A U C T I O N

LIVE Thursday, May 2nd, 2019 | 7:00 PM Grand Ballroom The , NY

1230 , NEW YORK, NY 10029 212.831.7272 El Museo del Barrio is the nation’s premier Latino and Latin American cultural A U C T I O N institution. Our mission is to present and preserve the and culture of these important and growing communities through our ever-expanding Permanent A U C T I O N Collection, acclaimed exhibitions, innovative programs, and renowned bilingual LIVE education initiatives. Founded 50 years ago by artist and educator Raphael Thursday, May 2nd, 2019 | 7:00 PM Montañez Ortiz and a coalition of Puerto Rican educators, artists, and activists, Grand Ballroom El Museo del Barrio is at the forefront of cultural empowerment for more than 60 LIVE million Latinos. Today, El Museo del Barrio serves more than 100,000 visitors each Thursday,The May Plaza 2nd, Hotel2019 | 8:00 PM New York, NY year, thus becoming a cornerstone of El Barrio and a valuable resource for New York Grand Ballroom City. The Plaza Hotel New York, NY

1230 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10029 212.831.7272 El Museo del Barrio’s Gala is celebrating its 26th anniversary.

El Museo del Barrio’s Gala is a spectacular event that brings together Latino and non-Latino cultural luminaries and leaders in business, finance, fashion, entertainment, art and philanthropy, to raise crucial funding for the .

This year, we are delighted to honor three individuals who have distinguished themselves in the fields of design, and cultural patronage. These include: artist, one of the founders and the frst Director of El Museo del Barrio Raphael Montañez Ortiz for Excellence in the Arts; philanthropist, an entrepreneur, businesswoman, and a collector of contemporary art Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, as an Outstanding Patron of the Arts; and entrepreneur, real estate developer and art collector Craig Robins, as an Outstanding Patron of Art & Design.

Introduction | Page 2 El Museo del Barrio presents a Live Auction featuring works of art selected by Patrick Charpenel and Viridiana Mayagoitia.

Patrick Charpenel El Museo del Barrio’s Executive Director.

Lives and works in . A philosopher by training, Charpenel has worked intensively as a curator and collector, highlighting the paradoxes and ambiguities of the contemporary art world. Prior to his appointment at El Museo del Barrio, Charpenel served as Director of ’s Museo Jumex. He has presented several exhibitions in various forums within and outside Mexico, including Franz West: Elefante Blanco at the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; The retrospective Gabriel Orozco at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City; the Art Public section of the 2009 and 2010 editions of Art Basel Miami Beach; 10.2 International Artists-in-Residence 2010 edition at Artpace San Antonio, Texas; and the Botanical Garden art project in Culiacán, Mexico. He has published critical essays in specialized journals, and served as a Council Member for the Centre Pompidou-Latin America, Paris, France in 2010.

Introduction | Page 3 L I V E A U C T I O N

LIVE Auction & Exhibit Thursday, May 2nd, 2019 7:00 PM The Grand Ballroom The Plaza Hotel New York, NY

Should you wish to participate as an absentee bidder, please, contact [email protected] for more information and instructions.

LIVE Auction | Page 4 The Auctioneer: Gabriela Palmieri.

Gabriela Palmieri is the founder and principal of Palmieri Fine Art, Inc., a bespoke full-service Art frm based in New York City. Prior to establishing PFA, Inc., Ms. Palmieri led a distinguished 17-year career at Sotheby’s, where she rose to Chairman of Contemporary Art, Americas, and was recognized as one of the most respected in the auction industry as a leading specialist in Post-War Art. Ms. Palmieri founded PFA, Inc. to provide her clients with an unbiased, objective and transparent counsel in the increasingly complex and nuanced art market. In her independent role, she is committed to providing impartial advice and counsel for established and new collectors aimed at making informed acquisitions, which requires careful analysis and due diligence. As a seasoned researcher and scholar, Gabriela brings to bear all the relevant factors about the artist, the market trajectory for the artist’s work, the particular work taken in the context of the artist’s career, provenance, condition, literature and comparative uniqueness. In the evolving art market; Ms. Palmieri recognizes that client advocacy was as important as advisory, a role that she spearheaded during her tenure at Sotheby’s where she was the client advocate on every transaction.

