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Art Museum of the Americas celebrates the bicentennial of Argentina with two exhibitions

The Art Museum of the Americas of the OAS presents two exhibitions in celebration of the bicentennial of Argentina: Argentina in Focus: Visualizing the Concept—Cristian Segura/Sergio Vega and Emilia Gutiérrez: Drawings and Paintings. These exhibitions are linked to the Smithsonian Latino Center's "Argentina at the Smithsonian 2010" which commemorates this country's Bicentennial. This series will feature programs and exhibitions which highlight the history, arts, culture, and science of Argentina.

Argentina in Focus: Visualizing the Concept—Cristian Segura/Sergio Vega

On view September 16-November 21, 2010 Art Museum of the Americas 201 18th Street, NW Washington, DC 20006 Gallery talk and press preview: Wednesday, September 15 at 12 noon Opening reception: Wednesday, September 15 at 6:30 pm

Cristian Segura (b. 1976), who lives in Tandil (a city in the province of Buenos Aires), follows a line of work that comprises a range of strategies to deal with the mechanisms and variability of contemporary art, always with a critical and reflexive eye on the institutional terrain. He took an early interest in art, which led him to become a museum volunteer at fourteen, an exhibitions coordinator at nineteen, and the director of Tandil’s municipal art museum at twenty‐three. His experiences with navigating issues surrounding museum work motivated him to produce artwork of his own, and these themes remain vital to Segura’s output. He explores the conservation of the artistic histories that are housed in the institution, the dependence on political and public support, as well as the idea of permanence and preservation of the arts when a museum can fall victim to its own poor management and a lack of interest, or even literally be consumed by fire. In Incendio en el museo (Fire in the museum, 2010), a piece created for this exhibition, Segura simulates flames on the exterior of the Art Museum of the Americas, calling attention to the real possibility of objects vanishing from the natural world in a matter of hours or minutes.

In Skateboarding at MACBA, Museu d’ Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Patinar en el MACBA, Museu d’ Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2008), Segura addresses museums being used for purposes beyond what they are intended for. His piece includes imagery of skateboarders using the steps outside of the institution for performing tricks, incorporating the hat of a security guard who would be tasked with preventing such use.

With a parrot speaking into a microphone in its galleries, and its façade in flames, the Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of American States announces Argentina in Focus: Visualizing the Concept—Cristian Segura/Sergio Vega. This exhibition of multi‐media artists from Argentina marks AMA’s new focus on both emerging and established contemporary artists of the Americas. In the words of OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, the AMA “will concentrate in showcasing cutting‐edge works by forward‐looking and talented artists from the Americas. “

Curated by Alma Ruiz of The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, this exhibition fuses contemporary trends that took shape geographically apart and that belong to different generations. Vega represents the Argentine Diaspora in the US, while Segura has emerged from a local Argentine setting.

Sergio Vega (b.1959) is interested in the concept of Latin America as an exotic place and therefore desirable to outsiders for reasons that only account for a small portion of reality at most. His studies of Argentine‐born Spanish‐colonial historian Antonio de León Pinelo, who believed the Garden of Eden to be located in the center of South America, led Vega to embark on the body of work known as Paradise in the New World, which continues to evolve.

The artist creates exotic worlds of felt tree cutouts which light struggles to penetrate, documents the slashing and burning of forests, and confronts viewers with images of slums and extreme poverty. The images are a harsh contrast to the concept of Latin America as a place of quasi‐biblical exoticism and mythology.

In Across the Corpus Callosum (Al otro lado del corpus callosum, 2005), Vega invites a parrot to speak at a museum. The stuffed parrot perches behind a microphone before a color sampler that shows the range of hues found in parrots’ feathers. Vega had noticed that the Bible depicts parrots as the only non‐human animal capable of speech, as well as the only animal that exists in every color gamma. Exhibition curator Alma Ruiz notes that “the parrot’s anthropomorphic qualities and its mimicry skills have been discussed by scientists, philosophers, and writers: this time it is Vega, a visual artist, who invites the parrot to speak in the museum, the very institution that Segura has held under a microscope.” Argentina in Focus: Visualizing the Concept—Cristian Segura/Sergio Vega brings together the work of two Argentine artists of different generations. Art collector Dani Levinas, who brought this project to AMA and co‐organized the show, was much inspired by conceptual artist and critic Brian O’Dougherty‘s legendary phrase “Space now is not just where things happen; things make space happen.”

