Galería Elvira Moreno is proud to show in the XX version of Zona Maco 2024 six Latin American artists who manifest the apparent pragmatism of geometric abstraction but who, beyond its visual context, lead us to reflect on the problems and historical references of modernism.
The curatorial selection represents artists from Cuba, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, and Venezuela, regions in which geometric abstraction forms an essential part in the historical evolution of their art, the axis on which the contexts below are individually based.
Federico Ovalles (Venezuela, 1982) and Lucio Celis (Colombia, 1927*) discuss the utopian proposals for social transformation of a dystopian Latin American modernism, evidencing the unrealizable promises expressed in the socio-political context that demagogically predicted a falsely promising future. The now unpublished works of Ernesto Briel (Cuba, 1943-1993) reclaim, through an optical and constructivist geometry, the historical place that was denied to him by a totalitarian state that punished homosexuality with prison and exile. The work of Eduardo Terrazas (Mexico, 1936) follows a constructive will inspired by ancestral traditions that precede the Eurocentric vision of modernism and invites us to reflect on the cosmogonies that give rise to the order and language of his creations. Jorge Riveros (Colombia, 1934) builds totemic wood sculptures that reflect the stelae's verticality and stylistic complexity. He captures geometric iconography inspired by the glyphs used in the original ideography of his region. Antonio Pichilla (Guatemala, 1982), a Guatemalan artist belonging to the Mayan Tz'utujil ethnic group, links his work to post-colonialist expressions that redefine the atavistic practices of his ethnic group. The conscious use of geometry and color persists in his work through the sophisticated renewal of the ancient craft of weaving.
Our exhibition recognizes the transcendence of Latin American geometric abstraction, the basis on which the contemporaneity of our artists carries strong messages that transcend the aesthetics of their execution.
*Alter Ego by Luis F Ramirez Celis (Colombia, 1969)