Prior to joining Sotheby’s, Ms. Palmieri received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History cum laude at Boston College in 1997, and she achieved her Master of Arts and advanced to Ph.D., standing at the University of Chicago. Ms. Palmieri has been certifed by the Appraisers Association of America since 2013 and adheres to the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice. She is a sought-after charity auctioneer and is the auctioneer for ICI (Independent Curators International); the Bronx Museum of Art; Maestro Cares among many others. In 2015 she was featured in the publication Nuevo New York alongside Nina Garcia, Carolina Herrera, and Narciso Rodriguez as one of the most influential

The Auctioneer | Page 5 ARTWORKS Artists and Artworks | Page 6 Firelei Báez

Excursion at Sea, 2019

Acrylic and ink on paper

Dimensions: 12 x 12 in 30.5 x 30.5 cm

Starting bid: $7,000

Firelei Báez | Page 7 Center for the Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando, FL; The Museum of , New York, NY; The Studio Firelei Báez Museum, , NY; Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, OH; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; Taller * Born in 1981, Dominican Republic. Puertorriqueno, Philadelphia, PA; and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT. Báez is the recipient of many awards: most recently, the College Rendering her subjects in complex layers of pattern and imagery, New York-based Art Association Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work (2018), the Future artist Firelei Báez casts cultural and regional histories into an imaginative realm, Generation Art Prize (2017), and the Chiaro Award (2016). Her work belongs to the where visual references drawn from the past are reconfgured to explore new permanent collections of The , New York, NY; Kemper Art possibilities for the future. In exuberantly colorful works on paper and canvas, large- Museum, St. Louis, MO; Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; The Cleveland Clinic Fine Art scale , and immersive installations, Báez combines representational cues Collection, Cleveland, OH; Phillip and Tracey Riese Foundation, New York, NY; San that span from lavish textiles and wallcoverings with colonial-era floral motifs, to Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton calligraphic patterns, hair textures, feathered headdresses and beaded jewelry. College, Clinton, NY; Sindika Dokolo Foundation Collection, Luanda, Angola; Spelman Often featuring strong female protagonists, Baez’s portraits incorporate the visual College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; The Jean-Marc Salomon Foundation for languages of regionally-specifc mythology and ritual alongside those of science Contemporary Art, Annecy, France; BNY Mellon Art Collection, Pittsburgh, PA, and fction and fantasy, to envision identities as unfxed, and inherited stories as Tiroche DeLeon Collection, Jaffa, Israel. perpetually-evolving. These empowered fgures’ eyes most often engage directly with the viewer, asserting individuality and agency within their varied states of flux. ABOUT THE ARTWORK Born in Santiago de los Caballeros to a Dominican mother and a father of Haitian descent, Firelei Báez’s concerns with the politics of place and heritage can be traced back to her own upbringing on the border between Hispaniola’s two neighboring countries, whose longstanding history of tension is predicated in large part by ethnic difference. Báez’s work ties together subject matter mined from a wide breadth of diasporic narratives. In addition to self-portraiture, past series have examined ciguapas, elusive and cunning female creatures from Dominican folklore; tignons, head-coverings women of color were legally required to wear in 18th century New Orleans; and the iconography of the Black Panther Movement. Báez often paints directly onto historical material, such as found maps, manuals, and travelogues, layering fgures over them. By rendering spectacular bodies that exist on opposite sides of intersecting boundaries—between human and landscape, for example, or those reinforcing racial and class stratifcation—Báez carries portraiture into a liminal space, where subjectivity is rooted in cultural and colonial narratives as much as it can likewise become untethered by them.

