Tag Archives: Art Exhibits

Geografia del Cuerpo comes to Washington DC

In conjunction with the Secretaria de Cultura del Ciudad de México, the Museo Archivo de la Fotografia, and Glen Echo Photoworks, I have brought a condensed version of Geografia del Cuerpo to inaugurate the One Wall Gallery at Glen Echo Photoworks. One Wall Gallery is a pop-up gallery space by the front door, designed to provide flexible exhibitions of shorter duration and bring life to an otherwise under-utilized space.

Given the time constraints and the space constraints, the exhibit was limited to one piece each from 11 of the 13 artists participating in the original exhibit in Mexico City (two were unable to participate). The form of presentation had to be re-interpreted to fit the space, and I think it turned out nicely.

The banners were printed on our 24″ Epson wide-format printer. The original concept was going to be mounting each image on a 12″x12″ backing board and hang them in three rows from curtain wires (like the one you can see at the top of the photo). This, unfortunately, is one of IKEA’s worst products – the metal feet that you screw the posts into that attach to the wall do not fit the threads on the posts a significant amount of the time. I do have a tap-and-die set I can (and will, when I get around to it) fix the threads with so we will be able to use the hanging wire in the future, but that in the moment necessitated the re-envisioning of the exhibit into what you see here today.

The artists represented in the show are, in alphabetical order (names will be linked to their Instagram accounts):

Juan Pablo Cardona (also here)

Hugo Cartas

Scott Davis

Jorge Diaz

Gloria Frausto

Memo Hojas

Guillermo Meda

Santy Mito

Lulu Puig

Arlette Ramos

Felipe Chito Tenorio

The show opened September 2 and will remain up through October 4 on the One Wall Gallery at Glen Echo Photoworks, 7300 MacArthur Boulevard, Glen Echo, Maryland. Photoworks is located inside the ground floor of the Arcade Building.

Artists, Florence Biennale

By pure fortunate happenstance, I was in Florence for the opening of the Biennale, an every-two-years art exhibition featuring contemporary artists across all media. Photographers, painters, sculptors working in ceramics, glass, wood, and bronze, video artists and installation artists were all represented. As I was there on opening day, some of the works were still being installed, and many of the artists were present. I got a chance to meet two of them- Xu Lishou and Amir Jabbari.

Xu Lishou
Xu Lishou

Xu Lishou is a painter from Taiyuan, currently residing in Italy. His work features traditional Chinese themes but painted in a very modern style, using mixed media such as paper pulp and rope to provide high-relief texture. We spoke a little through a friend of his who translated.

Amir Jabbari
Amir Jabbari

I met Amir in the light well of the exhibition hall (the hall is mostly underground, inside the Fortezza Basso, a Medici-era military fortification which still has use today as a base). I had stepped in to photograph the stairways, and he was smoking a cigarette. He is a video artist from Tehran. I did not get to see his video, alas, as it was one of a group of videos on continuous loop in the video exhibition room, and I was feeling under the weather and couldn’t wait for it to come back up.