RESEARCH: The Dialectic Body - Fuentes Angarita Collection

The Dialectic Body: Document

Deborah Castillo
Slapping Power
2015
Video 4:45
Edition1/3

Deborah Castillo
Slapping Power
2015
Video 4:45
Edition1/3

Curatorial proposal by Pietro Daprano.

The human body is an accumulation of voids and fullness associated with the dynamic notions and transformations that arise during each person’s life experience. Exploring its forms from the perspective of psychosocial habits comprises a fascinating field of reasoning and argumentation that dialogue and oppose each other, as they are intimately linked to emotions, behavior, rituals and memory that the bodily experience accumulates in each of its social relations.

From this premise on the development of the life cycle, appears The Dialectic Body: Document, the first exhibition made up of works from the Nina Fuentes Collection, which brings together a series of pieces that have a complex critical relationship with the ups and downs of the social being, reflecting from this physicality the undulating power of the body as an offering, protest and praise to gender.

The exhibition starts from the body’s idea to address personal identity and its peripheral components such as tastes and habits, together with the central elements that reside in the node of attitudes and behaviors. It underlines the influence of stereotypes and paradigms through a varied and complex vision of corporeality, trying to unveil the enigmas of that place where all experiences arrive.

In this regard, the representation of the body by the selected artists varies according to the different points of view and media tactics used by them, through diverse visual strategies such as drawing, ready-made, performance, photography, and video. In general, they establish a suggestive range of possibilities to explore the theme, coinciding in many cases with the setting of the social, political, and sexual atmosphere to give meaning of the lines of research they carry out.

However, it would be necessary to say that each of these results is a framework derived from the creators’ personal decisions, which, when placed in the collective context, cease to be an individual position. From the praiseworthy nature of art, the artist seeks the maximum benefit in transmitting a visual message to represent their ideas and concerns.
This suggests that the politics of art resides in its autonomy and faculty to evoke dialogues and praise diversity, respect, and solidarity, among other values that emit from specific social policies that affect our ways of life.

In addition to these critical links or more or less explicit denunciation, this exhibit focuses on the obviousness of the body that persists through narratives that speak to us of physicality, the matter that moves through fundamental axes such as the passage of time, the mark of actions and memory. Similarly, we will find visual scripts that keep us in frequency with the different types of body structures made up of the extremities. A fact that gives the characteristic shape to each body and at the same time refers to the infinite range of features that characterizes each human personality.
Around this universe of bodily constitutions, attributes of temperament, and human behavior, the artists’ proposals in The Dialectic Body: Document generate diverse places for reflection and a vast chain of open questions: How do social stereotypes and dominant systems impact on constructions about gender? Can the frenetic practices of the fashion trade cause us to lose consciousness or a sense of identity? Should we doubt our perception of reality? How are we affected by how others recognize our bodies, or what is the basis on which we can establish that our physical actions are consistent with what we speak, think or feel?

Martin Castillo & Maria Antonia Rodriguez
Rutina #2
2004
Photography
Unique artist proof
24 x 20 in each piece (60,96 x 50,08 cm)

Martin Castillo & Maria Antonia Rodriguez
Rutina #5
2004
Photography
Unique artist proof
24 x 20 in each piece (60,96 x 50,08 cm)

From this line of facts, it is convenient to turn our attention to the artists that are part of the thematic axes of this exhibition: Deborah Castillo, (Venezuela); Martín Castillo Morales, (Venezuela) & María Antonia Rodríguez, (Venezuela); Leslie Gabaldón, (Venezuela – United States); Muri Kim, (South Korea); Gustavo Marcano, (Venezuela); Lee Materazzi, (United States); Yessica Sofía Mitrani, (Colombia); Érika Ordosgoitti, (Venezuela); Marta María Pérez Bravo, (Cuba); Lucia Pizzani, (Venezuela); Andreína Rodríguez -Andreotra-, (Venezuela); César Rojas, (Venezuela) and Amparo Sard, (Spain).

The Dialectic Body: Document frames a set of conceptual strategies in the form of cultural anthropology that pay special attention to the risks that can be caused by all the foreign factors that affect the physical body and even warn us that according to certain circum-stances, some things can lead us to over-dimension everything that happens, spreading alerts about a psychological reality that requires attention. In these multiple dimensions, the exhibition establishes itself as a living space of exchanges, proposals that from the voice of small stories transform the image of the body into an open possibility of dialogue and confrontation, calling attention to the undulating course of that individuality trapped in the dialectic -internal and external- of a changing matter.

Leslie Gabaldon
Photography
Edition 3/25
11 x 8 in (27,94 cm x 20,32 cm)

Muri Kim
Bund door # 3
2010
Photography
Edition 1/5
13 x 19 in (33,0 x 48,26 cm)

Gustavo Marcano
La noche de las luciérnagas
2009
Photography
14 x 10 in (35,56 x 25,4 cm)

Lee Materazzi
Pant Hanger
2009
Photography
Edition 2/5 (+2AP)
33 x 25 in (83,82 x 63,5 cm)

Jessica Sofia Mitrani
Nora on the Beach (Bulgarian Jew)
2010
Inkjet and color pencil on watercolor paper
Single edition
22 x 22 in each piece (55,88 cm x 55,88 cm)

Erika Ordosgoitti
Me abro la cabeza
2013
Video 9:20
Edition 1/5

Marta Maria Perez Bravo
Travesía I
2011
Digital print
11,8 x 12,4 in (27,4 cm x 31,5 cm)

Lucia Pizzani
Vessel
2009
Photography. Laminated of acrylic
Edition 1/5
29 17/32 x 19 11/16 in (75 x 50 cm)

Andreina Rodriguez -Andreotra-
Busqueda de la fecalidad
2007
Ready-made. Pewter bedpans and adhesive vinyl.
10 in diameter each bedpan x 4 in-depth (25,4 x 10,16 cm)

Cesar Rojas
La deboradora de hombres
2006
Photography
Single edition
24 x 24 in each piece (60,96 cm x 60,96 cm)

Amparo Sard
Perforated paper
13 x 18 in each piece (33,02 x 45,72)