Firelei Báez (b. 1981, Dominican Republic) received an M.F.A. from Hunter College, a B.F.A. from The Cooper Union’s School of Art, and studied at The Skowhegan School of Painting and . In 2019 her work will be the subject of solo exhibitions at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and the Mennello Museum of Art, Orlando, FL. Other forthcoming projects include the Firelei Báez (b. 1981) Modern Window at The , New York, NY, as well as a group exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, CA. The artist Excursion at Sea, 2019 recently participated in the 2018 Berlin Biennale, and was also featured in biennials Acrylic and ink on paper Prospect.3: Notes for Now (2014), Bronx Calling: The Second AIM Biennial (2013), and 12 x 12 in El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files (2011). Her signifcant 2015 solo exhibition Bloodlines 30.5 x 30.5 cm was organized by the Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL and traveled to the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA. El Museo del Barrio thanks the generous donation provided by Firelei Báez and James Cohan, New York. Other recent solo exhibitions of Báez’s work have been presented by Witte de With

Source and image: Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. Firelei Báez | Page 8 Sandú Daríe

Untitled, 1960s

Acrylic on masonite

Dimensions: 122 x 61 cm (48 x 24 in) Signed “Darie” at lower right

Starting bid: $80,000

Sandú Daríe | Page 11 ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Sandú Daríe Sandú Daríe (b. 1981)

* B. 1908, Romania Untitled, 1960s D. 1991, Havana, Cuba Acrylic on masonite

Romanian-born artist Sandú Daríe grew up in France and was trained initially as a Dimensions: lawyer, and moved to Havana in 1941, taking Cuban nationality. In his compositions, 122 x 61 cm (48 x 24 in) the triangle predominated in combination with vertical and horizontal lines. He also Signed “Darie” at lower right used interchangeable mobile panels. One of the most important developments for Cuban concretism occurred in 1949, when Sandú Darié began a fruitful A pioneer of Cuban concrete abstraction, Sandú Daríe was constantly preoccupied correspondence with Gyula Kosice, the influential leader of the Argentinian concrete with the exploration of spatial relationship, forms geometrically interlocked, light and movement Madí. Darié’s early embrace of Kosice’s theories of rationalism and color as well as with viewer participation in the motion, perspective and movement of materialism helped shape the evolution of hard-edge Cuban abstraction in the his works. 1950s. Later he was a member of the Diez Pintores Concretos group active from 1959 to 1961. The development of Cuban geometric abstraction and, specifcally, the El Museo del Barrio thanks the generous donation provided by formation of Los Diez, coincided with the radical political and cultural shifts that Ella Fontanals-Cisneros. raged throughout the country in the 1950s.

His works evince the basic tenets of Concrete art, a combination of planes, primary colors and form fused with geometric rigor stimulated by Piet Mondrian’s Neoplasticism. His most innovative works include irregular-shaped canvases and structures with moving parts, connoting the principles of the Latin American Madí movement that wished to break from traditional painting and focus on the concrete and physical reality of art.

Sandú Daríe | Page 12 Gonzalo Fonseca

Untitled, 1953

Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 20.5 x 29.65 in 52.07 x 75.3 cm

Starting bid: $20,000

Gonzalo Fonseca | Page 13 ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Gonzalo Fonseca (b. 1922 - d. 1997)

Untitled, 1953 Oil on canvas Dimensions: 20.5x 29.65 in 52.07 x 75.3 cm

El Museo del Barrio thanks the generous donation provided by Gonzalo Fonseca Cecilia de Torres, Ltd. * B. 1922 Montevideo, . * D. 1997 Seravezza, .

In 1942, Fonseca quit his architectural studies in order to pursue an artistic career. Working under the direction of Joaquín Torres-García, Fonseca joined the artist’s workshop, where he participated in the group’s collective exhibitions. In 1945 Fonseca traveled with other Taller Torres-García members through Argentina, Peru, and Bolivia to study pre-Columbian art. This experience, along with numerous trips throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa during the 1950s, profoundly affected Fonseca’s formal and theoretical approach to art.

