The third Los Angeles “SUR: biennial” art exhibition held an opening reception in the evening at the art gallery on Thursday, Oct. 8. The exhibition features contemporary artists that are connected in some way to Latin America and the Caribbean.
“The word SUR is Spanish for South and we sort of think of it as a regional focus. It is sort of focused on an orientation towards the south of the United States. Any kind of country south of the U.S. sort of qualifies and fits into that mandate,” said Director and Curator, James MacDevitt.
There are 5 solo artists: Guillermo Bert, Daniel Lara, Beatriz Cortez, Patrick Martinez, Rebeca Mendez, and 1 collective group called CUBO which consists of four female artists: Jennifer Donovan, Gabriela Torres Oliveros, Nina Waisman, Flora Wiegman plus Marius Schobelle.
“We don’t really focus so much on the ethnicity of the artists; we recognize that Latin America is a and always has been really a multicultural space. And so we sort of look at a number of people who have connections to the south. Maybe they did a residency in Mexico City, or they were born and raised in the U.S. but have family connections there, or they are dealing with issues sort of relevant to the U.S. and Mexican border,” said MacDevitt.
The focus for this exhibition is the artists worked with technology which is non-traditional media.
One of the members of the CUBO Collective group present at the reception was Nina Waisman. The CUBO collective group’s piece, Impediment (2011) is made with short to long wood slats that hang from the ceiling, on the slats they have proximity sensors attached plus speakers to emit the various sounds when one goes through the slats to reference the U.S. and Mexican border, and it was created with custom software and hardware.
“The shape of the piece it gets very tighter and tighter as you go back, very constraining. But there is more space at the bottom and we were thinking about how most of the passage ways to get to the border are sort of open at first then the closer you get the more constrained it is the checkpoints it is and so on,” said Waisman.
Waisman adds, “But we were thinking this split too between the sounds of the U.S. side and the sounds of the Tijuana side. The sounds of the U.S. side which we put up in the head area [of the piece] are all like white noise. These are literally the sounds you hear in the U.S. side of the border; you hear all these processing sounds and it is a muddle. Once you cross the border and go to Tijuana, you hear clear sounds such as people working, and signs of life that are difficult.”
She also adds that the group wants everyone to take the piece in their own terms. They [CUBO] hope people be aware how they are experiencing the world through their body. Not so much through the mind, but how the body is being talked to whether sonically and visually.
Fine arts major, Alysia Ponce remarks on Patrick Martinez’s ‘Carniceria (2015)’ piece, “He had the fruit stands and the neon sign. I liked how he used mixed media, and the whole cultural side to it. It also is kind of funny and I can relate to the bars on the windows, the colors, and the flowers he used too.”
The exhibition will run until Friday, November 20 on campus. SUR: biennial exhibits also include the following locations Manhattan Beach Art Center, Rio Hondo College Art Gallery, and the Torrance Art Museum, all in which feature other contemporary artists.
