DaWire

Charles Juhász-Alvarado

Sometimes artists do it better than curators. Oftentimes, in fact, they get right to the heart of the matter without our didactic curatorial worries. The project at Casa de los Contrafuertes, convened by Charles Juhász-Alvarado (with Néstor Barreto), shows rather than tells. It is a must-see event. Inspired by the theme set forth for this year’s Trienal Poli/gráfica de San Juan, “El Panal/The Hive,” these busy bees have enacted a hive of their own, thus affirming the curatorial premise that artists working with other artists remains a powerful and productive creative force.[...]

Hey there! Below you can find the catalogue essay for the exhibition The Dialectic City: Document | Context that closed last November at Laboratorio de Artes Binarios. Enjoy! -Carla Acevedo-Yates “To capture a city in an image means following its movement.” Nicolas Bourriaud, The Radicant The city is comprised of colliding elements; conflicting mechanisms that through [...]

Quintín Rivera Toro’s most recent exhibition titled Allafuera, currently on view at METRO:plataformaorganizada in San Juan, is comprised of a general survey of new works and a presentation of several ongoing series that the artist has been working on for several years. Although the works are presented devoid of curatorial strategies, through them, the viewer can sense a personal approach consequent to the artist’s immediate environment, that combined with political proclamations seems to evoke a sense of agitation and unrest. Ideas related to hopelessness, desire and futility prevail as relevant themes to explore within the context of Rivera Toro’s recent artistic production.[...]

  Ingenious Displacements: Hope and Failure in the Works of Manolo Rodríguez Flight has been the dream of mankind for centuries. A lofty desire inspired by nature, present in most mythologies, ancient cultures and religions, from Greek mythology to Persian literature and Christianism. In these, flying suggests divinity, winged flight a province of the gods [...]

Jason Kraus, 3 Gas Tanks. Courtesy of Redling Fine Art.

Jason Kraus (1983, New York) is a young promising artist who recently graduated from the California Institute of the Arts. Since then, he has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions in Los Angeles and New York, and recently collaborated with Martin Kersels in a one-night performance at the Whitney Museum titled Jason Martin wants to be a DJ. Demonstrating an interdisciplinary approach, Kraus’ artistic practice is often the result of a private performance, where the final object produced proposes narratives meant for the viewer to construe. The experience of viewing his work invokes instances of what the artist defines as suspended disbelief, where he keeps the viewer thinking if what he sees is found or fabricated. But with so much talk lately of the hyperreal and the simulated in our visual landscape, does it really even matter anymore?[...]

Video Still from Untitled, Juan Pablo Macías. Courtesy of the artist.

Spectroscopies was conceived as a critical response to the commemorative furor that pervaded the cultural production and consumption in Mexico (because it was imposed) during the years 2009 and 2010. Whether it was because they were included in the corresponding exhibitions of the official celebrations for the start of the struggle for Independence of Mexico (1810) and the beginning of the revolutionary struggle for the establishment of a representative democratic government (1910), participating in the institutional activities associated with it, or because their labor was required for the realization of mass entertainment, very few members of the diverse artistic communities of the country were indifferent to the “centennial fever.”[...]

The article we are featuring today as a part of our week-long 1 year celebration is on an extremely controversial work that made worldwide headlines in the arts and human rights communities. I am talking about Guillermo Vargas “Habacuc,” the infamous Costa Rican artist who tied up a stray dog during a show and left him to starve to prove a point. Adán Vallecillo’s essay eloquently explains not just the ethical problems the work poses, but the economic and political reasons that motivated the work; ideas that are seemingly completely obscured by the shocking nature of the work.[...]

On July 26th 2009, I founded DaWire to provide a serious platform for emerging writers and artists. The idea started in San Juan, with one single essay, and with a lot of motivation to accomplish something different from what was already around. After arriving in Puerto Rico after 12 good years abroad, my good friend and artist Catherine Matos Olivo suggested I write an essay about her work for publication in the visual arts section of Small Axe curated by Christopher Cozier. I accepted and embarked on a series of writings on Puerto Rican emerging artists that included Josué Pellot and Jason Mena.

We want to bring our readers more news on contemporary art from around the world. That’s why we have teamed up with our friends at DailyServing, a global online magazine based in California, to bring you the first of a series of posts that will feature articles originally published in DS. For our first post, we have chosen an interesting article written by Noah Simblist on Maurizio Cattelan’s work, a part of a feature that explores the concept of myth in contemporary society. Kudos to our friends at DS for publishing such great content. I hope you enjoy it![...]

A title like this one has to be placed in context, otherwise we run the risk of dispersion or formalistic reductionism that we are so accustomed to. For this reason, the concepts of raw materials and manufacture will have to be questioned in sociological terms in order to better understand some of the differences between the art produced in the First World and in Central and Latin America.[...]