"Las oferentes" (The Offerors) is Carla Grunauer's first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Curated by Lucrecia Palacios, the show consists of a selection of unpublished works, created by the artist during the year 2021, which revolve around imaginary and mythological figures with a modern treatment that recreates the ancient practice of ritual.

As soon as we enter the room, the viewer is struck by a burst of pastel colors and hybrid forms. The sculptures, the discipline in which this artist trained in drawing and engraving has worked for the first time, mark the rhythm of the exhibition. They are figures composed of soft colors and curved lines that include organic materials such as trunks and plants. In her paintings, we can also find bodies that twist and distort.

Inside the exhibition

"Luz mala" (2021) by Carla Grunauer

Inside one of the sculptures

"La cicatriz del tronco" (2021) by Carla Grunauer

 The Museum of Contemporary Art in Querétaro, México, invited five female artists to collaborate on an exhibition to contemplate the role that women have in society. Curator Miryann Díaz proposed a series of dialogues where the five artists could get to know their personal stories and reflect on their role as female artists. The result was Todas Somos Todas, an exhibition that showcases the artists' perspective on the labels placed on women and their understanding of who they are and their value. Todas Somos Todas is built with video performances and photographs to reflect on contemporary social issues that affect women.

Among the selected artists is Mariceu Ethal, a Mexican artist born and raised in Querétaro. Through photography, she found a way to express her emotions, transmit her story, and understand the world. Mariceu traveled to Cuba and stayed with an elderly couple, Ana and Enzo, whose only daughter had migrated to Europe looking for independence and adventure. Mariceu shares her experience living for one week in the couple's house, stating that she could feel the absence of their daughter and that she wanted to fill the space that was left. The result of this experience was a series of photographs titled Iriana in honor of their daughter.
For this exhibition, she chose three photographs that belong to her Iriana Series. It is a story of absence, of feeling lost and vulnerable, and of learning to transcend.

Mariceu Erthal. Self-portrait Inside Iriana’s Bedroom. From the Iriana Series, 2019. Digital photography. 28 x 43 cm.

Mariceu Erthal. From the Iriana Series, 2019. Digital photography.

If we talk about influential works in Art History, we must mention the triptych of the famous Early Netherlandish artist Hieronymus Bosch. The Garden of Earthly Delights, has transcended time, and has shown that it can become the inspiration to articulate a social portrayal of our time. Several artists from different parts of the world reviewed this work and its symbolism, proposing a new interpretation of it, through sculpture, 3D animation, artificial intelligence, sound art, installation, collage, or even a video game.

SPECULUM (2019-2020) by SMACK – Image: Matadero Madrid

The exhibition was organized by Matadero Madrid, Center for Contemporary Creation, where it is located, and Colección SOLO, an international project to support contemporary art, based in Madrid. This project has been collecting and commissioning art inspired by The Garden of Earthly Delights since 2016. The exhibition has almost 20 different works.

Image: Matadero Madrid

Definitely The Garden of Earthly Delights shows a specific context, now, in contemporary times, how can we reinterpret this painting? What is paradise, the earthly world, and hell today? The different artists work on these concepts from new perspectives. We can find topics such as mental health, the excessive use of social networks, or even migration in a constant dialogue with a painting that is more than 500 years old.

Heaven x Hell Series (2020) by Sholim

One of the most interesting elements of this exhibition is the amount of techniques that we can find, from classical elements such as oil or sculpture, to sound installations and artificial intelligence.

El jardín de las delicias (2020) by Lusesita

The exhibition space has been designed by the architects Estudio Herreros, who decided to create a cardboard labyrinth, which, with lighting, generates a mysterious atmosphere similar to the scenes in Bosch's painting.

El jardín de las delicias (2020) by Lusesita

The artists exhibiting their works are: The SMACK collective, La Fura dels Baus- Carlus Padrissa, Mario Klingemann, Mu Pan, Miao Xiaochun, Cassie McQuater, Lusesita, Filip Custic, Cool 3D World, Sholim, Dan Hernández, Enrique del Castillo, Dustin Yellin, Dave Cooper and Davor Gromilovic.

Among the outstanding works, we can find SPECULUM, the proposal by the Dutch collective Smack, a work made up of three huge LED screens measuring 4 x 7 meters each, where the harsh reality of the 21st century is reviewed, with its vices and pleasures.

