Viewpoint: 2011 CIFO Grants and Commissions Program Exhibition

Viewpoint:
2011 CIFO Grants &
Commissions Program Exhibition
September 9–November 6, 2011

Open Thursdays: 1–9pm
Friday–Sunday: Noon–5pmCIFO Art Space
1018 North Miami Avenue
Miami, FL 33136
+1.305.455.3380

www.cifo.org

Viewpoint: 2011 CIFO Grants & Commissions Program Exhibition commemorates the eighth annual exhibition dedicated to the foundation’s grants programs at the CIFO Art Space. The emerging artists selected as recipients of CIFO’s 2011 grants are: Laura Belém (Brazil), Marcius Galan (Brazil), Fritzia Irizar-Rojo (Mexico), Begoña Morales (Peru), Amalia Pica (Argentina), and Antonio Vega (Mexico). The mid-career artists selected for CIFO’s Commissions award are: Tania Bruguera (Cuba) and Alicia Villarreal (Chile). This year also commemorates the first time in four years since the foundation has awarded its prestigious Achievement Commission, this time to David Lamelas (Argentina) whose artistic contribution in the past 30 years has been a pioneering force in the development of conceptualist practices and has laid the framework for a younger generation of artists who have expanded these practices in to their own. The exhibition includes works by all the artists with the exception of Tania Bruguera, whose thought provoking performance will take place in January 2012.

The title of the exhibition, Viewpoint, plays on the idea of a point as a place from which to view. Starting from the artist, through the viewer and back, it is the relationship with and through the artwork that is the focus of this exhibition. It documents the transition of works (whether in video, photography, performances, sound, space interventions and drawings) from a personal place where a work is born as a subjective idea, to the exhibition space where it is transformed into an object to be experienced.

Artists David Lamelas, Begoña Morales and Alicia Villarreal peripherally employ documentation tactics to create views of time, place and space. The works in Viewpoint then move from alternative proposals for documenting place to pieces that create space anew such as those by Marcius Galan and Laura Belém. On the other hand, Amalia Pica, Antonio Vega and Fritzia Irizar-Rojo’s pieces examine the viewer’s position in social and physical space and how this determines their ability to perceive and access the concepts explored in each of these works.

These works explore our position in place, reformulate our relationship to space and explore the importance of our positions on communication, interaction and cooperation. They explore the position of the viewer, the executed, the outsider, the affected, the listener, the winner and the loser through a series of enabled views, retold narratives and histories. As a result Viewpoint becomes not only a passageway in to each individual practice, but a slideshow of the dynamic dialogue that characterizes contemporary art today.

Related Exhibition Programming

Thursday, September 8, 2011 6–9pm
Viewpoint Opening Reception
RSVP: rsvp@cifo.org / 305-455-3338
Sponsored by Bacardi

Thursday, September 15, October 6 and October 20, 2011 7pm
Cinema @ CIFO; Select film screenings pertaining to themes found within the context of the exhibition

Saturday, September 24 and October 22, 2011 1–3pm
Cultural Family Spot @ CIFO (limited space)

Saturday, October 15, 2011 2–5pm
CIFO Art Wall Unveiling: CIFO has teamed up with Primary Flight and local artist Johnny Robles to create a block-sized mural at the CIFO Art Space.
RSVP: rsvp@cifo.org / 305-455-3338

About CIFO
The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, is a non-profit organization established in 2002 by Ella Fontanals-Cisneros and her family to support artists who are exploring new directions in contemporary art. CIFO fosters cultural understanding and educational exchange through three primary initiatives: a Grants and Commissions Program for emerging and mid-career visual artists from Latin America; an exhibitions program showcasing work by Latin American artists and international contemporary art from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection at the CIFO Art Space; and foundation-initiated support for other arts and culture projects.