Trans/Migrations: Graphics as Contemporary Art will open this Saturday, December 4 at 12 noon, at the Antiguo Arsenal de la Marina in La Puntilla, Old San Juan. This exhibition features a selection of more than 250 works of art occupying some 20 galleries in the Metropolitan area. Trans/Migrations is part of the first San Juan Poly/Graphic Triennial: Latin America and the Caribbean, presented by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture along with its Program of Visual Arts. The exhibition is dedicated to master Lorenzo Romar and presents a hundred of innovative national and international contemporary artists.
The opening will be held at 1 :00 p.m. in the following buildings in Old San Juan: Arsenal de la Marina Espanol in La Puntilla; Cuartel de Ballaja; El Polvorin of the Luis Mufioz Rivera Park; the hall of the Tourism Company in Paseo la Princesa; Centro de Artes Populares in Calle Cristo; the Museo Casablanca; and in Santurce, at the art gallery at the University of the Sacred Heart (the former Museo de Arte Contemporaneo).
On Sunday, December 5th from 11 :00 a.m. to 1 :00 p.m., and from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., the symposium "Status of Contemporary Graphics" will be held in the Raul Julia Theater at the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico on Jose de Diego A venue in Santurce. Speakers will include: Ricardo Resende, curator and museographer, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Alvaro Barrios, artist, Bogota, Colombia; Deborah Wye, curator of the Museum of Modem Art (MOMA), New York City; and Antonio Martorell, artist and art critic, Puerto Rico, Magali Arriola, independent curator, San Diego, Rita Gonzalez, curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Daniel Joseph Martinez, artist, Los Angeles, and Carmen Cuenca, Executive Director of InSite_05, San Diego.
Trans/Migrations explores technological and territorial displacements, and the conceptual trajectories that printmaking has experienced in the last few decades. This exhibition features work by Latin American artists and artists working in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Similarly, the curators have taken advantage of Puerto Rico's strategic position as a dynamic meeting point for artists of the Americas.
The team of curators includes Mari Carmen Ramirez (Puerto Rico), Justo Pastor Mellado (Chile), Harper Montgomery (USA), Jose Ignacio Roca (Colombia), and Margarita Fernandez Zavala (Puerto Rico). The curators emphasized how printed medias have impacted contemporary artistic production, and how this work raises questions about how printmaking has been defined and proposes alternative modes of reproduction and dissemination.
Says the Executive Director of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, Dra. Teresa Tio, "I feel an enormous satisfaction with the work done in this First Edition of the Triennial. It brings together the best of Latin American art, it is indebted to the country and to our cultural world, and will continue to grow to obtain a place of reverence in contemporary graphic art." She adds, "This exposition recognizes that contemporary graphic arts have moved beyond their traditional terms."
The works are organized according to four themes. The theme Impugnations includes work born from violent situations, war, and conflict in all its manifestations. These works will be shown in the Sala de las Artes, in the University of the Sacred Heart, in the Antigua Cuartel de Ballaja and the School of Plastic Arts, in Old San Juan. Grids is the second theme, which illustrates the physical or mental cartographies that acquire a graphic presence in the form of maps or diagrams. Their works will be exhibited in the former Arsenal de la Marina in La Puntilla in Old San Juan. A third theme, Insertions, groups graphic installations in public spaces, in communication mediums, and in the Internet, among others. The halls of the Centro de Artes Populares, Cristo Street #253 in Old San Juan, and the hall of the Tourism Company on Paseo de La Princesa lodge these works. The fourth theme titled Out of Register touches on the nostalgic and decorative sense associated with some types of graphic expression, as the desire of the artists to enlarge their artistic status. These works will be-on-exhibition in the Polvorin of the Luis Muñoz Rivera Park.
Trans/Migrations accompany three monographic expositions opened in October, Inscribed and Proscribed: Displacement in Puerto Rican Graphic Arts at the Museo de las Americas in the Cuartel de Ballaja dealing with displacement in the Puerto Rican graphic arts (1950-90s), and monographic exhibitions of Antonio Berni (Argentina) in the Museo de Arte Puerto Rico and Beatriz Gonzalez (Colombia) in the Museo de Historia, Antropologia y Arte of the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus.
