Great Art Events This Week on the Border

There are some great art events happening this week on the border. Beginning tonight, (Wednesday May 17) at the Museo de Arte here in Juarez ,Carlos Palacios, curator at the Museo de Arte Carillo Gil and curator of the Carla Rippey show currently on exhibit will give a free talk about the show. This is at 7 pm and tomorrow at noon he will lead a guided tour of this extraordinary retrospective.
There are a series of events at the museum this week in honor of International Museum Day culminating in a whole series of activities this Saturday at Un Dia en El Museo.

Friday is the opening of what promises to be a fascinating exhibtion to be shown on both sides of the border. Called “Narradores, Ponte en los Zapatos del Otro” here and more simply “Storytellers” in El Paso it shows the work of 60 students from different schools who present thier videos, and projects as well as interviews in which they talk about their life, hopes and dreams.
This was supported by the US Consulate in Juarez with the participation of some other local organizations and, of course, the assistance of a wide variety of local schools.
The opening in Juarez is this Friday night at Juarez Contemporary Gallery at Calle Omega #1351 at 7 pm. It will be up through the 21.
In El Paso it is scheduled to open on the 25th at The Station Urban Offices 500 W. Overland where it will run through the 28th.
Thursday is also the start of a series of films to be shown pimarily at Cafe Unico and at the Cineteca Nacionale branch at Cultural Centro Paso del Norte. The series is called Apanerowa and concerns indigenous culture and human rights . The  series at Cafe Unico begins at 4 pm .

So there you have some of the things going on here. Don’t tell me there’s nothing to do in Juarez.-dsokolec

 

Juarez blessed with arts this week

I feel like I need to clone myself this week because there are so many overlapping events I can’t see them all unless I’m my own double.
Beginning last Thursday and running through this Thursday (20) is the amazing “Ambulante-gira de Documentales.”. This yearly collection of documentary films from around the world tours various States of Mexico, and this week it is here. Mostly concerned with issues of social concerns in all of its forms it brings some remarkable films, most of which are free. Included are well-known, though too little seen films like Last Men in Aleppo, about the doctors who stayed in that city during the bombing, but there are also unknown fims and various series on different films  like a series of shorts I saw the other day about migration in all of its forms told from a child’s point of view. I was particularly moved by a film of a young boy from Syria who was missing his father still in Syria. There are director’s talks and a series of workshops. This Wednesday night there is an outdoor  screening of “Ovarian Psycho” about a group of women (Ovarian Psycho Bicycle Brigade)  who use bicycles  to take back streets of Los Angeles. This film at 8:00 will be preceded by a bicycle tour starting from La Rodadora led by Punto de Lanza and beginning at 6.
So in  addition to all of  these films, there is also the Siglo de Oro drama festival on both sides of the border which this year brings troupes from Spain, Canary Islands and Mexico City. These are all free.
Tuesday at 5 there is a free lecture about Carla Rippey’s remarkable exhibition at the Museo de Arte, and of course there are the usual goings on like the weekly c”Charla Fotografia” which features a talk on a different aspect of photography every week.

It’s a good week to be here, I just wish there were more of me.-David  sokolec

 

New Space at Museo de Arte

Tomorrow, Thursday 23, the Museo de Arte in Juarez is opening a new space dedicated to promoting local, national and international artists who deal in new media. Called Antecamara de proyectos it will be inaugurated by a film called Reflexiones en Torno al Cielo by Mexico City based artist Alexandra German who will be attending the opening, and curated by Victoria Vinamaragui.
Here is the description in Spanish from the museum. Looks like a wonderful new addition.
Antecámara de Proyectos del Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez tiene el enfoque de promover y difundir la producción y consumo de arte actual y nuevos medios. A partir de curadurías y diseños de exhibición que nazcan desde el museo. Antecámara es una sala alternativa que se logra dentro de una dinámica de rotación de artistas locales, nacionales e internacionales, para así lograr alcanzar mayores públicos.
the opening is set for 6 pm.-david sokolec

Carla Rippey- Resguardia y Resistencia

I am really looking forward to the opening of Carla Rippey’s retrospective  at the Museo de Arte here in Juarez this Friday night. Rippey is the current director of “La Esmeralda”(La Escuela Nacional de Pintura,Escultura y Grabado) and the first woman to hold that position. Although born in Kansas City, she has lived in Mexico since 1973, having fled Chile after the fall of Salvador Allende.
The exposition, covering the years 1976-2016, recently opened at the Museo de Arte Carillo Gil and from all I can gather  it seems a magnificent show which not only demonstrates her extraordinary skill at interweaving photography and printmaking among other artistic talents, but also, and more importantly, shows her interest in preserving her personal memory, exploring the female and cultural cross-currents.
Should be an incredible show ,particularly for those interested in print making and drawing  but also anyone interested in seeing the workl of this important and involved artist.
The opening is set for Friday 17th at 7 pm.
I also want to mention there is still time to see the show Encuentro de Mujeres Artistas at Alianza Francesa. Thirteen local artists combined forces to show 30 pieces in various media. The work shows just some of the remarkable talent here in Juarez, and the wide range of subject matter and media used. It includes a video, and a wonderful installation in a nook just inside the entry which combines music with shell forms hanging from the ceiling into each one of which is delicately inserted a drawing.
The show continues through April 10. -david sokolec

