Since the summer of 2007, Monte Vista and
ART2102 conversed about a mutual interest in artist-run,
non-commercial methods of exhibition. As an artist-run alternative
space in Los Angeles that hosts exhibitions, lectures, events,
and discussions, Monte Vista seeks to expand the local dialogue
by drawing parallel links to similar artist-run practices
in other countries. To this end, we invited Alejandro Pintado,
a prolific and talented artist who has also curated a number
shows, including Landscape interventions, part of the Moscow
Biennale, Qui Vive? (Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2008)
and the internationally traveling exhibition Speedy Gonzales
is German, Playing with Stereotypes (UTD, Texas; University
of Atlanta, Georgia; Central Gallery, Hertfordshire, England;
and the Museo de la Ciudad de Queretaro, Mexico). Pintado
in turn invited Ricardo Alzati and Diego Toledo. The resulting
exhibition is a radical investigation of the systems of
perspective and perception.
Visually stimulating and formally surprising, the work of
Alejandro Pintado, Ricardo Alzati, and Diego Toledo questions
the retinal experience and pushes the boundaries of the
expected. Pintado’s photorealistic paintings of landscapes
and architectural spaces are layered with vinyl patterns,
evocative of cartographic topography maps, architectural
diagrams, or mathematical isomorphs gone awry. The juxtaposition
of the two visual languages creates an intriguing, perplexing
dialogue. Alzati’s site-specific project for Monte
Vista promises to be equally engaging. Alzati’s past
site-specific installations offer a contemporary take on
the idea of anamorphism. Like the famous distorted skull
of Holbein’s painting, The Ambassadors, Alzati’s
installations of painted lines and simple shapes, seems
to offer the illusion of a coherent three dimensional form,
when seen from a particular angle. However, Alzati’s
illustionistic forms are always playfully skewed, questioning
the possibility of a coherent, correct perspective. Toledo’s
sculptural, painted constructions similarly play with a
conjunction of contradictory perspectives, while also challenging
traditional categories of sculpture and painting by combining
the two in a complex relation where the second and third
dimension meet.
In diverse ways, the work of Alzati, Pintado, and Toledo
all reflect upon the influence of systems in everyday life,
by visually analyzing and breaking open the rational and
logical way this system has come to represent three-dimensional
space. All theartists were born in Mexico City, where Alzati
still lives and works. Pintado now lives and works in London,
and Toledo lives and works in Berlin. This exhibition inaugurates
Monte Vista’s first collaboration with international
artists with similar interests in alternative, artist-run,
non-traditional methods of exhibition.
About the Artists
Ricardo
Alzati was born in Mexico City in 1974. He received
his education in History and Visual Arts at the Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México and in Photography
and Visual Arts at the Centro de la Imagen and Centro Nacional
de las Artes. In 2001-2002 he also attended the Gerrit Rietveld
Academie in Amsterdam. Alzati’s photography, video,
installations, paintings, and drawings have been exhibited
in Mexico and the United States, including solo exhibitions
at the Museo del la Ciudad de México (Mexico City),
Casa Vecina (Mexico City), Fototeca de Veracruz (Verazcruz,
Mexico), 111 projects (Mexico City), and group exhibitions,
such as the 2001 Visions: Contemporary Mexican Photography
show at the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, and
the 2008 Proyectos para descontrucción at the Museo
Universitario de Ciencias y Artes MUCA Roma in Mexico City.
In 2007, Alzati was recipient of the Jóvenes Creadores
art production grant. In 2008, he was selected as part of
the core group participants at United Nations Plaza Mexico
City and was also awarded artist residencies at the Triangle
Artist’s Workshop (New York), and the 26th International
Symposium of Contemporary Art, Baie St. Paul (Quebec, Canada).
Alzati also writes for Rim Magazine (Los Angeles), and Arte
MX (Mexico City). He currently lives and works in Mexico
City.
Alejandro Pintado was
born in Mexico City in 1973. He received his MFA at Goldsmiths
(London), and his BFA at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura.
Pintado has exhibited widely nationally and internationally.
He has had numerous solo shows, including Galeria O (Mexico
City), Galeria Emma Molina (Monterrey), the Museum Ciudad
de Querétaro, Vaknin Schwartz Gallery (Atlanta),
and Haus der Kunst Gallery (Guadalajara). Pintado was also
included in the 2008 Moscow Bienale for young art, the 2007
Bienal de Artes de Yucatán, the 2005 Bienale de Monterrey
at the Centro Navional de las Artes, and Declaraciones,
at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid
(2005). From 1994-1999, Pintado co-founded the artist run
space, Tallería espacio cultural, and has since curated
several international exhibitions including Speedy González
is German: Playing with Stereotypes (2003) and Landscape
Interventions at the Moscow Bienale (2008). In 2007, he
was awarded an artist residency at the Skowhegan School
of Painting and Sculpture and was also honored with a Pollock-Krasner
Grant. He currently lives and works in London.
Diego Toledo was born
in Mexico City in 1964. He graduated as a painter from the
National University School of Arts, San Carlos, UNAM (1983-87).
As co-founder in 1988 of the alternative and independent
space called “La Quiñonera” in Mexico
City, he experimented with different materials and other
technologies, and began to show his work. Toledo’s
work has evolved from painting to the use of a great variety
of materials and processes, creating pieces of a site-specific
and conceptual nature. Toledo’s work has dealt with
elements and forms that concerned information design, advertisement
and public art, and recently has produced objects and installation
dealing with problems of how we experience and understand
space through architecture and its representation from a
phenomenological point of view. Toledo has exhibited widely
in Mexico and internationally. He has had solo shows at
many galleries and museums, including the Carrillo Gil Museum,
Mexico City (1993), Contemporary Art Museum, Oaxaca City,
Mexico (1995), Radio House Gallery, New York (2002), and
OMR Gallery, Mexico City (2003). In 2000, Toledo was awarded
artist residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada)
and the “Laboratory Mexico-Cuba” (Cuba). He
currently lives and works in Berlin.
About Monte Vista
Monte Vista is a new artist run space in Highland Park that
hosts art exhibitions, conversations, events and performances.
There is no "manifesto" as this space will be
self-determining, but the general aims are to bring a platform
for art and conversation to Los Angeles that sidesteps the
influence of the commercial market. Monte Vista wishes to
facilitate the contribution of works of art that come from
non-traditional sources, and support artworks that contribute
to non-traditional dialogues.
Hours 12-5pm Saturday-Sunday and by appointment.
For more information on Monte Vista, visit http://www.montevistaprojects.com
This exhibition is made possible in
part by the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts.
>Back to Program
|
