Wednesday 29 November 2006

PABLO INVITES LOCAL WRESTLERS TO GIVE A DEMONSTRATION OF 'LUCHA CANARIA' IN GRAN CANARIAS













Canary Islands Wrestling
Wrestling Deomonstration
a situation by Pablo Leon de la Barra
curated by Antonio Zaya
Bienal de Canarias
December 2006

Canary Island wrestling has Guanche indigenous origins and is popular in all the
Canary Islands. Traditionally, this type of wrestling was used to settle disputes
over domestic issues and Land. The Luchadores would roll their trousers up to the
thigh so that they could both get a grip of the other and the bout - or "brega"
would begin. Almost every borough has its own sand "terrero" or circular
wrestling ring. Each "brega" is between two contestants who try to unbalance each
other with spectacular trips and throws called "mañas". The two wrestlers have to
remain on their feet, as, if any other part of the body touches the ground, that
wrestler is eliminated. Canary Island wrestling is also practiced in Venezuela and
Cuba; a legacy of Canary Island migration.

Thursday 12 October 2006

RIO DE JANEIRO AND SAO PAULO PANORAMA


café at Rio de Janeiro Airport


building in Rio de Janeiro centre


balaustrade at Dominique Gonzalez Foerster “Sitio Experimental Tropical” in Santa Teresa in Rio


Roberto Burle Marx’s grass design outside the Museum of Modern Art Rio


waiting room in Parking lot in Rio


tiles at the Bar do Minheiro in Santa Teresa in Rio


lamps at the Bar do Minheiro in Santa Teresa in Rio


Vidente do Amor (Love Fortune Teller) in the streets of Sao Paulo


Maestro Lawrence Weiner having a caipirinha in Sao Paulo


avaf meets Abravaneista movement at Galeria Triangulo in Sao Paulo


ceiling at Karaoke in Liberdade, japanese neighbourhood in Sao Paulo


Dominique Gonzalez Foerster’s family of columns at the Ibapueira Park during the Sao Paulo Bienial


Freeway in Sao Paulo closed on Sundays so people can have a stroll in the centre

Monday 9 October 2006

MARCELO KRASILCIC'S NIGHT OF A 1000 MARCELOS!







Marcelo was a popular name during the 60s and 70s in Brazil. Some say that is because of Mastroiani's success with 'La Dolce Vita'. For the 'Night of a 1000 Marcelos', Marcelo Krasilcic invited as many Marcelos and Marcelo's friends to Royal in Sao Paulo. F. Kawallys created caps, and together with Rick Castro/Abravanation made beautiful acrilic Marcelo pieces, meanwhile Camila Levi and Juliano Lopes djd.
http://www.marcelok.com/

Sunday 8 October 2006

GUIA DO COPAN OUT NOW




Press release
Guia do Copan / Copacopan Day,

pablo international magazine and exo experimental org. invite you to the Copacopan Day, a series of events celebrating the launch of the publication Guia do Copan, a special edition for São Paulo S.A.

Friday 06th October, 2006
Copan Building
Av. Ipiranga, 200 República
São Paulo SP Brazil
info@exo.org.br
11 9492 2445

Events of the day
9:30am coffee at Café Floresta**
10:00am Copan building special tour with Sr. Affonso Celso Prazeres (manager)*
12:00pm Tai Chi lesson at the Copan’s Mezannine
18:00pm Sunset on the rooftop of Copan building*
19:00pm Pizza and launch of the Guia do Copan at Pizzaria Copan**

* please confirm assistance via e-mail or phone, limited number of places available
** tours and events in the building are free, participants are only responsible for their own expenses at café and pizza place

Guia do Copan is an investigation by Pablo Léon de la Barra of the Copan Building and its historical documents. The Copan was designed in 1951 by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer as a commission for the Pan-America Hotel and Tourism Company, a joint venture between Brazilian investors and the US-based Intercontinental Hotels Corporation, a subsidiary of Pan-American World Airways. Located in downtown São Paulo, at the intersection of Avenida Ipiranga and Avenida São Luis, the Copan was officially inaugurated in 1966. The 1950s and 1960s comprised an industrial and economic boom in São Paulo, which resonated with a larger ideology of development and progress in the country marked by the construction of Brasília – the new capital of “the country of the future”. Copan was idealized as the “Rockefeller Center of São Paulo”, an urban complex integrating an hotel with apartments, offices and shops. During its construction the project went through several changes and its final configuration is a 32 story building consisting of 1.160 residential apartments (ranging in size between 29m2 - 240m2) divided into 6 blocks, with shops, a cinema on the ground level, a bank and a parking lot. Copan has become one of the most important symbols of the city, “synonymous with the metropolitan scale of São Paulo’s modernity”, signaling a radical change in the modes of living and in the configuration of the landscape. With a diverse population currently estimated at 5.000, Copan is inscribed with the many levels of social and cultural co-habitation in São Paulo. Investigating Copan is an attempt to critically engage with the city’s complex urban and societal issues. exo experimental org. has located its office and artist-in-residency program in the Copan since 2003. Pablo Leon de la Barra took part in the São Paulo S.A. international residency research program.

