Gathering a myriad of voices by a multigenerational group of artists with diverse concerns surrounding the medium of painting—one of incessant transformations and profound reflections throughout history— the exhibition ¿Pintura, no Pintura? (Painting, not Painting?) seeks to question the medium, explore its malleability and hybrid character in order to understand its current state. 

 

The exhibition puts forward two fundamental questions: How is the medium of painting being approached by contemporary artists today?  What is the significance of painting nowadays? The exhibition evidences the coexistence of multiple understandings about the pictorial act, manifested in a multiplicity of forms that constantly generate bewilderment and confuse our expectations. 

 

For some, painting is highly stimulating collaborative act that invites to contemplation. For others, it is materialized in the careful selection of discarded materials and settled in the process of installation; it is also synthesized in the deconstruction and exploration of the elements that make it up through the use of video, installation and drawing; or it turns into an effective mechanism able to reference complex issues involving territory, the ancestral, and other issues of social and political order. 

 

Far from presenting an exhibition of painting that responds to a traditional notion of the medium, ¿Pintura, no pintura? reveals works of great presence, which in their discourse, construction, and materiality take the medium to its limits. In so doing, these works renovate and expand the definition of painting while evidencing that “painting continues to provide poignant answers to human knowledge”  

 

Danilo Dueñas, Carlos Rojas, Bernardo Ortiz, Luis Roldán, Rosemberg Sandoval, Alejandro Salcedo &Tikal Smildiger, Cristina Umaña, Siu Vásquez, León Trujillo, Luz Lizarazo, Verónica Lehner. 

 

Paula Bossa