Venezuelan Pavilion opens at HotShoe Gallery, London – Transatlantic exchange

Venezuelan Pavilion (11 September – 8 October) is the second in a series of exhibitions at HotShoe Gallery in London, curated by visual artist Marcin Dudek, that examines a particular country’s artistic cultural individuality through architectural installation, photography and moving image, with a particular focus on experimental practices. This series was inaugurated in May 2010 by Dudek with Romanian Pavilion.

© Javier Rodriguez, No pudo su estado. Photo courtesy of the artist and the gallery

“The Venezuelan Pavilion project evokes a model of national and universal exhibitions that have been taking place around the globe since the industrial revolution, with the aim to reassert and disseminate the idea of progress…

“Similar to other Latin American states that regained their independence during the 19th century, Venezuela adopted the grandiloquent image of those fairs. Likewise, it allowed itself to be seduced by the allures of modernity.

“The works by Daniel Medina, Magdalena Fernandez, Jaime Castro, Federico Ovalles, Javier Rodriguez and Ivan Candeo are conceived from a contemporary standpoint; they are not defined by the national context they emerge from, but rather through well thought-out strategies or representations that seek to expose the clash between vernacular aspirations and foreign patterns of artwork production.

“In this manner, abstraction and nature, professional architecture and popular edification, the act of representation and reality, converge in a hybrid panorama; saturated by anachronisms and reverences.

“Consequently, the exhibition introduces a comment, not exempt from irony, about the country’s current political situation. This exhibition could be seen to outline a “cultural geography” constituted by appropriations made in vain, as well as by fruitful mistake-making.” – Felix Suazo.

Translated by Daniel Izquierdo.