SPECULUM (2019-2020) by SMACK – Image: Matadero Madrid

Looking for the union between technology and art, the work of the German Mario Klingemann also stands out, who, with his piece The Garden of Ephemeral Details, uses Artificial Intelligence so that his creation is in constant mutation, playing, in this way, with the viewer's perception.

The Garden of Ephemeral Details (2020) by Mario Klingemann– Image: Matadero Madrid

On the other hand, the Spanish artist Enrique del Castillo, decided to question what The Garden of Delights sounds like, thus creating a sound composition on celluloid, which recovers extracts from Josquin Despriez and Adrian Willaert, contemporary composers from the time of Hieronymus Bosch.

Umbráfono II (2021) by Enrique del Castillo

The exhibition will be accompanied by a book, published by Collección SOLO, which explores all the featured artworks, their relationship with the original and with the present. You can go to see the exhibition from October 7, 2021 to February 27, 2022, in Nave 16 at Matadero Madrid.

Image: Matadero Madrid

Exhibition Title: The Garden of Earthly Delights through the artworks of Colección SOLO

Location and dates: Matadero Madrid from October 7, 2021 to February 27, 2022.

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Matadero Madrid on Instagram

The group exhibition "Simbiontes" (Symbionts), at the Centro Cultural Kirchner in Buenos Aires, gathers sculptures, sound art, paintings, video, and installations by emerging contemporary artists -and others not so much- from Argentina, around the pioneering studies on the theory of evolution by Lynn Margulis.

The American biologist demonstrated that the evolution of life has acted through cooperation and genetic exchange between organisms, which she called symbiosis. This caused a great revolution because it contradicts the Darwinian postulates based on competition and survival of the fittest. But this did not only affect the field of natural sciences, as Lynn developed her research from an ecofeminist perspective.

Her message helps to shape a different view, in which we are all interdependent (we cannot survive in isolation from the rest of our peers or outside society) and eco-dependent (we depend on the natural ecosystems that are the physical support that sustains us). The exhibition postulates that biology is a political space. Ecofeminisms denounce that there is a link between capitalism, sexism, and the destructive exploitation of nature.

To rethink the human being and the rest of living beings to inhabit a more just world, "Symbionts" exposes a series of imaginary mutants whose aesthetics are counter-hegemonic. It can also be interpreted as dissident bodies or queer people in contemporary society. Diversity is the banner of this proposal.

"Calamar" (2012) by Miguel Harte

Upon entering the room, the viewer is struck by the large sculpture "Calamar" (2012) by Miguel Harte, one of the most important artists of Argentine "epochal" art of the 1990s. That hybrid creature seems taken from a science fiction movie and produces both rejection and admiration. It is surrounded by the works of Fernanda Laguna, which are visually contrasted by their naive aesthetics. In her surrealist works, the human and the non-human coexist, challenging the pictorial language.

"Burnt!" (2001) by Fernanda Laguna

"I Miss You So Much" (2018) by Fernanda Laguna

In the next sector, "Song I" (2011) by Claudia Fontes shows a small deer on the floor that disintegrates or branches out, made with black threads that climb up the wall in all directions. The oneiric atmosphere generated by this work is interrupted by disturbing noises coming from a box on the floor at its side. This is "Alert States" (2016-2017) by Mariela Yeregui, a piece that combines technology with organic materials -cowhide-. The artist creates the illusion of a cyborg hiding from something or someone.

"Song I" (2011) by Claudia Fontes

"Faking Perfection" is the second solo exhibition of Romanian artist Andrei Tudoran (b. 1987, Slatina) presented at AnnArt Gallery in Bucharest. Tudoran obtained a doctorate degree in painting from the National University of the Arts Bucharest in 2017, where he also works as a lecturer. Although painting is at the core of his practice, he tries to employ the medium more critically. As he states: my current preoccupations aim to investigate possible resources, strategies, conceptual or formal positions that the painting as a traditional medium can deliver in the current context of the excess image.