São Paulo S.A. aesthetic, social and political practices in debate is a medium/long term cultural project initiated in November 2002 that articulates investigations related to the Brazilian social and political context. The project focuses on the debate concerning contemporary aesthetic practices at the crossroad of diverse disciplines and urban experiences. It considers the metropolis of São Paulo and its complexities as the epicenter of reflections, involving theoreticians, artists, as well as social and political agents. São Paulo S.A. is directed by Catherine David and realized by exo in association with various Brazilian and international cultural institutions, comprising seminars, an international residency research program, workshops, work presentations, an archive and a series of folders and publications.

exo experimental org. is a non-profit cultural organization held in São Paulo since 2002 - co-founded and coordinated by Ligia Nobre and Cécile Zoonens. Copan is the site where exo has its office and artist-in-residency program since early 2003.
www.exo.org.br

Pablo León de la Barra's practice provides a social and aesthetic platform for the examination of different and contradictory tensions which give form to the contemporary experience. He has curated exhibitions such as To Be Political it Has to Look Nice, 2003 at Apexart in New York and Glory Hole, 2006 at the Architecture Foundation, London; and participated amongst other exhibitions at Localismos, 2004 Mexico City; Tropical Abstraction, 2005, Stedelijk Museum; BMW- 9th Baltic Triennial, 2005, CAC-Lithuania and ICA-London; Globos Sonda/Trial Balloons, 2006, MUSAC, Spain; Nothing Really Matters When You Wear A Big Moustache, 2006, Locus, Athens. He lives in London, he was born in Mexico City in 1972.

Saturday 7 October 2006

'COPACOPAN DAY' A PROJECT BY PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA, INCLUDING THE LAUNCH OF GUIA DO COPAN, GUIDED TOUR THROUGH COPAN BUILDING AND SUNSET AT THE ROOFTOP


plan of Copan


Welcoming Desk



Angelica at Welcoming Desk!


Welcoming desk committee at Copan's Pavimento Terreo


curator Ligia Nobre and Sr. Affonso guiding the tour, Copan photomural in the background



Tour through the building


at rooftop of Copan


Sao Paulo at Sunset as viewed from the rooftop of Copan




visitors at Copan's rooftop


Cay Sophie Rabinowitz and Christian Rattemeyer


Sao Paulo by night as viewed from above


Sao Paulo quartet playing at rooftop!


Pizzas at Pizzaria Copan afterwards!

Press release
Guia do Copan / Copacopan Day,

pablo international magazine and exo experimental org. invite you to the Copacopan Day, a series of events celebrating the launch of the publication Guia do Copan, a special edition for São Paulo S.A.

Friday 06th October, 2006
Copan Building
Av. Ipiranga, 200 República
São Paulo SP Brazil
info@exo.org.br
11 9492 2445

Events of the day
9:30am coffee at Café Floresta**
10:00am Copan building special tour with Sr. Affonso Celso Prazeres (manager)*
12:00pm Tai Chi lesson at the Copan’s Mezannine
18:00pm Sunset on the rooftop of Copan building*
19:00pm Pizza and launch of the Guia do Copan at Pizzaria Copan**

* please confirm assistance via e-mail or phone, limited number of places available
** tours and events in the building are free, participants are only responsible for their own expenses at café and pizza place

Guia do Copan is an investigation by Pablo Léon de la Barra of the Copan Building and its historical documents. The Copan was designed in 1951 by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer as a commission for the Pan-America Hotel and Tourism Company, a joint venture between Brazilian investors and the US-based Intercontinental Hotels Corporation, a subsidiary of Pan-American World Airways. Located in downtown São Paulo, at the intersection of Avenida Ipiranga and Avenida São Luis, the Copan was officially inaugurated in 1966. The 1950s and 1960s comprised an industrial and economic boom in São Paulo, which resonated with a larger ideology of development and progress in the country marked by the construction of Brasília – the new capital of “the country of the future”. Copan was idealized as the “Rockefeller Center of São Paulo”, an urban complex integrating an hotel with apartments, offices and shops. During its construction the project went through several changes and its final configuration is a 32 story building consisting of 1.160 residential apartments (ranging in size between 29m2 - 240m2) divided into 6 blocks, with shops, a cinema on the ground level, a bank and a parking lot. Copan has become one of the most important symbols of the city, “synonymous with the metropolitan scale of São Paulo’s modernity”, signaling a radical change in the modes of living and in the configuration of the landscape. With a diverse population currently estimated at 5.000, Copan is inscribed with the many levels of social and cultural co-habitation in São Paulo. Investigating Copan is an attempt to critically engage with the city’s complex urban and societal issues. exo experimental org. has located its office and artist-in-residency program in the Copan since 2003. Pablo Leon de la Barra took part in the São Paulo S.A. internacional residency research program.