Although Fonseca left the College of Architecture in Montevideo as a youth, an emphasis on structure and architectonics is present throughout his oeuvre. As a teenager, he taught himself to sculpt in stone and later returned to such sculptural practices after studying ceramics in Spain in 1953. Fonseca moved to the United States in 1958 and later divided his time between New York and Italy, where he created large-scale sculptures.

Artworks by Fonseca are included at The of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museo Municipale, Pietrasanta, Italy; and the Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, among other collections. The artist’s works are also featured in numerous public spaces around the globe, including Tokyo; Palo Alto, California; New York; Reston, Virginia; and Montevideo.

Source and image: Courtesy of Cecilia de Torres, Ltd. Gonzalo Fonseca | Page 14 Marcius Galan

Bandeirinhas (bunting), 2013

Painted Iron, nail and string Dimensions variable

Starting bid: $25,000

Marcius Galan | Page 15 ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Marcius Galan Marcius Galan (1972) Bandeirinhas (bunting), 2013 * Born in 1972, Indianapolis, United States. Painted iron, nail and string Lives and work in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Dimensions variable

The sculptures and architectural installations of Marcius Galan disrupt the familiar and In Bandeirinha (bunting) seemingly unyielding sheets of iron have been bent, folded the banal, twisting the function of objects in order to encourage a reconsideration and suspended encouraging a reassessment of the familiar and a disruption of how of their shapes. Playing with visual assumptions and evoking colors and geometric we expect materials to behave and function. shapes employed by his neo-concrete ancestors, Galan redefnes the objects and how we look at them. El Museo del Barrio thanks the generous donation provided by Marcius Galan and Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil. Recent solo exhibitions include: Instrumentos de Precisão, Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, Ribeirão Preto, Brasil (2018); Mará-obi, Capela do Morumbi, São Paulo (2018); Line Weight, Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin (2017); Planta / Corte, Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo (2015); Arquitecturas del Desarraigo, Ideobox Artspace, Miami (2014); Diagrama, NC-Arte, Bogotá (2013); Geometric Progression, White Cube, London (2013).

Recent group exhibitions include: Plural Domains – Selected work from the CIFO Collection, Bienal de Cuenca, Museo de la Ciudad, Cuenca, Equador (2018); MAM 70, Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, (2018); Avenida Paulista, MASP - Museu de Arte de São Paulo (2017); De lo espiritual en el arte, MAMM - Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (2016); Brazil, Beleza?! Contemporary Brazilian Sculpture, Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague (2016); Imaterialidade, Sesc Belenzinho, São Paulo (2015); Empty House, Luhring Augustine, New York (2015); Arbeit und Freundschaft, Pivô, São Paulo (2014); Inside, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014); Cruzamentos: Contemporary Art in Brazil, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2014); 30th São Paulo Biennial (2013); Blind Field, Kannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavillion, Illinois (2013).

Art collections holding his work include: Museu Serralves, Portugal; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Museum of Fine Arts Houston, USA; Jumex Collection, Mexico; CACI Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim, Brazil; Cifo Cisneros Fontanals, USA; The Zabludowicz Collection, England; Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil.

Source: Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil. Marcius Galan | Page 16 Image: Courtesy of the artist, photo by Benjamin Westoby. José Carlos Martinat

Sin título, 2018

Wall extraction

Dimensions: 53.1 x 27.1 in 135 x 169 cm

Starting bid: $18,000

José Carlos Martinat | Page 17 José Carlos Martinat | Page 18 ABOUT THE ARTWORK

José Carlos Martinat

* Born in 1974, Lima, Perú.

He has exhibited extensively internationally, including exhibitions at: Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Los Angeles, (2017), Museo de Arte de Zapopán, México (2017), XII Bienal de la Habana, Cuba (2015), VII and X Mercosur Biennale, Brasil (2009 and 2015), Saatchi Gallery, London (2014), Tate Modern, London (2013), Biennale of Visual Arts, Ireland (2012), Noord-Holland Biennale, Netherlands (2012), Museum of Latin American Art, Los Angeles (2012), IX Shanghai Biennale, China (2012), Estação Pinacoteca, Brazil (2011), Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2011),Trienal Poligráfca de Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico (2009), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Vigo, Spain (2007), IFA (Germany), La Laboral, Spain (2007), MALI, Lima (Lima), among others.

