ZONA MACO 2023: Galería Elvira Moreno
The Elvira Moreno Gallery (Bogotá) proposes for its participation in Zona Maco 2023 four artists represented by our space. Initially, the artists Federico Ovalles Ar (Caracas 1972) and Luis F. Ramírez Celis (Bogotá 1971), both focused on the utopian contexts of modernity, its dystopian urban development, the end of modernism, and its influence on the development of the entropic modernist Latin American identity. This manifesto, which reflects a “concretist” sentiment of protest, will be accompanied by the participation of the artists Joaquín Segura (Mexico City 1977) and Ernesto Leal (Havana, Cuba 1973), who, through our curatorial approach, will present works that reflect an unprecedented visual language as the only alternative commitment in the face of censorship and oppression within the context in which the works were created.
Our proposal brings together two examples in Latin American contemporaneity that reflect on the evolution and prevalence of systems that persist and develop in the absence of structure (Ovalles and Ramírez), and that survive through hegemonies in which censorship forces them to be deposited into artworks as the sole mechanism that makes them viable (Leal and Segura). Our decision to participate with this group of artists is curatorially oriented through one of our lines of research, which focuses on modernity and the social utopias of the 20th century, and their disenchantments that have become a dystopian condition due to the inevitable dissolution of their narrative structures and the complete evaporation of their certainties. The four artists, each from distinct angles, reflect on this topic and together offer a panoramic and conclusive vision in this regard.
For his part, the Colombian artist Luis F. Ramírez points to the contradictions of modern architectural models by confronting them and placing them in dialogical relation with the organic and effective spatial distribution of his collages, reflecting on the utopia of Latin American modernist architecture. Likewise, Federico Ovalles, although the Venezuelan artist focuses on the self-constructive models of Latin American cities in a critical intersection with the formal metaphors of modernity, such as constructivism and geometric abstraction respectively.
In the case of the artist Joaquín Segura, his reflection on this disenchantment lies in pointing out the seams and darkness within the emancipatory narratives articulated by the modern echo, as well as the messianic certainties that today are nonexistent and empty; while the Cuban artist Ernesto Leal signals the contingencies masked within textual and oral discourses, in order to unmask the powers present through works that, until today, have been impossible to manifest in his country due to the oppressive restrictions prevailing on the island.
