidola

Opening Reception: Thursday April 2, 6-9 pm Exhibition runs through May 16, 2015 Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 11-6 pm

Henrique Faria Fine Art is pleased to present Eidola, Luis Roldán’s third exhibition in the gallery and his fifth in .Eidola , plural of eidolon, meaning a specter or phantom, or an idealized person, is a presentation of new work by Roldán that includes painting and objects. The title of the exhibition is invoked through Roldán’s practice of re-purposing and re-contextualizing found objects, objects that had a previous “life” and function before their reincarnation as objets d’art. Mariangela Méndez writes in the exhibition text, “Ruins are crumbles of our material world, abandoned fragments, hollowed out of the divine spirit that once animated them. Images give us hope, that particular hope of accessing the world without limits.” The interaction of the paintings and sculptures is meant to represent the cyclic dialogue of life, death and rebirth, of how life informs art and how art, in turn, informs life.

The materials that compose the wooden sculptures were, in fact, originally hat molds. Standing in for the human head, these molds were used to transform felt into pieces of fashion. As styles changed and hats were no longer an essential item of clothing, the molds became obsolete, relics of a different time; but their likeness to the human skull established them as eidola. Méndez remarks, “what is really remarkable of the skull as image is the effect it has on recognition. It looks like a figure with something missing; it is at once a body and its ghostly double.” Through the act of painting Roldán has vindicated these molds by re-inscribing the marks of creativity upon them.

In response to the enlivened objects, Roldán created paintings that play with light schemes and patterns that move across the wooden pieces. The paintings surround the objects, establishing a dynamic visual relationship built by color and creative intention. Méndez continues, “The sculptures and paintings organized in the exhibition space are fragments that invite us to continue completing, enlarging, augmenting, researching the myriad hypotheses that might justify their existence. But mostly, their purpose is to provoke our imagination, to make us creators of stories and narratives by suggesting an interplay between observation and materialization, surface and volume, void and being, possessions and desires.” In this way, the conversation goes back and forth, from the dimensional to the plane, from the figure to the abstract, from the external world to the internal, from part to whole.

35 East 67th St. New York, NY 10065 | Tel 212 517 4609 | www.henriquefaria.com Luis Roldán (Cali, Colombia, 1955) studied Art History at the École du Louvre (), engraving at S.W. Hayter (Paris) and Architecture at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá, Colombia). He has exhibited extensively at institutions internationally. A selection of solo shows include: Expiación, Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño, Bogotá (2014); Presión y flujo, Galería Casas Riegner, Bogotá (2014); Mechanical Ventilation. Interactions with Willys de Castro and Other Voices, Henrique Faria, New York (2013 and 2011); Transparencias, Museum of , Medellín (2011); Continua, Sicardi Gallery, Houston (2007); Acerca de las estructuras, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, San José, Costa Rica (2006) and Permutantes, Sala Mendoza, (2005). Selected group shows include: the First Biennial of Cartagena, 2014; the Tenth Monterrey Biennial, 2012; the 53rd Biennale, Latin America Pavilion, 2009; and Dibujos, , Buenos Aires (2004). He has won numerous awards such as the Luis Caballero Award (Bogotá, 2001) and the National Award in Visual Arts (Colombia, 1996). His work is included in important collections such as Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Museo del Barrio and Deutsche Bank Collection, New York; FEMSA Collection, Monterrey; Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami and the Museums of Modern Art in Buenos Aires, Bogotá and Medellín. He lives and works both in New York City and Bogotá.New York, Philadelphia, and Ilha Grande, Brazil.

For press inquires please contact Eugenia Sucre, Director, at [email protected]

35 East 67th St. New York, NY 10065 | Tel 212 517 4609 | www.henriquefaria.com JAIME DAVIDOVICH. Tapes Period. 1969-1975

Opening Reception: Thursday April 2, 6-9 pm Exhibition runs through May 16, 2015 Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 11-6 pm

Henrique Faria Fine Art is pleased to present Tapes Period. 1969-1975, Jaime Davidovich’s second exhibition in the gallery and one of many held in New York City since he first moved from Buenos Aires in 1968. This exhibition will feature a selection of tape monochrome paintings, proposals for tape interventions, videos and a site-specific installation developed specially for the gallery’s fireplace. The variety of media featured in the show correlates directly to Davidovich’s fascination with tape as a versatile, artistic material and demonstrates the range of subjects Davidovich addresses in his work.

With an interest in abstract painting, Davidovich conceived of the application of tape to a surface as akin to a monochromatic painting. While his earlier works such as Collage Tape Painting 5 and Tape on Paper 4 (both 1969) feature strips of tape overlaid across a large sheet of paper, Davidovich soon began to devise installations of tape that would overtake the traditional frame and occupy entire walls and rooms. With their large scale, these environmental installations posed a challenge to the viewer’s perception of constructed, interior space. As Aimé Iglesias Lukin notes in the exhibition text, “tape covers the space at the same time as it reveals space, accentuating, but yet still distorting, the architectural surroundings.” Where was once a white wall, a corner, a ceiling, in its place a shimmering, expanse of color that seems to take on a dimensionality. Proposals for such projects can be seen at the gallery, like Adhesive Tape Project (1973), which shows a whole gallery room obscured by tape, and the Tape Project: Cincinnati (1974), which was realized at the Not In New York Gallery that same year.

The inclusion of the video La Patria Vacía (The Empty Homeland ) (1975) is notable in that it is one of the few works in which he examines his identity as Argentine immigrant and his experience of Argentina’s recent history and current events as viewed from a self-imposed exile. As in his other video works, tape is present in this piece, but its qualities have a more sinister function. Rather than covering or obscuring the surface underneath it, the tape is instead censoring and directly referencing the civil rights limitations that were becoming commonplace in Argentinean politics. Strips of black tape are placed over a monitor showing the footage of former Argentine president Perón’s funeral and pieces of tape obscure views of the Argentinean neighborhood in Jackson Heights, Queens. From its various

35 East 67th St. New York, NY 10065 | Tel 212 517 4609 | www.henriquefaria.com applications across Davidovich’s artworks, “through the formal exploration of abstraction and phenomenology and the political reference to censorship,” Iglesias Lukin highlights the double function of tape as a material, that it “covers while at the same time reveals.”

Davidovich is also featured in a solo show, Adventures of the Avant-Garde, running concurrently at the Bronx Museum for the Arts.

Jaime Davidovich (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1936) was educated at the National College in Buenos Aires, Argentina; the University of Uruguay; and the School of Visual Arts in New York. Under the auspices of E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology), he carried out a collection of works in which he replaced canvases with adhesive tapes. His experiments with tapes originated the project Tape as Art/Art on Tape, in which Davidovich proposed to confront the experiences produced by these two heterogenic mediums. His foray into video work enabled him not only to exhibit in some of the most important cultural spaces in the United States, but also to receive grants from The National Endowment for the Arts and The New York State Council on the Arts, among others. In 1976, together with other artists, he founded Cable Soho and served as its first program director. One year later, he became a founding member of the Artists Television Network (ATN), an institution aimed at promoting television artists and their work, where he served as the director between 1977 and 1983. Davidovich has widely exhibited at museums and galleries in the US and internationally at institutions including the American Museum of the Moving Image, New York; MUMOK, ; MoMA, New York; Artium, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, ; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires; the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; among others. He has received grants from the NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, the Creative Artists Public Service Program, the New York State Council of the Arts, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Davidovich lives and works in New York City.

For press inquires please contact Eugenia Sucre, Director, at [email protected]

35 East 67th St. New York, NY 10065 | Tel 212 517 4609 | www.henriquefaria.com