Luis Camnitzer “Towards an Aesthetic of Imbalance”

Luis Camnitzer “Towards an Aesthetic of Imbalance”

Alexander Gray Associates

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Alexander Gray Associates presents its sixth exhibition of Luis Camnitzer’s work, highlighting two key installations, El Mirador [The Observatory] (1996), and Territorio Libre [Free Territory] (2018). For over five decades, Camnitzer’s interdisciplinary practice has influenced discourses around Conceptualism, pedagogy, and politics.

In 1988, Camnitzer represented Uruguay in the 43rd Venice Biennale, where he produced a series of works that combined physical objects, printed images, and text. In the context of the end of Uruguay’s military dictatorship (1973–1984), these works addressed themes of torture, abuse of power, and repression, combining seemingly disparate elements to elicit poetic interpretations. Despite political instability during the transition to democracy, Camnitzer agreed to participate in the Biennale, realizing that “keeping one’s purity could be in the way of more important things like the cementing of a regained democracy.” Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, Camnitzer built upon the political themes in his work, developing new series and projects, including The Agent Orange Series (1985) and Los San Patricios (1992). Conceptually building on the work he debuted eight years prior at the Venice Biennale, Camnitzer presented El Mirador in 1996 at São Paulo Biennial. Consisting of an enclosed room that is only visible to the viewer through a narrow slit in the wall, El Mirador evokes multiple spaces of confinement: a prison cell, a psychiatric hospital, and a torture chamber. Various objects are placed throughout the white-walled room, which is starkly lit with glaring light, lending the installation a surreal quality. In this tableaux, uncanny elements are gathered––an iron bed frame with a single glass sheet as a mattress, a shattered wall mirror, a house of playing cards, and a window with panes made of Astroturf grass––resulting in a hallucinatory aura, meant to destabilize the viewer’s initial interpretations.

In addition to alluding to an observatory, the work’s title also implicates the one who is looking––the viewer––in the act of surveillance. In our contemporary moment, El Mirador takes on additional meaning: suggesting that our data-driven society functions as a self-sustaining surveillance system, supporting hegemonic structures of power and the status quo. El Mirador can elicit various metaphoric interpretations ranging from political imprisonment to censorship, and ultimately, the instability of one’s own perception.

Similarly, Territorio Libre, represents Camnitzer’s ongoing engagement with borders and ideas of freedom. This recent installation consists of projected text on the floor that is encircled by razor wire in a darkened room. Labeled as “free territory,” the inaccessible space is guarded by the razor wire––as a result, the viewer experiences the work in the dark, from the “outside.” Inviting associations with current disputes about borderlands, the refugee crisis, and international powers, Camnitzer’s Territorio Libre is a timely interrogation of fictitious boundaries. In a metaphysical sense, Camnitzer explains: “In the end everything is a prison: the body, the limits of intelligence and imagination, the limits of society. The real prison is an example of an infinite number of prisons. We are always carrying around a prison, wearing it like a suit.”

A retrospective of Camnitzer’s work, Luis Camnitzer: Hospice of Failed Utopias, was on view in 2018 at El Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. Camnitzer’s work has been shown at important institutions since the 1960s, including solo exhibitions at El Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, Santiago, Chile (2013); Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (2011); El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY (1995); Museo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, Mexico (1993); and List Visual Arts Center at M.I.T., Cambridge, MA (1991). Retrospectives of his work have been presented at Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, NY (1991); Kunsthalle Kiel, Germany (2003); Daros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland (2010); El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY (2011); and Museo de Arte de la Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá (2012). His work has appeared in numerous group exhibitions, including HOME—So Different, So Appealing, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), CA, which traveled to Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (2017); I am you, you are too, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2017); Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (2014); and Information, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (1970). He has been featured in several international biennials, including the Bienal de la Habana, Cuba (1984, 1986, 1991, 2009); Pavilion of Uruguay, 43 Biennale di Venezia, Italy (1988); Whitney Biennial (2000); and Documenta 11 (2002).

Camnitzer’s work is in the permanent collections of countless institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Tate, London, UK; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zurich, Switzerland. He was the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowships on two occasions, 1961 and 1982. A highly regarded critic and curator, Camnitzer is a frequent contributor to contemporary art magazines. He has authored the publications New Art of Cuba (University of Texas Press: 1994, 2003), Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation (University of Texas Press: 2007), translated as Didáctica de la liberación: Arte conceptualista latinoamericano (Hum, Montevideo, Uruguay, CENDEAC, Murcia, Spain and Fundación Gilberto Álzate Avedaío, IDARTES: 2012). From 1969 to 2000, he taught at the State University of New York (SUNY) College at Old Westbury, and is professor emeritus.

Media

• Installation

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