Francis Alys
The Latin American art world is fairly insular, but the third edition of MACO: Mexico Arte Contemporaneo -- the contemporary art fair that took place in April -- was a marginally international affair. Only about a third of the 77 galleries were from Latin America, with Mexico's own OMR, Kurimanzutto, and Nina Menocal joined by David Zwirner, Arndt and Partner, Marianne Boesky, and Hauser & Wirth in the un-air-conditioned 5-storey Expo Reforma convention center off Paseo de la Reforma. Sales were so-so, and improving on recent years, but the market has not caught up with the boom of the US-European axis, even with Mexican first lady Marta Sahagun de Fox cheer-leading at the opening and organizers Zelika Garcia and Spot magazine publisher Enrique Rubio (pop star Paulina's brother) lending glamour to the proceedings.
For those with interest in art as well as in price tags, the city offered an array of delights. The Tamayo Museum had a show of Ed Ruscha horizontal landscapes curated by Dave Hickey, and a superb survey of the underappreciated optical magician Jesus Rafael Soto. The ancient Collegio de San Ildefonso was filled with a huge retrospective of photographs, videos, and notebooks by Francis Alys, the Belgian artist long resident in Mexico. The contemporary art museum in a converted church near downtown provided the perfect darkened setting for the kinetic light works of Jluio le Parc. And the Autonomous University's modern art museum was architecturally transformed by Thomas Glassford who lowered the translucent ceiling panels to form an elegant ravine between luminous sloping white walls.
Buses trucked the art crowd to the city's outskirts where Eugenio Lopez presented Los Angeles and Mexican artists from his Jumex Collection at the juice company's warehouse. The Jumex Foundation, led by Abaseh Mirvali, is the city's major art sponsor, stepping in to lend assistance to myriad projects, such as Fernando Camacho's blue light poles dotting the forest of Chapultepec Park one evening. Taco Inn owner Cesar Cervantes opened his modernist home and contemporary collection to throngs of visitors, and the uneasy photographs of the body amassed by Teofilo Cohen in recent years were the subject of a remarkable exhibition, as well as one of the great opening parties of the week. Which is not to mention the Precolumbian treasures in the Archaeological Museum, the new folk art museum, Diego Rivera's many murals, Frida Kahlo's house, and the European Old Masters in the stunning private collection of Juan Antonio Peres Simon, now on view at the Thyssen in Madrid.
Gabriel Orozco
And if you were lucky, you got a chance to visit Gabriel Orozco preparing a graphite-inscribed whale skeleton for installation in the cavernous atrium of the city's new national library. There was more street art as well. The fair coincided with Labour Day in Mexico, and thousands of trade unionists marched down Paseo de Reforma, pausing before the US Embassy for speeches denouncing US anti-immigration policy. Amid chants of "chinga tu madre" directed at Uncle Sam, an artist who called himself Rama set fire to his colorful papier-mache satirical sculptures, which featured presidents Vincente Fox and George Bush, prime minister Tony Blair, and the Pope. "Artists have no other way to express themselves," he said, referring to one work which placed Mr Fox atop a red-white-and blue phallus.
The following month saw the 15th edition of Argentina's contemporary art fair ArteBA (19-24 May), and with the country's economy resurgent after the disastrous 2001 peso devaluation, the event showed evidence that the elegant capital's modest art scene is on the rise. The fair remains a regional event, with nearly all 63 participating galleries and most of the 100,000 visitors coming from Latin America, and BA galleries like Braga Menendez, Daniel Maman, and Ruth Benzacar doing most of the business as Brazilian and other dealers looked on. This year, for the first time, the foundation invited more around 150 collectors and curators from around the world, but they did not seem to be buying much. ArteBA - a private foundation dedicated to stimulating Argentine contemporary art -- provides matching funds for foreign museum acquisitions. The Blanton Museum in Austin, Texas, got help to purchase a Jac Leirner wall piece from Baro Cruz Gallery of Sao Paulo, and Museo del Barrio in New York acquired a kinetic piece by Venezuelan Elias CrispÃn from Ms de Torres.
