Program

SP1
Gerd Leufert
NENIAS (1969/2023)
Site-specific installation
Vinyl
Presented by Henrique Faria, B11

Leufert used the name “Nenias” to identify a series of figures he started to develop as a theme in the early sixties. The conventional meaning of the term comes from music, where it refers to certain very old songs or lamentations which belonged to funerary rites.

These essential forms, adapted now in a new space and for a new spectator, recall their first large-scale installation at Caracas’ Museo de Bellas Artes in 1985. In the then newly formed series of Nenias from 1969, Leufert configured these refined and symmetrical totemic structures from the encounter between the notions of art and design. Here he fused together ancestral cosmogonies with contemporary figures able to transcend the diverse currents of anthropological and indigenist thought. Simultaneously geometric and organic, the Nenias emerge as atemporal and original representations situated in the cultural space of the collective imaginary.

SP2
Manfred Mohr
Early Plotter Drawings (circa 1970)
Plotter drawings on paper
Presented by bitforms, B52

Manfred Mohr utilizes algorithms to engage rational aesthetics, inviting logic to produce visual outcomes. This special project highlights a selection of the artist’s earliest computer-generated plotter drawings (circa 1970) and showcases his first implementation of the hypercube through the seminal video work, Cubic Limit (1973-74). While Mohr’s career continues to evolve and invite new variables, this special project distinguishes his pioneering use of algorithms decades before it became a tool of contemporary art.

Mohr wrote his first algorithm using the programming language Fortran IV in 1969. He plotted the resulting computer-generated data by hand, an exhausting and unsustainable process of intricate drafting. Systems capable of drawing the results of algorithms were not easily accessible at this time. In 1970, Mohr gained unique access to the computer center at the Météorologie Nationale in Paris where he used a high-resolution Benson plotter and CDC 6400 computer. There he realized all his programs and plotter drawings until he moved full time to New York in 1983, where he established his own computer center, including a high-resolution vector pen plotter. The resultant diversity of his artwork confirmed the urgency and aesthetic significance of his algorithms. Over fifty years later, the connections Mohr establishes between aesthetics and instruction continue to stimulate dialogue within the contemporary art world.

SP3
Vera Chaves Barcellos
Epidermic Scapes (1977-2022)
Inkjet print on cotton paper
Presented by Zielinsky, B15

Epidermic Scapes (1977-2022) is a work by Vera Chaves Barcellos (1938, Porto Alegre, Brazil) which consists of a series of images of the artist’s skin, and of other people, enlarged to such an extent that their indexical function is lost as they begin to take on a more abstract appearance. The artist created each image by applying black ink to various parts of her body, over which she then rubbed a piece of tracing paper, effectively creating a negative, which she then enlarged. Her intention was to expand the images to such an extent that they could be displayed on the floor or wall in a monumental way and as if they were terrestrial landscapes. This work recently became part of the Museo Reina Sofía collection.

From the beginning of her career, Vera Chaves Barcellos has been interested in the reuse of pre-existing images taken from the media to develop works using video, photography, engraving, installation and artists’ books. The artist’s research takes as its starting point the relationship between the body and time: performing characters and narratives from the past and the future, focusing on stories that were left out of historiography, documenting and collecting archive materials from local events or from personal memory.

SP4
Henrik Godsk
Carousel 1884, 2023
Oil on canvas installed on lit steel frame
Presented by Vigo, B1

Godsk is of seventh-generation traveling heritage, having grown up among the world of the fun fair in Denmark. His practice reflects his pride in his upbringing and cultural identity. Across his works, fusing folkloric and high art, he utilizes the portraits and creatures that form his subjects as vessels for his exploration of color and form. Carousel 1884, which is a modernist reworking of a family heirloom, functions as a gesamtkunstwerk; a fair within a fair that is also emblematic of the artist's own sentiments of nostalgia about his heritage.

