Three Perspectives

Exhibition in downtown Miami features new work by three artists from Latin America selected through CIFO’s 2007 Commissions Program

This spring, the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) will present 3 Perspectives: CIFO 2007 Commissions Program Artists showcasing newly-commissioned work by the three artists from Latin America selected through CIFO’s 2007 Commission Program: conceptual artist & painter Eugenio Espinoza (Venezuela); painter Alvaro Oyarzún (Chile); and video artist José Alejandro Restrepo (Colombia).

The exhibition, featuring new work by each artist alongside selections of their previous work, will be on view from March 17 to May 6, 2007 at the CIFO Art Space at 1018 North Miami Avenue. The exhibition is curated in house by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill CIFO’s Chief curator and Laura Lavernia, CIFO’s assistant curator. Three curators have been invited to lead public talks with the artists and to write essays on the artists: Cuauhtemoc Medina (Mexico) on Restrepo, Cecilia Brunson (Chile) on Oyarzún, and Ruth Auerbach (Venezuela) on Espinoza.

A bilingual illustrated catalog for 3 Perspectives will be published. The catalogue will be launched at a special event prior to the close of the exhibition.

“CIFO’s goal is to broaden global understanding of the work of artists who are making a significant impact in Latin America but are less familiar to U.S. audiences,” said CIFO Director and Chief Curator Cecilia Fajardo-Hill. “The Commissions Program gives these artists a forum to develop and present new work, and provides residents and visitors to Miami with the rare opportunity to learn about their important contributions to contemporary art.”

CIFO established the program in 2006 to support and share the work of mid-career visual artists from Latin America who are exploring new directions in contemporary art. Submissions are reviewed by an international panel of leading artists, curators and art professionals, and two to four artists are selected each year to receive funding for a new project and an exhibition at CIFO. CIFO launched the Commissions program last May with the presentation of Savage Modern/Moderno Salvaje by Alexander Apóstol (Venezuela) and Surfaces/Superficies by Magdalena Fernández (Venezuela).

Miami-based Venezuelan artist Eugenio Espinoza is the recipient of the 2007 CIFO Achievement Commission, a special honor recognizing the significant contributions of an artist from Latin America that have an extensive career track by providing them with broader exposure. “The Achievement Commission is especially significant, as it offers an international platform for artists with an important trajectory—an exchange that enriches both artist and audience alike,” noted Fajardo-Hill.

Espinoza will present a series of painted canvases—each using the grid structure that has become a signature element of his work—creating mounted structures that oscillate between sculpture, installation and painting. This series is a response to Espinoza’s 30-year conceptual oeuvre that has expanded and challenged the rigidity of the modernist grid, while also using it as artistic language. The canvases will be presented alongside historic photographs, artist sketchbooks and a new installation, Negativa Moderna, a direct response to his 1972 work, Impenetrable--an installation of a grid on canvas covering the floor of the exhibition space thereby denying public access.

Installation artist Alvaro Oyarzún of Chile will present a new project entitled, La imagen pintada o los más bellos recuerdos de la vida del Capitán Zanahoria (The Painted Image or the Most Beautiful Memories of the Life of Captain Carrot). This large-scale piece, encompassing an entire gallery wall, is composed of some 500 small-scale drawings, paintings and photographs. Oyarzún refers to his work as a visual montage of various intertwined stories where the characters—amorphous archetypes of artists—carry out one plot. In The Painted Image, these characters question the existence of art and the relationship between art and the artist. The piece also explores the relationship between painting and the contemporary image through photographic documentation and the multiplicity (and inherent irony) of Oyarzún’s humorous drawings as both didactic and illustrative tools.

José Alejandro Restrepo, considered one of the pioneer video artists in his native Colombia, will produce the newly-commissioned video installation Protomárties, a contemporary interpretation of the santoral, or calendar of the lives of saints. Restrepo will present Protomárties along with a selection of works—a video/sculpture and three video pieces—all which, through the use of new media, re-contextualize religious iconography and myth. The dramatic, baroque visual expressions of Christianity in Latin America are a key influence in Restrepo’s work, offering “a rich laboratory from which to develop a repertoire of figures and bodies that can be re-interpreted within a contemporary context.”

Three Perspectives
CIFO 2007 Commissions Program Artists

mit Eugenio Espinoza, Alvaro Oyarzun, Jose Alejandro Restrepo