Art Basel Shows

PEREGRINOS

Peregrinos (Pilgrims) proposes a photography that collects memories of cultural icons. In a recursive method the artists re-photograph the fans on the memorial sites capturing the spirit of the place and the sense of recollection. Lady Di, Hemingway, Chaplin, Gainsbourg, La Milagrosa, Frida, Diego Rivera, become a historical presence and a contemporary interpretation of the idol or the place. They transform our collective memories into new emblems.

Each photograph is an adventure to the past recovering the absence-presence of the personages in their last site, but it is also a recollection of the fans visitors in their pursue to recover their idol. The photographic gaze of Atelier Morales acts as a double witness; first capturing the symbolically charged physical location; second, regaining the immanence power of the collective figure.

The artistic duo Atelier Morales (Teresa Ayuso, 1961 and Juan Luis Morales,1960 b. in Cuba; live and work in Paris)  expands the concept of photography towards a 3D conception. The artists deconstruct the univocal level of photography towards an intervention in the space. Below each photograph it comes an acrylic box with a memorabilia (diverse found objects, souvenirs, collected items) related to the icon. The artists in their visit to the places gather peculiar articles that create awe and surprise. Each work presents its box as a vivid extension of the celebrity.

Milagros Bello, Ph.D.

Curator of the show

Toy's Art US

TOYS ART US is a survey on ludic art. More than 25 artists participate through photography, installation, sculpture, painting, drawing, and performance on key categories such as the art as a toy, babies and children as playful entities, games, heroes and anti-heroes, dolls and fairy tales, all of which ultimately manifest themselves within contemporary art on the peculiar tendency of Toy Art. In the same tradition of Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, these artists incite to irony and criticism. They fuse the boundaries in between the toy as object and the object as art. With no fear they dare to create images or objects as a countercultural response to fossilized forms. They play out against commercialism but they go onto the other edge; creating artworks where the toy and the art work fuses in their conceptions.

From the infancy, -the baby, the child, the family, - to dolls, animal toys, lollypops, the exhibition shows the diverse notions and ideas that relates to the playful world of toys. The artists each one in their own way has chosen the toy object or the toy image to create their own artistic report to their era.

Contemporary Art urges towards new creative impulses and perceptions, still in progress in this beginning of a century; able to create awe and surprise, perhaps, rejection and disgust. In any case, new thoughts and impressions are taking place in this moment worthy enough to set a new statement in the arts.

Milagros Bello, Ph.D.
Curator of the show