Image Courtesy of AnnArt Gallery

Along paintings, the exhibition showcases drawings and an installation work - all carefully displayed in each room of the gallery space in a balanced chromatic distribution. There are black and white drawings and coloured paintings with infused neon-like brush strokes. Each work waves a corpus of narratives that try to problematise the profound structural transformations of socio-cultural systems of reference and the reconfiguration of the constructed principles of globalisation and its effects. Each visual representation is filled with an abundance of narratives, symbolically charged, resembling a collage of figures and shapes juxtaposed onto the even surface of the canvas.
Image Courtesy of AnnArt Gallery

Image Courtesy of AnnArt Gallery

Image Courtesy of AnnArt Gallery

Guided by the principle that art cannot exist outside society, the artist shows how the consumption and proliferation of images pushed by the neo-liberal markets, global capitalism and digital technologies creates alienation and the fragmentation of identities. This new reality is informed by a saturation of choices, an amalgam of realities shaped by the hegemony of the images in the post-truth, post-internet era. Essentially, the exhibition "Faking Perfection" explores the configuration of a dystopic world, where excessive consumerism and control over our choices blur the boundaries between what is true and what we perceive as truth from our own personal contaminated frames of reference.

Image Courtesy of AnnArt Gallery

Image Courtesy of AnnArt Gallery

Faking Perfection, AnnArt Gallery, 14.10 - 26.11

On Monday October, 18th in Padua “Photo Open Up”, an international festival of photography, will close its doors after this successful third edition whose theme was “Hell, Hells”. 

Italy, Alexandra Boulat, Photo Open Up festival, photography

2021 marks the seventh centenary of Dante Alighieri’s death and there will be manifestations and events that will be related to this important anniversary. 

Italy, Letizia Battaglia, Photo Open Up Festival, photography

This festival tried to reflect on the themes outlined by the Italian poet in his “Inferno” (Hell), the first cantica of The Divine Comedy. The photographs - exhibited in some places of the city, such as Museo Eremitani, Cattedrale ex Macello, Palazzo Zuckermann - fill the temporal gap between the work of Dante Alighieri (13th century), his catholic moral and its redemption’s path described within its pages, and the contemporaneity. 

Italy, William Lakin, Photo Open Up festival, photography

A special exhibition, which makes the viewer plunge into the fragrant splendor of the "warped" herbs with a special refinement and ingenuity, was inaugurated with notable success to the public, on Wednesday, September 15, 2021, at the Art Museum in Cluj -Napoca (Bánffy Palace), where it will remain open until October 22. It is about the most recent personal exhibition of decorative art (fiber art, assemblies, installation and object) of the appreciated textile artist Mariana Gheorghiu, lead member of the Cluj Branch of the Union of Visual Artists in Romania (UAP) and a prestigious name in the field of romanian contemporary decorative art, generously reunited under a title with metaphorical-symbolic valences: "Warp of herbs".

Photos by Nadejda Ursu

The exhibition presents over 40 artworks, some of which are imposing compositional ensembles made up of several pieces, while others are subtly integrated in scenic framework environments, suggestively recompose a journey with biographical-artistic value, which takes the viewer on a fascinating chronological journey, extended during the years 1996-2020. Constructed as an essay that stimulates optically and emotionally, the exhibition proposes a disturbingly beautiful visual journey that lists the artistic-standard works of Mariana Gheorghiu, a noted and established artist, as the curator of the exhibition, Alexandra Sârbu, pointed out: "not only by her impressive flexibility creative and inventive, but also through the very personal, spontaneous work technique, which, since 1994, uses, almost exclusively, the vegetal elements (bundles of dry grass, hay, wheat ears, sheaves of barley, leaves, plants, etc. ) as a favorite raw material for artistic workshop creation. For this reason, beyond the seductive visual spectacle offered by the subtle and refined contrast of the chromatic chords, of the associated forms and textures, the olfactory side becomes an important component in the equation of reading his works ”.

Also noteworthy are the two short video productions dedicated especially to this exhibition, which will be launched soon on the official facebook page of the Art Museum Cluj-Napoca (MACN), both being made based on a collaborative partnership between MACN and the Department of Photo-Video and Computerized Image Processing within the University of Art and Design of Cluj-Napoca (UAD), at the initiative and under the coordination of art historian Alexandra Sârbu (MACN), with the support of the artist photographer Andrei Budescu (UAD). The two videos are authored by Nadejda Ursu, a young artist with a promising potential, very creative and sensitive, UAD student in the 2nd year, specialization "Photo-Video and PCI", who is currently at the the second collaboration with MACN, after a first approach of this kind, appreciated and welcomed by the general public and specialists in the field, on the occasion of the 2021 edition of the international exhibition "World Press Photo".