His work is part of international collections, including: Tate Modern (London, UK), MoMA (New York, USA), Malba (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Saatchi Collection (London, UK), Mali (Lima, Perú), among others.

He is represented by Galería Leme in São Paulo and Revolver Galería (Lima-Perú y Buenos Aires-Argentina). José Carlos Martinat (b. 1974)

ABOUT THE ARTIST Sin título , 2018 Wall extraction During the last decade, the artwork of José Carlos Martinat has converted 53.1 x 27.1 in appropriation as his indelible signature. Unlike the artistic trend of the 80’s, focused 135 x 169 cm through arguable questions, on the originality in arts, Martinat’s approach about appropriation involves the extraction of elements from the streets -peeling-off pintas José Carlos Martinat is known for his unique take on appropriation and políticas, the collection of gypsum molds from the foundries where heroes of the 19th recontextualization. This piece belongs to his Ejercicios Superfciales series, in which century were molten in bronze, or take molds from equestrian fgures with aluminum he makes use of already existing images through the process of extraction of paint paper which is re-contextualized afterwards, to comment on the different uses of and volumes by using resin and fberglass, thus imprinting the appropriated images public space and political stories of certain places. onto the new work. This particular piece was extracted from the artist’s own studio wall. However, perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of its practice that resorts to appropriation lie in the accumulation of fragments of information that float on the El Museo del Barrio thanks the generous donation provided by World Wide Web, the defnitive public square in our globalized world. Many of these José Carlos Martinat and Revolver Galeria, Lima/Buenos Aires. works are based on the uninterrupted emission of thermal printers -similar to those used in old ATMS- of small pieces of paper with texts extracted randomly from the Internet. These texts refer to a specifc search order; a word, fed by the artist to a software program. In some cases, the artist later associates the result of the random search with a material emblem of the exhibition space.

- Sharon Lerner

Source: Courtesy of the artist and Revolver Galeria, Lima/Buenos Aires. José Carlos Martinat | Page 19 Jesús “Bubu” Negrón

Papel de Colillas, 2008

Cigarette paper

Dimensions: 24 x 22 x 3/8 in (61 x 55.9 x 0.9 cm)

Starting bid: $4,000

Jesús “Bubu” Negrón | Page 20 ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Jesús “Bubu” Negrón

* Born in 1975, Puerto, Rico. Jesús “Bubu” Negrón (b. 1975) Jesús “Bubu” Negrón is an artist whose work is characterized by minimal interventions, the re-contextualization of everyday objects and a relational Papel de Colillas, 2008 approximation to artistic production as a revealing act of historical, social and Cigarette paper economic proportions. Negrón lives in the neighborhood of Puerta de Tierra in San 24 x 22 x 3/8 in Juan, where he is part of the Brigada PDT, a grass-roots community organization for (61 x 55.9 x 0.9 cm) the preservation and wellbeing of the neighborhood, its history and its people. El Museo del Barrio thanks the generous donation provided by After completing an artist residency with M&M Proyectos in Puerto Rico (2002) his Jesús “Bubu” Negrón and Henrique Faria, New York. work has been featured in multiple projects, notable ones include: Abubuya Km0 organized by Kiosko Galeria, Bolivia (2014); Living as Form organized by Creative Time, New York (2012), curated by Nato Thompson; The Obscenity of the Jungle with Proyectos Ultravioleta for SWAB Barcelona in Spain (2013); the 1st Bienal Tropical in Puerto Rico (2011), where he was awarded the “Golden Pineapple” prize for best artist; Interpretation of the Soneto de las Estrellas with Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico (2013), curated by Taiyana Pimentel; Trienal Poligráfca in Puerto Rico (2009), curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Julieta González and Jens Hoffmann; Sharjah Biennial in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2007), curated by Mohammed Kazem, Eva Scharrer and Jonathan Watkins; Whitney Biennial, New York (2006), curated by Chrissie Iles and Phillipe Vergne; the T1 Torino Trienale in Italy (2005), curated by Francesco Bonami and Carolyn Christov–Bakargiev; and Tropical Abstraction at the Stedelijk Bureau Museum in Amsterdam (2005), curated by Ross Gortzak. His work has been reviewed in Flash Art, , Journal des Arts, the LA Times, The Art Newspaper, Art Nexus and Frieze Magazine.