 

 

 

Plans for a Nuevo Siglo

The folks at Los Paisanos de la Chamizal have an ambitious plan for a new huge Hispanic themed festival designed to bring artists and performers from all over the world as well as the inclusion of local talent in what sounds like a wonderful proposition. They have the support of the City and County of El Paso as well as the National Park Service and are looking for local talent, businesses and people in general to join in. Their website is  at Nuevo Siglo-elpaso.org.

I have to say that one of the things I found exciting when I moved here was the Siglo de Oro theater festival at the Chamizal. Under the leadership of the indefatigable Virginia Ness, theater groups and academics from all over the world came to both sides of the border to perform widely varying interpretations of plays from the Golden Age of Spain. I could never figure out why the city and various arts organizations didn’t use this as an opportunity to join hands and create a citywide, or binational wide, festival which would attract theatergoers from all over a la Spoleto festival in Charleston or the Santa Fe Opera. At last there  seems to be a recognition that a festival bringing together local and national talent to the region would be an enormous boost for the region.I’m not sure the new plan is designed to include the Siglo de Oro festival, which has unfortunately been allowed to dwindle to a pale shadow of its former self, or if , as it appears to be, an entirely new type of festival. In either case, it sounds wonderful and good luck to them.-david sokolec

Francis Alys showing in Juarez

Belgian born artist Francis Alys is arguably one of the best known international  artists currently living in Mexico.He has worked all over the world and been shown in important venues all over the world. Currently he is represented by the influential David Zwirner gallery.

I bring this up because beginning tomorrow (Oct 17) his work will be on view at Alejandro Luperca Morales’s visual movable feast Proyecto Impala. Alys was in Juarez a few years ago on a project literally kicking a fireball down the street. This is typical of his work which involves interacting in various ways with the environment, in ways which usually include a political component or to simply provide a different way of interacting or viewing a given space. He will either work alone or involve members of the community in his activity. Because of this the work seems to fall more properly under the heading of documentation rather than a traditional finished work of art, but as good art can generally be said to change our perception of something, to look at things in a new way, Alys certainly does that following his own path. He apparently likes to invoke the idea of the flaneur (traditionally a stroller of boulevards, a walker so his work often involves strolling through a city or some area . (I can relate to this as being a flaneur is perhaps the only occupation I have asiduously and seriusly pursued over the years.)

It is really exciting to have his work here, and I believe it was due to his connection with local artist and arts promoter Morales (who seems to know a staggering array of people all over the place) that this happened so thank you Alejandro and everyone else involved  for helping make this happen. Mo info on Alys can be found on his website (including that fireball in Juarez), and for when and where the Proyecto Impala will be you can go to their website or Facebook. -david sokolec

 

Venas de Acero

Venas de Acero (Veins of Steel) is not the latest Marvel comic book offer, but the satisfying exhibition of sculptures by Agueda Lozano at the Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juarez. Born in Ciudad Cuauhtemoc, Chihuahua in 1944, Lozano studied art in Nuevo Leon and  moved to Mexico City in the tumultuous year of 1968. There she exhibited widely, but although there were a number of important art movements going on at the time, she apparently didn’t quite feel at home with any of them and moved to France in 1971. That seems to have been a smart move. The Museum of Modern Art  of Paris acquired one of her works  and she won a prize at the International Festival of Cagnes-sur-Mer.
She has spent her time since then working steadily and intensely on her work. She began painting abstracts but then turned to sculpture using steel as her preferred medium while continuing with her works on canvas.

Ecoute Celeste -200x50x86 cm

The pieces shown here, all of fairly recent vintage and ranging in size from table top to well over 6 feet (200 cm)  show balance, harmony and movement. Lozano often gives her pieces sharp serrated edges as though the halves had been ripped apart. Other works are like “La Derniere Page” which shows leaves of a book with  the last page appearing to have just been turned. La Derniere Page (132x75x85cm)

Terre du Mexique Enterre de France (116x35x26cm)

There is a fluidity and sense of movement in many of the works with the parts seeming to either be about to wrap around each other or perhaps fly off.

Etoile Filante (200×200 cm)
Also on exhibit are  some of her large (200 x 200cm) abstract paintings. These are spare uncluttered works which  hint at an interior world into which the viewer is allowed to enter.
When so much art being produced today often seems to be trying too hard to be clever or simply slapped together and rushed to market, it is refreshing to see work which can stand on its own and which shows the result of years of hard work and continuing exploration.
Lozano has recently inaugurated a cultural center in Cuautemoc where presumably the next generation of artists can be trained and developed.
The show will be up through the end of the year.-David Sokolec