Of Bridges & Borders, phase III - CCEBA | Centro Cultural de España en Buenos Aires
Exhibitions
Shifting Borders + In Transit
Shifting Borders
14 May – 3 July 2011
Opening: May 14
CCEBA San Telmo location: Balcarce 1150
In Transit, Jorge Miño
11May – 25 June 2011
Opening: May 11
CCEBA location at Paraná 1159
CCEBA announces the opening of the third phase of the Of Bridges & Borders project at both, its new San Telmo location (formerly Padelai), and at its location on Paraná Street. This international exhibition brought together a selection of works by sixteen outstanding artists:
Mexican artists Daniel Alcalá, Carlos Amorales, Marcela Armas, Erick Beltrán; Swiss artist Frédéric Post; Spanish artists Ignasi Aballí, Santiago Cirugeda, Santiago Sierra; Cuban artist Diango Hernández; Peruvian artist Ishmael Randall Weeks; Egyptian artist Hassan Khan; North American artists Peter Garfield, Nicola López; and Argentine artists Eduardo Basualdo, Matías Duville and Jorge Miño.
These artists from different backgrounds and generations employed an array of vocabularies in their varied visions of globalization, an issue that has become increasingly important in recent years.
This third phase of the project focused on the morphology of borders, not only from a geographical perspective, but also from a poetic and aesthetic point of view. It attempts to offer the public the experience of a ceaselessly connected world, where borders have become both virtual and political, invisible but latent. Through a multidisciplinary approach, the visitor has access to intangible fragments of daily life in the contemporary world as well as the possibility of engaging with new universes, ones strangely correlated to the current world.
Shifting Borders + In Transit
Curated especially for CCEBA San Telmo and Paraná by the artist Sigismond de Vajay, this exhibition consisted of works produced considering the architectural specificities of each location and taking advantage of their theatrical characteristics.
Shifting Borders at CCEBA San Telmo made use of thirteen spaces and provided the artists with complete freedom to develop interesting formulations. Works included video installations, interventions, performances, installations, sculptures, large-format drawings and interactive works. In Transit at CCEBA Paraná consisted of billboards and photoprints by Jorge Miño that absorbed the space, creating a vertiginous environment.
The project also included a series of concerts and sound performances that resonate with the show. These pieces were performed by dual visual-sound artists. The program ranged from contemporary classical music to experimental electronic music by way of local cumbia, shaabi from Cario, Caribbean reggaetón, French musette and recontextualized Italian hits from the 1960s to the 1980s. These concerts took place on the day of the opening and during weekends over the course of the exhibition.
Produced in conjunction with the CCEBA (Centro Cultural de España de Buenos Aires) for its new San Telmo location, Shifting Borders + In Transit was the third phase of “Of Bridges & Borders”, a co-production of KBB (Kültur Büro Barcelona / Buenos Aires) and Toit du Monde (Vevey / Switzerland).
Phase III was supported by: Pro Helvetia (Swiss Art Council), AVINA Foundation, CIA Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas, the paint company Plavicon, Durlock, the Mexican and the Swiss Embassy in Argentina and the Buenos Aires city government through its Law for Patronage of the Arts through the following companies: Gas Natural and NH Hoteles.
About “Of Bridges & Borders”
Of Bridges & Borders is a cross-border multidisciplinary cultural project. Like certain plays and films, its origin lies in a book that was produced and published in October 2009.
In that publication, visual artists, musicians, architects and thinkers from seventeen countries presented a wide range of positions and artistic visions.
In 2011 in Buenos Aires, Of Bridges & Borders entailed a series of exhibitions, urban interventions, concerts and lectures whose formats range from installations, video art, film, architecture, music and performances. The underlying interest is to provoke new forms of reading through proximity, difference, comparison and contradiction in the cultural sphere.
Phase II “Beautiful Bridge, # 1” was a colorful and geometrical painted intervention by the Swiss artists Lang/Baumann that took place under the pedestrian bridge of the faculty of located on Figueroa Alcorta Avenue. A public art piece that remained and later became emblematic for the city.
Phase III “Fronteras en Mutación” took place at the CCEBA (Spanish Cultural Center) in its San Telmo neighborhood (former Padelai) and Paraná street headquarters, with an international exhibition that brought together a selection of 16 outstanding national and international artists who created site specific projects.
These artists from different backgrounds and generations employed an array of vocabularies in their varied visions of globalization, an issue that has become increasingly important in recent years.
This third phase of the project focused on the morphology of borders, not only from a geographical perspective, but also from a poetic and aesthetic point of view. It attempts to offer the public the experience of a ceaselessly connected world, where borders have become both virtual and political, invisible but latent.
Phase IV “Lluvia de arañas sobre el Riachuelo” a strong visual open-air opera which took place on and around the Boca bridge for the Night of the Museums, with the participation of three groups of musicians from different backgrounds, mixing opera, electronics, jazz, minimal and experimental music.
Phase V presented “From Real to Surreal” at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Buenos Aires (MAMBA) where works by the English, Lliam Gillick, the Belgian, Hans Op de Beeck, the Chinese, Yung Shun and the German, Carsten Nicolai, were installed, specially designed for the exhibition room.
