jueves, abril 23, 2009

Días de arte contemporáneo en México

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Ayer empezó la feria de arte contemporáneo Zona Maco en el Centro Banamex, hoy se inaugura una exposición de la Colección Jumex y el 25 de abril Gabriel Orozco presenta su última obra en una galería del poniente de la ciudad. Parece que la crisis aún no golpea tanto al mercado del arte mexicano, eso habla de la resilencia que se ha creado en los últimos años. Copio del reporte de la AFP al respecto:

Crisis provides inspiration for Mexico art fair

MEXICO CITY (AFP) — One of Mexico's hottest art venues, a juice factory outside the capital, opens a new show Thursday in a busy art week proving Mexico's growing stature on the international contemporary art map.

With Mexico badly hit by the slowdown in its closely-tied northern neighbor, the crisis appeared to provoke inspiration rather than desperation among many involved in the exhibit of works from reputedly the largest contemporary art collection in Latin America.

Titled "Nothingness and Being", a play on the 1943 Jean-Paul Sartre text "Being and Nothingness", the exhibit brings together around 100 works from the Jumex collection to explore the human condition through ideas of emptiness, failure of communication, absence, void, skepticism, and fracture.

"Mexico is currently going through a time of quite strong anguish. (There is) a kind of loss of meaning in usual things. I think this will be very eloquent for the time that we're going through locally," said Mexican artist Eduardo Abaroa, taking part in the exhibition.

Mexico City's contemporary art scene, however, has blossomed in recent years, largely thanks to private collections like Jumex and galleries that have helped give local artists international exposure.

International artists and dealers are pouring into Mexico City this week for MACO Mexico, from April 22-26, a top Latin America contemporary art fair which first began in 2004.

A vast new public contemporary art museum, Muac, also opened in the south of the city last November.

The whole Jumex collection of more than 2,000 works including top international artists such as Jeff Koons, is housed in a juice factory in Ecatepec, on the outskirts of the sprawling capital.

Owned by Eugenio Lopez Alonso, the Grupo Jumex food-processing heir, works from the brimming warehouse are regularly used in local exhibits or loaned all over the world.

When Lopez first set up the exhibition space, in March 2001, he met a cool reaction, however.

"In the beginning, people thought he was mad. It's very conceptual, it's very difficult," said Patricia Marshall, an art buyer who has been working with Lopez since 1995.

"We don't have an easy approach. We're not here to please the public," Marshall added.

Howvever, the collection is open to the public for free, by appointment, and Lopez has bought land to open a public viewing space in the more easily accessible Polanco district of downtown Mexico City in 2011.

It has also undoubtably boosted the contemporary scene in a city already bursting with museums of other art works, and even won over some skeptics.

"There's a phenomenon now here that wealthy people want to be art collectors," said Michel Blansube, manager of Coleccion Jumex. "For him (Lopez) it's a long process, a love story."

Artists from India to Albania, as well as many from the United States and Mexico, are represented in the latest Jumex exhibit, which opens Thursday.

The works were selected by Shamim M. Momin, associate curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

"I think the scene in Mexico is incredible, and I have done for quite a while," Momin told AFP.

"Like many areas that have long been overlooked, I think that it has a long way to go."

The curator of the exhibit touching on despair and nihilism said quite a lot of artists she had talked to appeared to be oddly relieved by the crisis.

"You see historically in these periods of shift and change there are opportunities for artists," Momin said. "When things get shaken up, messed up, collapse, interesting things happen."

US artist Alex Hubbard, who also is in the show, agreed.

"We were at this moment of tired and bored and now we're nervous and awake," Hubbard said, alluding to a work by another artist entitled "Bored and Tired".

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