The formal components of the artwork are inseparable from the artist's time spent as a child painting the panels and façades during renovations of the rides. At 12, he began to design and paint them himself; at 15, he came across books about Picasso and Modigliani, the latter’s elongated necks and distorted, flattened proportions heavily influencing Godsk’s current œuvre. The controlled brushwork, geometric lines, flat surfaces, and tight compositions of the artist’s cubistic portraits act as a conduit for his personal exploration of classically modernist forms. The androgynous and striking shapes of the artist's portraits are directly reminiscent of the accentuated designs of these fairground rides, and Carousel 1884 further emulates this through a mimicking of the circa 3.5-metre height required by carousels to draw a crowd.

SP5
April Bey, Petra Cortright, Christine Sun Kim, Hana Ward
Limited Edition Prints (2023)
Presented by For Freedoms

For Freedoms is an artist-led organization that centers art as a catalyst for creative civic engagement, discourse and direct action. We work closely with artists and organizations to expand what participation in democracy looks like. In service to this mission, For Freedoms is excited to present a series of limited edition prints by April Bey, Petra Cortright, Christine Sun Kim, and Hana Ward. Each of these artists has collaborated with For Freedoms on past public campaigns to make a positive impact on the communities we share. Shop the collection at shop.forfreedoms.com.

SP6
Kelley Johnson
Fleeting Fragments of Time 15/45 (2023)
Chrome powder-coated steel and glass

Kelley Johnson Studio will present a functional sculpture within this year’s Untitled Art Podcast Lounge. In conjunction with the awarded Rado Production Prize sculpture in the fair’s interstitial space, Fleeting Fragments of Time 15/45 (2023), features an interplay of light over the chrome surfaces, so that participants' interactions will continuously reshape the work’s interpretation.

SP7
Luis Ortiz Monasterio
Luis Ortiz Monasterio X Marea (2022)
Concrete, volcanic rock, painted plaster, and cement
Presented by Ediciones Marea

Marea has collaborated with the Pedro Reyes Studio for the elaboration of five selected works from the repertoire of Luis Ortiz Monasterio in a meticulous reconstruction work assisted by the artist's family. Luis Ortiz Monasterio (1906-1990) was a sculptor and teacher, and founder of the so-called Mexican School of Sculpture.

With a career spanning more than sixty years, Ortiz Monasterio is one of the main figures of Mexican sculpture in the 20th century. His work transited from nationalism to the emerging avant-garde, with both American (Toltec and Aztec) and global influences. Among his most recognized works are Monumento a la madre (1949), Fuente monumental de Nezahualcóyotl (1955-1956) and Plaza Cívica de la Unidad Independencia (1960). This project, consisting of an exceptional collection of limited edition pieces will mark the first-ever presentation of these works by Ortiz Monasterio's outside of Mexico.

SP8
Karian Amaya
Open Sky, Mirage (2023)
Copper, sea water, and salt
Presented by YI GALLERY, A41

Open Sky, Mirage (2023) is an ongoing exploration by Karian Amaya into the transformations of matter and its effects when placed in varying geographical contexts. Inspired by the aesthetics of exploitation and extraction of natural resources, this presentation seeks to encapsulate the passage of time, serving as both a record and memory of a place. As the minerals in the copper pools change and evaporate, they create distinct pools, each capturing a unique visual representation of time.

SP9
Awilda Sterling-Duprey
Blindfolded (2020 and ongoing)
Performance and mixed media on vinyl
Presented by El Kilómetro, A35

Awilda Sterling-Duprey´s Blindfolded dance drawings are a series of works that began in 2020, where the artist blindfolds herself to make abstract marks on papers mounted on walls in response to salsa and/or jazz improvisation. Fusing Afro-Caribbean dance, music, drawing, and performance, Sterling-Duprey translates the music through her body into dance movements on the paper´s surface with sharp actions and a sense of playfulness. The currents of sound are drawn by expressing dance and improvising tonal and chromatic scales from the salsa and jazz.