Artists:

Rómulo Aguerre | Geraldo de Barros | Lázaro Blanco | Johanna Calle | David Consuegra | Martín Chambi | León Ferrari | Fernell Franco | Billy Hare | Jorge Heredia | Beatriz Jaramillo | Agustín Jiménez | Julio Le Parc | Pablo López Luz | Sameer Makarius | Raúl Martínez | Jorge Ortiz | Andrea Ostera | Santiago Rebolledo | Victor Robledo | Jorge Roiger | Armando Salas Portugal | Cristián Silva-Avária | Victor Trejo | José Yalenti | Facundo de Zuviría

Curator:

Alexis Fabry

Although the exhibition does not purport to build a complete overview of abstract photography in Latin America, the selection of works flows freely, following Jean-Louis Larivière's inclinations that swing between two of his preferred sources of inspiration. There is informalism and abstract expressionism on the one hand, and on the other, the geometries of cold America. Turning to the elements of abstract painting, photography picks up on the spontaneity of gesture and the attention paid to different surface textures. Among many others, one thinks of the partitions of Mark Rothko, the black lines of Franz Kline, or looking further south, of the weft and weave of Kenneth Kemble and Clorindo Testa. However, this is always subject to the prevailing imperative of the plane, supported by the freedom of the laboratory.

The walls of America, eroded by saltpeter, bruised by blows or vibrant with bright colors, have been a subject of inexhaustible inspiration for many photographers. However, a growing number of artists opted to abandon this style of photographic record and focus on a direct confrontation with light-sensitive paper, both within and outside the darkroom. Such a gesture betrays rage, one that is at times expressive, but since the 2000s, we see that it is most often meticulously minimalist in its range.

Constructivist inspiration, which is so cold, objective and rigorously linear, pays homage to the double legacy of European modernism and pre-Columbian cultures... Throughout the Americas, from the Mexican valleys to the Southern Cone, encompassing everything from the peaks of the Andes to the sprawling mega-cities of Brazil, photographers bend to the task of stripping away the reality they behold and extracting their material from the world around them. These are simple forms that give rise to more or less strict geometries—and amidst these, some openly drink from the fountain of Amerindian paradigms.