Curator:
Holly Block (lives and works in New York City, USA); María Inés Rodríguez (born 1968 in Colombia; lives and works in Bordeaux, France).
Description:
“‘Beyond the Supersquare’ explores the indelible influence of Latin American and Caribbean modernist architecture on contemporary art. The exhibition features over 30 artists and more than 60 artworks, including photography, video, sculpture, installation, and drawing, that respond to major Modernist architectural projects constructed in Latin America and the Caribbean from the 1920s through the 1960s. Beyond the Supersquare examines the complicated legacies of modernism through architecture and thought—as embodied by the political, economic, environmental, and social challenges faced by countries throughout Latin America—through the unique perspective of artists working today.
“‘Beyond the Supersquare’ explores how contemporary artists from Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions have responded to the aggressive rise of Latin America’s urban centers and the ways in which those urban areas have evolved since the mid-twentieth century. Also examined is the social critique of political, social, economic, and environmental issues in Latin America and the Caribbean, including unstable economies, ad hoc urbanism, militarized police forces, and rapidly exhausting natural resources
“Artists in the exhibition include: Leonor Antunes (Portugal), Alexander Apóstol (Venezuela), Alexandre Arrechea (Cuba), Felipe Arturo (Colombia), Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck (Venezuela) and Media Farzin (USA), Alberto Baraya (Colombia), Carlos Bunga (Portugal), Los Carpinteros (Cuba), Jordi Colomer (Spain), Livia Corona Benjamin (Mexico), Felipe Dulzaides (Cuba), Fernanda Fragateiro (Portugal), Magdalena Fernández (Venezuela), Carlos Garaicoa (Cuba), Mario Garcia Torres (Mexico), Terence Gower (Canada), Patrick Hamilton (Belgium/Chile), Diango Hernández (Cuba), Quisqueya Henriquez (Cuba), Andre Komatsu (Brazil), Runo Lagomarsino (Argentina), Pablo Leon de la Barra (Mexico), Maria Martinez-Cañas (Cuba) and Rafael Domenech (Cuba), Daniela Ortiz (Peru), Jorge Pardo (Cuba), Manuel Piña (Cuba), Ishmael Randall-Weeks (Peru), Mauro Restiffe (Brazil), Pedro Reyes (Mexico), and Chemi Rosado-Seijo (Puerto Rico) and Roberto ‘Boly’ Cortéz (Puerto Rico).”
—”Beyond the Supersquare,” Bronx Museum, 2014.
“This exhibition—derived from a 2011 Bronx Museum symposium and accompanying volume of the same name—takes Lucio Costa’s idealized dwelling unit in Brasília, the superquadra, as a jumping-off point to explore the ways in which contemporary artists have addressed the contested legacy of Latin American and Carribean architectural modernism. Twenty-plus artists contribute more than sixty works in diverse media—ranging from quasi-architectural interventions (Los Carpinteros) to incisive social critique (Daniela Oritz and Alexander Apóstol) to poetic reflections on history and form (Quisqueya Henríquez and Ishmael Randall Weeks). These heterogeneous approaches promise to grapple not only with midcentury modernism’s effects on the built environment but with its abiding spectral presence as an emblem of utopia.”
—Daniel Quiles, “Preview: ‘Beyond the Supersquare‘,” Artforum, May 2014.