Source and image: Courtesy of the artist and Henrique Faria, New York. Jesús “Bubu” Negrón | Page 21 Vivian Suter

Untitled, nd

Acrylic on canvas

Dimensions: 70.87 x 96.85 in 180 x 246 cm

Starting bid: $35,000

Vivian Suter | Page 22 ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Vivian Suter

* Born in 1949, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Vivian Suter was born in 1949 in Buenos Aires. She has painted in Basel, Vienna, Africa, Bern, Rome and Panajachel, and has lived in Panajachel, Guatemala, since 1982.

Panajachel Traveling through North and Central America in 1982, Vivian Suter arrived in Panajachel — a village on the Atitlan Lake — and stayed on, making her home on the grounds of a former coffee plantation. Since the early 1980s, most of her artistic works have been created against this backdrop, and many have become a part of it. Vivian Suter (b. 1949)

The gravilea, avocado and mango trees, originally planted to protect the coffee Untitled, n.d plants, immerse the area in their green shade all year round. A steep walkway, half Acrylic on canvas steps, half mountain path, leads up to Vivian Suter’s studio, which looks out over the 70.87 x 96.85 inches tips of the treetops down to the village of Panajachel with its lake and volcanoes. (180 x 246 cm) The artistic works created up there are about the wind, the rain, the volcanoes, and El Museo del Barrio thanks the generous donation provided by the vastness and clarity of the tropical landscape. Vivian Suter and Gaga, Mexico City and Los Angeles. Down below, in the shadow of the coffee plantation, is a second studio. The view through the open gables reaches no further than the leaves of the banana plants growing densely in front of the house. That’s where the close-ups are created: the ever-repeating motif of the forbidden fruit, the gaze turned on oneself or within.

Vivian Suter’s pictures and the photographic works and paper sketches she creates alongside them are depictions, commentaries and interpretations of her outer and inner surroundings. But they are also appropriations of these. They appropriate themselves to their surroundings, and in turn, are appropriated by these very surroundings.

In Vivian Suter’s unsettled life there has always been one constant feature: her art. Wherever she is, there will be a place where she creates new work and is surrounded by the pieces she has created so far.

Source and image: Courtesy of the artist and Gaga, Mexico City and Los Angeles. Photo by Omar Olguín. Vivian Suter | Page 23 Adrián Villar Rojas

De la serie “La inocencia de los animales”, 49, 2013

Inkjet print, watercolour, acrylic paint and pencil on paper

Dimensions: 21 x 29.7 cm. (8.27 x 11.69 in.)

Framed Dimensions: 36.4 x 43.3 x 3 cm. (14.33 x 17.05 x 1.18 in.)

Starting bid: $10,000

Adrián Villar Rojas | Page 24 Adrián Villar Rojas ABOUT THE ARTWORK

* Born in 1980, Rosario, Argentina.

