Graciela Iturbide, Philadelphia Museum, june 14-Aug 9, 1999, Feb 27-May 2, 1999, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California, May 21-aug29, 1999, Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Chicago Illinois
Cantos Paralelos, Visual Parody in Contemporary Argentinean Art, Jack S. Blanton, Museum of Art, College of Fine Arts, The University of Texas at A,ustin January 16-March 7 1999, 23rd and San Jacinto, Austin, Texas 78712
Contemporary Art from Cuba, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, AZ, January-15-may 2, 1999 (organized by ICI)
At the Threshold of the Visible, Minuscule and Small scale Art, 1964-1996, Edmonton Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada, April 10-June 13, 1999, Huntington Beach Art Center, CA, July 10-Sept.5, 1999 (ICI)
Do it, The Morris Museum, Morris, NJ, Jan 10-April 4, 1999
Marcos Ramirez Erre, March 20-June 13, 1999, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, WI, tel: 414 229 5070
Cantos Paralelos: Visual Parody in contemporary Argentinean Art, January 22-March 7, 1999, Jack S.Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, tel: (512) 471-7023
Drawing from important public and private collections in Buenos Aires, this international exhibition, organized by Mari Carmen Ramirez, Curator of Latin American Art, explores the use of parody in the work of eight of Argentina's most innovative contemporary artists. By bringing their work together in an exhibition, the viewer is granted the opportunity to compare and contrast how each artist utilizes their personal views and choice of medium in order to attain a common satiric goal. The exhibition consists of about seventy pieces created between 1960 and 1997. The range of media represented in this collection will vary from traditional paintings and sculptures to assemblages and boxed objects. Following are artists included in the show.

• The artistic career of Antonio Berni (1905-1981) may be traced to Paris in the late 1920's. Initially inspired by Surrealism, by the 1930s Berni had shifted to using modes of social realism, and in 1959, he started to produce a series of monumental collages and assemblages inspired by episodes in the lives of two fictional characters: a boy from the slums of Buenos Aires, Juanito Laguna, and a prostitute, Ramona Montiel. Berni used the concept of the anti-hero as a means of exposing the moral and social underbelly of Argentinean society.
• Jorge de la Vega (1930-1972) was first recognized in Argentina as one of the founder of the avant-garde group Otra Configuracion (1961-63), and became known for his monumental collages that depicted the "esquizo-bestias" (schyzo-beasts); horrible yet amusing creatures that rise from the surface of the canvas. These monsters are visual parodies of individuals and institutions of Argentinean society.
• Alberto Heredia (b.1924) is a sculptor who works with nontraditional materials. An early piece, Camembert Boxes (1962-63), consists of cheese boxes filled with bits of garbage. His later work addresses issues of power, wether political, military or religious.
• Juan Carlos Distefano (b.1933) explores the themes of violence and torture associated with political repression. El camioncito de Dock Sur (1996) is a poignant parody to the plight of dock workers in Argentina.
• Pablo Suarez (b. 1937) produces sculptural tableaux and installations that represent aspects of the Argentinean popular classes. Suarez's critical wit is ever present in his depiction of regional life. In his series, Suarez emphasizes the accumulation of incongruous elements that make up the popular immigrant-based culture of Buenos Aires.
• Leon Ferrari's (b.1920) is concerned with religious power. Ferrari has an inclination towards the ephemeral and is a master of transforming small objects from daily life into viciously comic statements.
• Victor Grippo (b.1936) uses consumer goods in his work. As objects of everyday use, Grippo's readymades are connected to parallel systems that endow them with meaning.
• Luis Benedit's (b. 1937) work is grounded in a conceptual approach to both subjects and materials. Since the late 60s, the artist engaged the "unstable and nonviable" encounter between nature and culture. Benedit's installations comment upon the exploitation of rural culture. Pieces such as Rancho (1991) and Rancho de azucal (1991) parody the persistence of the rural in the Argentinean imaginary.

Most of the works included in the show have never been exhibited in the United States.
Following its premiere in Austin, Cantos Paralelos will travel in the United States and Colombia before returning to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires.