New York dealer Cecilia de Torres, who works with Oscar Prato of Montevideo, told me there still isn't much interest in international contemporary work among the conservative Argentine population. With the exchange rate at 3 pesos to the dollar, and restrictive VAT taxes on imports, homegrown talent is a more affordable option. This was born out in visits to private collections - including arteBA president Mauro Herlitzka, plastic surgeon Angel Tedesco, and Ignatio Liprandi -- which rarely extend beyond the art of Argentina. (There are exceptions, such as the diverse holdings of Jorge Helft, nephew of the great Paris and NY dealer Paul Rosenberg.)
Leon Ferrari
The irony is that local artists have talent on a par with their international counterparts. Visits to the studios of senior artists found Leon Ferrari still using his acid humor to debunk the hypocrisy of the Church and State, and Luis Benedit making beautiful collages of polished bone. Rogelio Polesello has an enormous modernist cement house and studio in which he makes hard-edge abstractions that involve distorting lenses. Then the younger generation includes artists like Guillermo Kuitca - one of the few truly international artists from Argentina - and rising stars like Nicola Constantino who creates intriguing kinetic machine creatures and enigmatic casts of cow fetuses in suitcases. (The national relationship with cattle and political violence crops up again in the work of Marcela Astorga whose designer accessories are covered in fabric patterned like raw beef.)
Guillermo Kuitca
With the city's modern art museum closed for refurbishment, the main attraction is Malba, the stunning private museum created a few years ago by Eduardo Costantini to house his superb Latin American collection. During the fair, Malba hosted temporary exhibitions of Gego (co-organised with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), Fabian Marcaccio, and Francis Alys. The museum loses money, but even without much-needed public support, it is challenging the National Museum of Fine Arts for preeminence -- despite the older museum's historical collection of Argentine fine arts and Old Masters, and its remarkably good assortment of modern art from North America and Europe.
Elsewhere in Buenos Aires are cultural gems like the museum dedicated to Xul Solar, the Latino Klee whose cosmic watercolors were admired by his close friend Borges. The Proa Foundation in the Boca district showed private collections of noted artists during the fair, and the gallery at Telefonica, the phone company owned by Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, had a show of Eduardo Kac, noted for his genetic engineering of a fluorescent bunny. Combined with the superb and affordable restaurants, distinguished buildings, balmy climate, and warm cosmopolitan population, the cultural fair makes the long journey to Buenos Aires well worthwhile.
But the cities of Latin America are still not considered primary cultural destinations among Europeans and Americans. Not that there is no curiosity about the art of Latin America - in academia it is a rising field in cities like Houston (MFA), Los Angeles (LACMA and Getty), and Austin Texas (Blanton). But the market is still seen as somewhat marginal, though that appears to be changing, slowly. When collectors like Eugenio Lopez in Mexico buy internationally, they develop a reputation and people want to go see what all the fuss is about. Dealers want to sell their artists to his Jumex collection, and as other collectors follow his lead the city builds up steam.
Nothing woke up European and American dealers more than the recent Damien Hirst show organised by Hilario Galguera in Mexico City. This was an enormous undertaking with an extremely difficult installation of works that were made in England and shipped all the way to Mexico just for this gallery show - which is on until 31 August. Observers imagined that Damien was doing just a little show near his vacation home on Mexico's Pacific coast. It can't compete with exhibitions at Larry Gagosian's galleries in New York or London, or with Jay Jopling of White Cube in London. Well, the show was excellent in content - a critique of Catholicism and notions of eternal life - and truly "sensational" in its appearance - vitrines of animal carcasses and impaled hearts that play up the macabre cast of Christian iconography, with a healthy dose of skulls and blood for good measure. The show, mounted in a modest neighborhood of Mexico City, sold out completely, and many of the works sold to Mexicans. And what's more, a new smaller version of his shark in a tank sold for millions of dollars to the Korean Samsung collection for their gallery in Seoul. The conclusion one may draw is that a successful and renowned artist like Hirst doesn't need galleries in Europe and the US. He can sell anywhere. And it suggests that if the economy in Latin America continues to improve, inevitably cities like Mexico and Buenos Aires will increasingly become participants in the international art world circuit.
Jason Edward Kaufman
Jason Edward Kaufman is the longtime Chief US Correspondent to The Art Newspaper of London. Based in New York, he reports and interprets news of the field from politics and the market to trends in contemporary art and the burgeoning museum sector. He also has published exhibition reviews, book reviews, interviews, and critical essays in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian, Art & Antiques, Art Review, and numerous other newspapers, periodicals, and broadcast media.
)
)
)