Adrián Villar Rojas has built a practice working across media to create immersive environments and experiences that seem to be in a state of perpetual space- time travel. Evolving over years towards the design of topography-based, mutant, organic-inorganic systems, Villar Rojas invites viewers to become explorers of an unpredictable microcosmos of his design, where the future, the past, and alternate versions of our own present interact as a constantly changing totality. By way of Adrián Villar Rojas (b. 1980) this world building, Villar Rojas posits the question: what if we could see and think De la serie “La inocencia de los animales”, 49, 2013 of ourselves - humanity - from an alien perspective; detached, unprejudiced, even Inkjet print, watercolour, acrylic paint and pencil on paper amoral? What if we could see and think of ourselves from the border of our own 21 x 29.7 cm. (8.27 x 11.69 in.) completed path? El Museo del Barrio thanks the generous donation provided by Villar Rojas’s method is emphatically site-specifc. The beginning of every project is a Adrián Villar Rojas and kurimanzutto, Mexico City / New York. process of personal immersion into the social, cultural, geographical, and institutional environment in which he and a group of project-oriented collaborators will work. During the production of his exhibitions Adrián Villar Rojas continually records This inherently peripatetic procedure defnes him as an itinerant artist, who, through different work situations: worktables with materials, everyday objects and conceptual constant travel and research, has developed deep engagement with a diversity of sketches, as well as drawings produced solely to pass the time, which fnd a way into sites across the globe. the repertoire of photographic images, as do photographs of individual sculptural elements and their interiors comprising iron or wooden frameworks, or of the remains Leaving scarce traces of its passage through the world due to its perishing of earlier installations. As the studio situations are in a permanent state of change, materiality and parasitical integration with its context of intervention, Villar Rojas’ the photographs serve as documentation, and also as the individual frames of a project seems to operate against the notion of commodity, undermining the tacit making-of. rules which ensure an effective circulation in the art feld: endurance, reproduction, trading, and transport. His work demonstrates its own temporality, offering - at the Some of the photos form the starting point for further interventions: German Peralta, risk of its own oblivion- what is doomed to disappearance, what cannot -and perhaps a permanent member of Villar Rojas’ team, transforms individual scenes, elements should not - be preserved. and motifs from photographic printouts on his behalf, drawing over them and painting them in watercolors. While the actual procedure of producing the respective Villar Rojas has been the recipient of numerous awards including Sharjah Biennial exhibition progresses, Peralta transfers the present into a drawn or painted parallel Prize, awarded by the Sharjah Art Foundation (2015), The Zurich Art Prize at the world, in which past, present, future, reality and fction overlap. Museum Haus Konstruktiv (2013); the 9th Benesse Prize in the 54th Venice Biennale, (2011); the Nuevo Banco de Santa Fe Scholarship for Young Artists (2006); and the The series of drawings called De la serie “La inocencia de los animales” arises frst prize in the Bienal Nacional de Arte de Bahía Blanca at the Contemporary Art from Adrián Villar Rojas’s La inocencia de los animales (the innocence of animals) Museum of Bahía Blanca, Argentina (2005). an immersive installation that resembles both an amphitheater of antiquity and a postapocalyptic cavern. Consisting of cracked, crumbling clay and concrete, the Recent solo exhibitions include The Theater of Disappearance, The Geffen work points forward and backwards—seemingly to the very beginnings of civilization Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles (2017); NEON Foundation at Athens National and its aftermath. Villar Rojas’s work also serves as a place to impart and absorb Observatory, Athens (2017); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz (2017), The Metropolitan knowledge by acting as the location of the EXPO School. Speaking of his work, Museum of Art, New York (2017). Participation in international group exhibitions Villar Rojas says, “What I wanted to do was work as if I was not human. As if the including 14th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2015); 12ª Bienal de La Habana, La Habana human species didn’t exist anymore. I mean, as far as we know, for 6,000 light years (2015); Sharjah Biennial 12, Kalba (2015); dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel and Kabul (2012) around us, the only beings that are producing symbols, that are thinking—in the and 54th International Art Exhibition: La Biennale di Venezia, Argentina’s National planets, in the universe—are humans. So when humans disappear from the face of Pavilion, Venice (2011). the earth, then there will be no more art. What could you do in those last moments? What would the last art look like?” Adrián Villar Rojas lives nomadically.

Source and image: Courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City / New York. Adrián Villar Rojas | Page 25 Photo by Diego Pérez, 2013. THANK YOU

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