At the Threshold of the Visible, Minuscule and Small Scale Art, 1964-1996, Edmonton Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada, April 10-June 13, 1999, Huntington Beach Art Center, CA, July 10-Sept.5, 1999
At the Threshold of the Visible is a traveling exhibition organized by ICI (Independent Curators International), New York, and curated by Ralph Rugoff. The show focuses on small-scale art and examines the uses and values of minute art since the mid sixties. It comprises 27 artists; among them are Chris Burden, James Lee Byars, Jessica Diamond, Ilya Kabakov, Charles LeDray, Guy Limone, Yoko Ono, Richard Tuttle, Hannah Wilke, B. Wurtz.
The show teases the pretentions of gigantic art. There is a modernist tradition in art to read expressiveness only in large-scale work. The works in At the Threshold of the Visible challenge this by uncovering the force of the very small and questioning the act of viewing. These mischievous pieces redefine the way we relate to an object. The viewer has to hunt for the artworks, and if in the quest they are not missed or stepped on, they will whisper their wonder to the curious who come close. Like with James Lee Byars’ Book of the Hundred Questions, 1969, the reader must concentrate on the three-inch column of microscopic writing to reveal its secrets. Richard Tuttle’s “little things” are unimposingly placed on the wall and yet exert a strong control on their environment, as if their low visibility emphasizes the space around them. Whose fly is this?, 1988, a plastic fly in a small Plexiglas magnifying box by Ilya Kabakov, expresses claustrophobic tensions in the domestic space. With its derisory question, the minute fly mocks emptiness in the everyday life.
Small scale work is a far cry from being a diminished contribution to the arts. Deliberately unimposing, its effect remains hidden until the viewer approaches. The art in the show reminds us that the experience of the objects depends on our active participation. As the philosopher Gaston Bachelard says, “To use a magnifying glass is to pay attention, but isn’t paying attention already having a magnifying glass? Attention by itself is an enlarging glass.”
Sandrine Guerin

Do it, The Morris Museum, Morris, NJ, Jan 10-April 4, 1999
Do it is a traveling exhibition curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and organized by ICI. It includes works by artists from the US, Europe, Asia and South America presented by way of written instructions.
Make a wish and tie it to the branch of a tree • Cast a silver ring and lose it • Run for president • Make pictures using your washing machine • Invite a stranger into your home for breakfast •
The institutions hosting the show have to select among the thirty Do it (museum) and twenty Do it (home) instructions offered and assign the production of artworks to any individual or group they want to involve with the project. The resulting time/space specific pieces express the artists' free interpretation of the directions. In this exhibition the art can be made by anyone, and the number of participants involved in the creation is unlimited.
Obrist is a Swiss-born curator who divides his time between London, Paris and Vienna, and who applies his curatorial ebulience to show art in new ways and in unexpected places. The concept of Do it was developed in 1993 after discussing with the French artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier the use of instructional procedures in their artwork. Soon the curator wrote the first Do it texts and set the rules for exhibiting the interpretations to be. Do it explores the relationship between art and society and challenges the museum structure in calling for participation from the public and offering a “potential” exhibition.
Sandrine Guerin

Contemporary Art from Cuba, Irony and Survival on the Utopian Island, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, AZ, January-15-may 2, 1999

These three exhibitions were organized by ICI (Independent Curators International), based in New York. ICI is a non-profit organization founded in 1975 that works like a contemporary art museum to produce a program of innovative thematic shows, but without a space of its own. ICI's mission is to educate people about contemporary art through its traveling exhibition program. The organization generates new exhibitions featuring a thought-provoking mix of subjects and artists that travel throughout the United States, Canada, Central America, and Europe.


Images of the Spirit: Photographs by Graciela Iturbide, Feb 27-May 2, 1999, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California, May 21-aug29, 1999, Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Chicago, Illinois
This exhibition, organized by Michael E.Hoffman, is the first retrospective of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide. It includes 100 gelatin silver prints.
Iturbide has brought a deeply personal and poetic vision to the Mexican artistic tradition of exploring issues of identity, diversity and selfhood. Iturbide's work was influenced by the two best-known earlier photographers of Mexico, Tina Modotti and Manuel Alvarez Bravo.
Iturbide was born in Mexico City in 1942, and came to photography relatively late. She was married when she began studying cinematography at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematograficos, Mexico. There, she was Manuel Alvarez Bravo's student and became his assistant. This professional relationship profoundly marked her career. Beginning in 1974 she dedicated herself exclusively to photography. With Alvaro's support she obtained her first assignments, as a photographer for the Instituto Nacional Indiginesta, a federal agency dedicated to the study of Indian communities. She worked with the Seri Indians of Northern Mexico, documented the Zapotec people of Juchitán in their daily and ceremonial activities. She explored the diversity of Hispanic cultures found in both Spain and the Americas. In 1986, Iturbide traveled to East Los Angeles, where resides the largest population of Mexican immigrants. For the book A Day in the Life of America, she approached young Mexican Americans, often gang members, and started to photograph the marginalized groups.
Iturbide images are simple and yet ambiguous. She portrays people respecting their voice, and the images render the close collaboration between the photographer and the subject.


Marcos Ramirez Erre, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, WI, March 20-June 13, 1999.
Marcos Ramirez Erre, commonly known as Erre, was born in 1961 in Tijuana, Mexico. Erre's work addresses the realities of Mexican and border culture. The artist creates large scale installations that are composed of used or discarded construction material such as wood or metal. The artist's installations have a direct reference to the exhibition site and carry a political or social commentary. The piece exhibited at The Institute of Visual Arts (inova) is new. Erre created a militarized playhouse for children. A fortress made of wood, surrounded by a fence and barbed wire, will be the centerpiece for photographs of children playing in Tijuana, Havana and Milwaukee.
Erre's work is often documentary in nature, but also holds a conceptual element that illuminates his installations with the pride and poetry of his heritage.