NYAB Event - Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck “Modern Entanglements”

Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck “Modern Entanglements”

Henrique Faria Fine Art

This event has ended.

Henrique Faria Fine Art presents Modern Entanglements, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. The mixed-media installations, which have been in progress for nearly a decade, examine the power of public messages and public secrets. These installations, or “entanglements,” as the artist terms them, are creative juxtapositions of disparate elements drawn from various disciplines and sources. Their aim is to re-contextualize historic problems within present-day circumstances.

Balteo Yazbeck’s uneasy juxtapositions explore the evolution of social, political, and cultural structures, and how they structure our understanding of the world. The Chinchorro/Hammock series (2004-2013) depicts the current friction between the Venezuelan government and its diverse ethnic populations. Balteo Yazbeck places framed silkscreens from another Venezuelan artist (Rolando Peña’s Oil Project series) within the woven cords of hammocks made by indigenous craftsmen. As Venezuela’s oil exploitation was nationalized in the 1970s, oil profits were inextricably woven into government revenue, and the expansion of production has only exacerbated the situation. The juxtaposition of industrial oil imagery and indigenous craft also evokes the promotion of technological advancement over cultural preservation.

Other installations examine longer durations and larger constellations of power. The sculptural component of Eames-Derivative, an installation produced in collaboration with art historian Media Farzin, is comprised of custom-made slotted cards that depict now outmoded computer technology. The cards are a “remake” of the Computer House of Cards, produced by the Eames office in 1970 for IBM’s pavilion at the Osaka World’s Fair. Much of the Eames’ work for IBM was intended to promote a friendly image of computers, working to establish the omnipresence of digital technology that defines today’s increasingly complex global society. The sculptural house of cards created in Eames-Derivative portrays the dominant influence of modern technology and the fragility of the financial systems that keep the world going.

Balteo Yazbeck’s series Israeli Nuclear Arsenal (2004-2013) publicizes sensitive information. The billboard work Waldorf Astoria, 1961 entangles the histories of US-Israeli relations and abstract art’s use as propaganda. Israel’s possession of advanced nuclear weapons was first revealed to the public when Mordecai Vanunu leaked photographs of the Dimona power plant to the British press in 1986. But in 1961, U.S. president John F. Kennedy had met with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion at the famed hotel to discuss how they might persuade the world of Israel’s peaceful purposes in building a nuclear reactor. An excerpt of that conversation is printed against the backdrop of an abstract painting, one of many such works used by the CIA as Cold War propaganda.

A natural reaction to an entanglement is to untangle it, to follow the chaos back to its source. Modern Entanglements offers an alternative method to locate, frame and unpack the complexities that constitute our understanding of the world we live in. Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck (b. 1972) graduated in Fine Arts in his native city of Caracas, Venezuela, where he has exhibited his work extensively. He moved his practice to New York from 2000 to 2010, and is now based in Berlin.

His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including most recently: “Liquid Assets: In the Aftermath of the Transformation of Money,” Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Austria (2013); “Order, Chaos, and the Space between: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Diane and Bruce Halle Collection,” Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, (2013); “When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes,” CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2012); “Artist on the News,” Creative Time, New York (2012); “Liberalis,” Lütze-Museum and Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen (2011); 12th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2011); “Then & Now: Abstraction in Latin American art, 1950 to Present,” Deutsche Bank, New York (2010); “Panorama,” Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo (2009).