Regarding her new collaboration with MACN, an experience that shows, joyfully and meritoriously, a great openness, concern and receptivity on the part of the Cluj museum institution towards the young generation, Nadejda Ursu underlined: “I am very grateful to the Cluj Art Museum for this renewed opportunity to interact and collaborate directly with museum professionals and established artists such as Mariana Gheorghiu, whose surprising and emotional personal exhibition managed to bring me closer to nature, soul and roots. I enjoyed every moment spent at the museum, and the approach of photographic and video documentation of the exhibition represents, without any doubt, a unique and very beneficial experience in the academic training process I am currently going through ”.

To the public interested in this event, the Art Museum of Cluj also offers the unic opportunity to enter the unseen "laboratory" of a creative process of a very special sensitivity and inventiveness, through a series of "face to face" meetings with the textile artist Mariana Gheorghiu, even in the impressive ambiance of her own exhibition. These meetings will take place until the end of the opening period - October 22, 2021, from Wednesday to Sunday, including, between the hours 11:00-13:00, with strict observance of the hygienic-sanitary norms against the spread of COVID- 19.

Photos by Nadejda Ursu

Within the project of ARTE Gallery, Collector as curator and selector, in the period from October 8 to November 22, 2021, art lovers will have a unique opportunity to see works from the private collection of the Marjanović family, at two locations of ARTE Gallery - Andrićev venac 12 and Kralja Milana 3 in Belgrade. 

Visitors will be able to see paintings, sculptures, graphics and drawings created mainly in the '50s,' 60s and '70s of the 20th century, by authors who are the most important representatives of domestic post-war art - Petar Lubarda, Aleksandar Tomašević, Lazar Vozarević. , Ivan Tabaković, Miodrag Dado Đurić, Ljubo Popović, Petar Omčikus, Radomir Reljić, Radomir Damnjanović Damnjan, Bora Iljovski, Dušan Otašević and many other artists.

Collector as curator and selector is a project that started in 2009 with the idea and goal to improve and acquaint the general public with the situation on the scene of the contemporary art market through exhibition and publishing activities. 

By exhibiting works of art from private collections, publishing richly illustrated publications, organizing auctions and digitizing collections, ARTE Gallery provides the general and professional public with an insight into a significant corpus of works by constantly increasing the visibility of domestic artistic heritage.

The exhibition will show more than 70 works, part of the collection of the Marjanović family, which has been carefully formed since the 1970s. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with a large number of illustrations and texts, which adequately presents the Collector project as a curator and selector, as the third edition within the project, and the character of the Marjanović collection.

Cover photo: Ivan Tabaković (1898-1977), Light and Shadows, 1967

* * *

Opening Date: 8th October2021
End Date: 22nd November 2021
Location: ARTE Gallery, Andricev venac 12 Street, Belgrade (Serbia)
Working hours: Monday-Saturday: 10 am to 8 pm,
                          Sunday: 10 am to 6 pm

Official website:
https://www.artegalerija.rs/collector-as-a-curator-and-selector-iii/?lang=en

Recently, the Art Gallery of Harghita County Council displayed the artistic results of the participants in the international art workshop “Free Camp” (August 27 - September 15), now in its seventeenth edition, an event that encourages freedom of expression and does not impose barriers in terms of working technique or theme. However, in the exhibition one can easily notice a predilection of artists for abstract representation, translated by works that fall into artistic movements such as action painting and gesturalism. The contemporary artist often associates the idea of creative freedom with an abstract representation centered on the expressiveness of color.

Gallery capture by Bogdan Urzica

Thus, the visitors of the exhibition were able to discover in the gallery space a series of abstract expressions that speak about color, line, matter, gesture and authorial freedom. In some works the color spots dominate, and in others the lines and shapes obtained spontaneously, through the freedom of gesture, but all are inscribed in the register of a nonfigurative denoting tension or creative energy. The characteristic of the gesturalist movement, but also of the tacitist one, is especially the exteriorization through colors and forms of some inner states or tensions.

"Creation is the true measure of human freedom. At Miercurea Ciuc, Harghita County, there is a space where plastic artists from everywhere, demolishing any kind of borders, focusing only on themselves, can create together: Free Camp", said the critic Székedi Ferenc. And this year's edition managed to "defeat the virus and virtuality, and life and creation present themselves before us again, in their reality", the critic continued.

