“Venezuela, The Best Kept Secret of the Caribbean: A Multi-disciplinary Evening of Venezuelan Visual Arts”
in conjunction with our current exhibit, Jump Cuts: Venezuelan Contemporary Art, Coleccion Mercantil
April 19, 2005
6:00 – 7:00 PM Video Program
7:00 – 9:00 PM Panel Discussion
Americas Society
680 Park Ave @ 68th St, New York
T 212-249-8950
Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat, 12:00-6:00 PM
Free Admission
www.americas-society.org
There is more to Venezuela than oil, Kinetic Art, and Geometric Abstraction. In line with our mission to promote understanding of the social, political, economic, and cultural issues that define and challenge the Americas today, the Americas Society is pleased to invite you to learn more about Venezuelan contemporary visual arts and culture.
6:00-7:00 PM Video Program
Please join us for a presentation and discussion by Ruth Auerbach, Director of the Sala Mendoza and curator, who will introduce a book about the 45th Anniversary of the Sala Mendoza, an alternative model for a Kunsthalle in South America. She will present a selection of contemporary video works by Alexander Apstol, Alessandro Balteo, Juan Nascimento & Daniela Lovera, and Javier Tllez. The discussion will be moderated Yates McKee, a New York based writer currently enrolled at the Whitney Museum International Studies Program.
7:00-9:00 PM Panel Discussion
The Americas Society presents a Panel Discussion with artists, scholars, curators, and critics examining different aspects of contemporary art production in Venezuela. The Panel will include presentations by Luis Perez Oramas (Adjunct Curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York), Gabriela Rangel (Director of Visual Arts at the Americas Society), Eduardo Subirats (Philosopher and Professor at New York University), and Javier Tellez (Artist).
Jump Cuts: Venezuelan Contemporary Art, Coleccion Mercantil
This exhibit features twenty-eight Venezuelan artists, including Arturo Herrera, Jose Antonio Hernandez-Diez, Javier Tellez, Carla Arocha, Jose Gabriel Fernandez, Alexander Apostol and several U.S. debuts. These works are drawn from the contemporary art section in Banco Mercantil’s extensive art collection in Caracas, Venezuela.
The concept of the exhibit draws on Jean Luc Godard’s use of the jump cut, a cinematographic term that refers to the editing of film shots causing a disjunctive and visible break in the film’s continuity, camera position, or time. The work of Venezuelan artists in this exhibit highlights dialogues with the past and present reflecting breaks from Kinetic Art, and the idea of modernity as a concept in crisis. Thematic groupings within the exhibition are: Art-Thought, Necrophilia, The Modern Vernacular, and From the Object to its Representation. These are the jump cuts in the history of Venezuela’s visual art from the 1970s to the present.
Jump Cuts is organized by the Banco Mercantil and the Americas Society. It is curated by Tahia Rivero, Curator of the Coleccion Mercantil; Jesus Fuenmayor, Independent Curator; and Lorena Gonzalez I., Coleccion Mercantil, jointly with Gabriela Rangel, Director of Visual Arts, Americas Society.
The exhibit inaugurates the Americas Society’s 40th anniversary celebrations and runs through May 21st, 2005.
For further information, contact Angela Herren at aherren@as-coa.org.