São Paulo S.A. aesthetic, social and political practices in debate is a medium/long term cultural project initiated in November 2002 that articulates investigations related to the Brazilian social and political context. The project focuses on the debate concerning contemporary aesthetic practices at the crossroad of diverse disciplines and urban experiences. It considers the metropolis of São Paulo and its complexities as the epicenter of reflections, involving theoreticians, artists, as well as social and political agents. São Paulo S.A. is directed by Catherine David and realized by exo in association with various Brazilian and international cultural institutions, comprising seminars, an international residency research program, workshops, work presentations, an archive and a series of folders and publications.

exo experimental org. is a non-profit cultural organization held in São Paulo since 2002 - co-founded and coordinated by Ligia Nobre and Cécile Zoonens. Copan is the site where exo has its office and artist-in-residency program since early 2003.
www.exo.org.br

Pablo León de la Barra's practice provides a social and aesthetic platform for the examination of different and contradictory tensions which give form to the contemporary experience. He is editor of Pablo Internacional Magazine, co-director of Blow de la Barra gallery and curator of White Cubicle Toilet Gallery. He has curated exhibitions such as To Be Political it Has to Look Nice, 2003 at Apexart in New York and Glory Hole, 2006 at the Architecture Foundation, London; and participated amongst other exhibitons at Localismos, 2004 Mexico City; Tropical Abstraction, 2005, Stedelijk Museum; BMW- 9th Baltic Triennial, 2005, CAC-Lithuania and ICA-London; Globos Sonda/Trial Balloons, 2006, MUSAC, Spain; Nothing Really Matters When You Wear A Big Moustache, 2006, Locus, Athens. He lives in London, he was born in Mexico City in 1972.

Friday 6 October 2006

'GUIA DO COPAN / COPACOPAN DAY' A PROJECT BY PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA AT OSCAR NIEMEYER'S EDIFICIO COPAN



Press release
Guia do Copan / Copacopan Day,

pablo international magazine and exo experimental org. invite you to the Copacopan Day, a series of events celebrating the launch of the publication Guia do Copan, a special edition for São Paulo S.A.

Friday 06th October, 2006
Copan Building
Av. Ipiranga, 200 República
São Paulo SP Brazil
info@exo.org.br
11 9492 2445

Events of the day
9:30am coffee at Café Floresta**
10:00am Copan building special tour with Sr. Affonso Celso Prazeres (manager)*
12:00pm Tai Chi lesson at the Copan’s Mezannine
18:00pm Sunset on the rooftop of Copan building*
19:00pm Pizza and launch of the Guia do Copan at Pizzaria Copan**

* please confirm assistance via e-mail or phone, limited number of places available
** tours and events in the building are free, participants are only responsible for their own expenses at café and pizza place

Guia do Copan is an investigation by Pablo Léon de la Barra of the Copan Building and its historical documents. The Copan was designed in 1951 by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer as a commission for the Pan-America Hotel and Tourism Company, a joint venture between Brazilian investors and the US-based Intercontinental Hotels Corporation, a subsidiary of Pan-American World Airways. Located in downtown São Paulo, at the intersection of Avenida Ipiranga and Avenida São Luis, the Copan was officially inaugurated in 1966. The 1950s and 1960s comprised an industrial and economic boom in São Paulo, which resonated with a larger ideology of development and progress in the country marked by the construction of Brasília – the new capital of “the country of the future”. Copan was idealized as the “Rockefeller Center of São Paulo”, an urban complex integrating an hotel with apartments, offices and shops. During its construction the project went through several changes and its final configuration is a 32 story building consisting of 1.160 residential apartments (ranging in size between 29m2 - 240m2) divided into 6 blocks, with shops, a cinema on the ground level, a bank and a parking lot. Copan has become one of the most important symbols of the city, “synonymous with the metropolitan scale of São Paulo’s modernity”, signaling a radical change in the modes of living and in the configuration of the landscape. With a diverse population currently estimated at 5.000, Copan is inscribed with the many levels of social and cultural co-habitation in São Paulo. Investigating Copan is an attempt to critically engage with the city’s complex urban and societal issues. exo experimental org. has located its office and artist-in-residency program in the Copan since 2003. Pablo Leon de la Barra took part in the São Paulo S.A. internacional residency research program.