Photo - Cosmina M. Oltean

In the exhibition were found works signed by the artists Andrea Balló, Nicolae Barb, Elena Drăgulelei Dumitru, Mariana Papară, Csaba Fazakas, Endre Lehel, Volker Schwarz, Ger Varga and Torino Bocaniciu. The project was curated by László Botár. The exhibition was organized by the Harghita County Council / CJHr Art Gallery, in collaboration with the Harghita County Cultural Center and the Cultura Nostra Association.

Ph. Cosmina M. Oltean

Ph. Bogdan Urzica

The exhibition of paintings by Momo Kapor "The Most Beautiful Stories" will be opened on Friday, September 3, at 7 pm in the Grand Gallery of the Army House in Belgrade and will last until November 6, and admission will be free for all visitors.

The exhibition is organized by the "Momcilo Momo Kapor" Endowment in cooperation with the Ministry of Defense and the "Defense" Media Center.

According to the announcement, the exhibition will also feature paintings that have not been exhibited anywhere so far and belong to private collections, and the most represented will be paintings from the collection of Miloš Petković.

All 35 paintings are oils on canvas and will be exhibited in ambient units that will complement the furniture and objects that Momo Kapor used during his life and work to create his works of art and literature. Visitors will be able to enjoy works from various periods, and the pictures are accompanied by stories that will be collected in a special catalogue published by the Media Center "Defense" on the occasion of this exhibition.

"Like the mythical Greek king Mida, who turned everything he saw into gold, Momo Kapor turned everything he painted into beauty and everything he wrote and published became a bestseller. I called the exhibition "The Most Beautiful Stories" because Momina's paintings give us a lost, almost forgotten world, full of nostalgia, love, beauty. Because Moma was a man of Renaissance gifts and God endowed him with many talents. His insatiable curiosity and sense to perpetuate trifles, erudition in which, apart from memory, all the senses with which he lurked the story, atmosphere, smells, tastes, line, character are employed… Moma knew everything, and everything he knew he could write and to paint in a beautiful, enchanting way ", said Ljiljana Kapor, the president of the Endowment.

For two months, the documentary "Momo Uncut", which was shot in the production of the "Momo Kapor" Endowment, will be shown within the exhibition.

The exhibition will be opened by the writer and art critic Dragan J. Danilov, and parts from his books by actresses Rada Đuričin and Vjera Mujović will talk and read about Momi.

Before the opening of the exhibition, the young academic painter Petar Mošić, the winner of the "Momo Kapor" award for fine arts, will be solemnly presented with a silver plaque with the "school" motif and a cash prize.

Petar Mošić received the award for 2019, which could not be presented to him due to the current pandemic, and for the same reasons, the Endowment did not award the prize for literature last year, so the awarding of this prestigious recognition will continue next year.

Artist's biography:

Belgrade painter and writer Momo Kapor (Sarajevo, April 8, 1937 - Belgrade, March 3, 2010) came to Sarajevo at the age of nine, where he was born, and became one of the protagonists of the Belgrade storytelling school.

An academic painter by education, he graduated from the Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Professor Nedeljko Gvozdenović; he entered the literary life of the capital in the early 1960s and has since published more than fifty books and novels. Provincijalac ,  Foliranti ,  Una ,  Zelena čoja Montenegro ,  Dosije Šlomović , Konte ,  Magija Beograda ,  Putopis kroz biografiju ,  Od istog pisca , Uspomene jednog crtača,  and many others were on the bestseller lists, and some of them are still on them.

It has been translated into many world languages. He differs from other Belgrade writers in that he illustrated his own books, cultivating a special lyrical drawing style. He was a long-term journalist-columnist of leading Belgrade newspapers. His oeuvre is completed by about twenty performed radio, TV and theater dramas, as well as several film scripts. According to his books, several feature films have been made, and he himself has been the screenwriter of many film and television projects. He rarely exhibited his paintings, several times in New York, Boston and Caracas, in Geneva, Frankfurt, Brussels, Paris, Udine, Zagreb, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Zrenjanin and Mećavnik. 

He was a regular member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of the Republic of Srpska. 

Opening Date: 03rd September 2021
End Date: 06th November 2021
Location: Grand Gallery of the Army House in Belgrade (Serbia); 
                19 Brace Jugovica street, Belgrade 11000
Working hours: 11 a.m. - 7. p.m.;
                          closed on Sunday