“PS. I HATE YOU. CONTEMPORARY POSTCARDS FOR A WORLD IN RUINS”

This is an exhibition of 13 Latin American artists whose works reflect from different media and angles on failure, fiction, and the ironies of our contemporary society. Reflecting on different forms of violence, the failure of modernity and the disappointment of unfulfilled personal dreams, the artists present poetic and subtle images that deceive us into much darker realities.

Ronald Morán presents a series of photographs and paintings that show images of floral arrangements. These are made of razor ribbon, which is common in Latin America as a defense mechanism in houses and properties to prevent trespassing. A series of sculptures are the starting point for the series, where a garden is built with the dangerous and sharp material. María Adela Díaz participates with a video that begins with a landscape, but the scene changes quickly and we see a migrant family running from the dangers of the route. Alonso Cedillo presents in his video installation a fictitious scenario inspired by video games, where he simulates the interrogation room of an intelligence service where the accusation of the public for the destruction of evidence of extraterrestrial life begins. The painting shows us the precise moment of contemporary failure, when a Starbucks drink ruins the computer we work on.

Luis Millé's sculptures refer us to the failure of modernity as a utopia due to the use of aluminum and the color palette. On the other hand, JJ Estrada T.'s paintings refer to his frustrated dream of becoming a baseball player in college. The paintings are records of the position where the ball falls from a pitching machine. We see the threads still impregnated in the canvas and the gesture represents the impossibility of the artist to continue in the sport due to a serious injury. José Wolff talks about the fiction that digital media creates in reality and presents us with an installation entitled “Cuadro” that makes us imagine a moving square from the four points on the screens. This piece is a commentary on the development of art history and how the perception and distribution of images has changed over time.

Karian Amaya also reflects on the passage of time in his corroded copper paintings. Copper is a highly exploited material in Mexican mining and one of the main materials of the artist's production, which refers to the changes in the landscape that the extraction of materials causes in her country. Albertine Stahl also shows landscapes in her work “Onda Tropical” where she shows us images of gas stations destroyed by natural disasters. The pastel colors and the force of her brushstroke captivate us towards the image of a beautiful nightmare. David Ramírez-Cotón, for his part, exhibits a painting of an urban landscape in Guatemala with the irony of his own contradiction. Natalia Castañeda presents ceramic sculptures from waste to create a valuable object from a piece of trash.

Diana de Solares references the second life of materials, with wood found on construction sites that she juxtaposes with MDF painted in her usual color palette. Reminding us of the murals of Guatemalan modernity, de Solares reflects on the precariousness of the world and its great mythologies. Sergio Valencia Salazar's series of paintings are digital errors of archaeological renderings of different sites, creating a fiction of heritage and its meaning in the world today. Finally, the small photograph Andrés Asturias is a flower petal on concrete, talking about the transition from life to death and the relationship between nature and urbanity.

All these works present us with contemporary contradictions, to talk about a present that seems to have been written in an absurd science fiction book, where the limits between the real and the fictional, the ironic and the poetic, the dangerous and tenderness intertwine. to form the great paradigm of the present that today houses us and shapes us within its contemporary stamps.

Josseline Pinto

ARTISTS:

Albertine Stahl (Sv)

Alonso Cedillo (Mx)

Andrés Asturias (Gt)

David Ramírez-Cotón (Gt)

Diana de Solares (Gt)

JJ Estrada T. (Gt)

José Wolff (Gt)

Karian Amaya (Mx)

Luis Millé (Vz)

María Adela Díaz (Gt)

Natalia Castañeda (Cl)

Ronald Morán (Sv)

Sergio Valencia Salazar (Gt)