São Paulo S.A. aesthetic, social and political practices in debate is a medium/long term cultural project initiated in November 2002 that articulates investigations related to the Brazilian social and political context. The project focuses on the debate concerning contemporary aesthetic practices at the crossroad of diverse disciplines and urban experiences. It considers the metropolis of São Paulo and its complexities as the epicenter of reflections, involving theoreticians, artists, as well as social and political agents. São Paulo S.A. is directed by Catherine David and realized by exo in association with various Brazilian and international cultural institutions, comprising seminars, an international residency research program, workshops, work presentations, an archive and a series of folders and publications.

exo experimental org. is a non-profit cultural organization held in São Paulo since 2002 - co-founded and coordinated by Ligia Nobre and Cécile Zoonens. Copan is the site where exo has its office and artist-in-residency program since early 2003.
www.exo.org.br

Pablo León de la Barra's practice provides a social and aesthetic platform for the examination of different and contradictory tensions which give form to the contemporary experience. He is editor of Pablo Internacional Magazine, co-director of Blow de la Barra gallery and curator of White Cubicle Toilet Gallery. He has curated exhibitions such as To Be Political it Has to Look Nice, 2003 at Apexart in New York and Glory Hole, 2006 at the Architecture Foundation, London; and participated amongst other exhibitons at Localismos, 2004 Mexico City; Tropical Abstraction, 2005, Stedelijk Museum; BMW- 9th Baltic Triennial, 2005, CAC-Lithuania and ICA-London; Globos Sonda/Trial Balloons, 2006, MUSAC, Spain; Nothing Really Matters When You Wear A Big Moustache, 2006, Locus, Athens. He lives in London, he was born in Mexico City in 1972.

Wednesday 30 August 2006

'WE HAVE THE DUCHAMP' AN EXHIBITION CURATED BY STEFAN BRUGGEMANN AND MARIO GARCIA TORRES


General Idea


Simon Popper


Karl Holmqvist


Los Super Elegantes


Aldo Chaparro


Joseph Kosuth


Matthieu Laurette


Stefan Bruggemann


Mario Garcia Torres


Jonathan Monk


exhibition view

press release:
we have the duchamp
curated by stefan brüggemann and mario garcía torres
galeria de arte mexicano
opening reception: August 30th, 2006. 7:30 pm.

MEXICO. August 24, 2006.- Galeria de Arte Mexicano is pleased to present We Have the Duchamp…an exhibition that beyond setting in opposition the paradigms and negotiations between the work and thinking of Marcel Duchamp and the more explicit relation of the exhibited works to the practices of the so-called conceptual artist from the late 1960’s and 70’s, it displays the conflation of those legacies as seen from our current social and political context.

Through an implicit narrative that takes a historical moment in the gallery as it’s starting point, We Have the Duchamp… is both a revolving of past histories, and a subtle illustration of the context that allows the production of these specific works. In other words; how to conflate the relationship of the Mexican art world and the avant-guard artist from the early century, the late influence of the non-object-oriented practice of the late sixties and seventies on the understanding of the work of art in our country and the negotiation of the contemporary artists towards the massive global cultural production?

Organized by Breton, Paalen and Moro, the International Exhibition of Surrealism took place during January and February, 1940 at the Galería de Arte Mexicano, where three works of Duchamp where shown along works by Picasso, Rivera, Kahlo, Magritte and Dalí, to mention just a few. If it is difficult to think the three works by the French artist had then any repercussion in the Mexican scene, it is clear that today, it is a consensus that not a small amount of artist are clearly influenced by his thinking and production.

Instead of implying that the works at We Have the Duchamp… have any direct interest in reclaiming such a legacy, the show tells a story where some anonymous person has decided to trade a long-time lost Duchamp for a number of contemporary works that are less preoccupied to create a specific lineage for them than to use and misuse historical works in order to reflect today’s matters.

In We Have the Duchamp… contemporary works that are influenced both from historical art sources as well as popular culture and everyday politics. These works are as well shown along work from key artist working along or after the so-called conceptual art movement. If the Duchamp / so-called early Conceptual Art discussion is a well documented academic argument labeled by the October group as the The Duchamp Effect and rectified by Seth Siegelaub as the “Duchamp fixation”, this show pretends to, beyond acknowledging a Buchloh-written genealogy from Duchamp to the Institutional Critique, to take a stake at how to restore and negotiate those legacies that were in both of the cases extremely related to the everyday cultural production, re-read, this time, from a place like Mexico in the limits of the over codified world.

The artist in the show are: Joseph Kosuth, General Idea, Aldo Chaparro, Stefan Brüggemann, Mario García Torres, Simon Popper, Jenny Holzer, Hugo Hopping, Jonathan Monk, Karl Holmqvist, Los Super Elegantes and Matthieu Laurette.