Levinas wanted to bring two artists from his native Argentina whose works reflect the diversity of contemporary art in that country: “Sergio Vega brings the world into the museum and Segura takes the museum out into the world."

Segura has participated in many solo and group exhibitions, among them: "Museum Expansion," John Erickson Museum of Art (variable locations) (2010); "I Trienal de Chile: Los límites del arte," Santiago (2009); "Talleres abiertos: ¿Quiénes somos? ¿De dónde venimos? ¿A dónde vamos?," Hangar, Barcelona (2008); "Macrocash," Centro de Expresiones Contemporáneas, Rosario, Argentina (2007); and "Mirador urbano: La (ex)posición del espectador," Galería del Poste, Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, Buenos Aires (2006).

Vega has an extensive exhibition history. His work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions around the world, among them: "Paradise: Real Time," Ikon Eastside, Birmingham, England (2010); "Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art: Against Exclusion," Moscow (2009); "Crocodilian Fantasies, Palais de Tokyo," Paris (2006); "51st Biennale di Venezia: Always a Little Further," Arsenale, Venice (2005); "Etnografía: Modo de Empleo—Arqueología, Bellas Artes, Etnografía y Variedades," Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas (2002); "Sonsbeek 9: Locus Focus," Kronenberg Mall and Arnhem Museum of Modern Art, Arnhem, the Netherlands (2001); and "Kwangju Biennale 2000: Exotica Incognita," Kwangju, South Korea (2000).

CLICK HERE to read curator Alma Ruiz’s catalog essay “Two Individual Visions.”

This exhibition is linked to the Smithsonian Latino Center's "Argentina at the Smithsonian 2010" which commemorates this country's Bicentennial. This series will feature programs and exhibitions which highlight the history, arts, culture, and science of Argentina.

Emilia Gutiérrez Drawings and Paintings

On view September 15-November 14, 2010 Art Museum of the Americas 201 18th Street, NW Washington, DC 20006

The Art Museum of the Americas announces the opening of Emilia Gutiérrez: Drawings and Paintings, an exhibition organized in collaboration with the Smithsonian Latino Center as part of a wide‐ranging series of cultural events in celebration of the bicentennial of Argentina. This exhibit is curated by María Teresa Constantin.

Emilia Gutiérrez’ paintings and drawings include stirring ghostly figures, quietly walking the streets, hunched over tables, or perched at bar stools in virtually catatonic states. Her pensive, bald children convey the loneliness and bewilderment of childhood with a quiet melancholy. María Teresa Constantin muses that “maybe it’s the artist displaying her own true self to the others as a portrait of her quiet wanderings through life.”

Although a member of the Argentine art group Grupo de Plata (Silver Group), Gutiérrez often opted to operate in her own self‐defined world. She did not participate in the group’s public functions, and sometimes required prodding to exhibit her work at all. As the art world moved toward performance art and happenings, Gutiérrez remained a stalwart proponent of figurative painting. By the 1980’s, health problems forced her to stop painting. It was at this time that she produced the drawings that are included in this exhibit. The sketches that she began to divert her attention from the grief of being unable to paint soon became an impressive body of work in their own right. According to Constantin, “the themes continue to be the same; lonely women, uncommunicative couples…a world of pain and stillness.”

Born in Buenos Aires in 1928, Emilia Gutiérrez studied at the Fernando Fader School and at the workshop of Argentine artist Demetrio Urruchúa. Since her death in 2003, there has been a renewed interest in and re‐evaluation of her work.

Also on view on the museum’s first floor during this time span will be Argentina in Focus: Visualizing the Concept—Cristian Segura/Sergio Vega. For more information on Argentina in Focus: Visualizing the Concept—Cristian Segura/Sergio Vega or Emilia Gutiérrez: Paintings and Drawings, please contact Greg Svitil at 202 458 6016 or [email protected].

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.

Reference: AVI-232/10