The exhibition, drawn from the Juan Yarur collection, celebrates the most compelling contemporary artists working in Chile today. This new generation of artists emerged, buoyant, through the fabric of the new Chilean democracy in the late 90s, causing the art scene in Chile to stop, look up, and make room for some clear new voices.
Despite the monumentality that characterizes these works, there is an undeniable modesty in the use of everyday materials. The choice of source materials is also about an attitude and reaction to the technology and ‘production values’ of first- world art. These are, above all, engagements with process and a desire to put the spectator in the centre of a fantastical, obsessive, formal, abstract and narrative universe.
In contrast to previous generations (Eugenio Dittborn, Gonzalo Diaz, Alfredo Jaar, and others), overtly political expression is left to one side in favour of journeys through personal, poetic, artistic and existential concerns. In the exhibition the works attempt to portray “the ambiguous, confusing, intimate, and emotional side of the socio–artistic struggle.”
Juan Yarur, the youngest patron participating in the Latin American Acquisitions Committee at Tate Modern, and Chile’s most celebrated art collector, “Chilean art has gained an energy from the emergence of this group, and I feel honoured to be able to provide the pieces to make such an important exhibition, through the curatorial work of Cecilia Brunson.”
Cecilia Brunson, curator of the exhibition commented, “Latin American art has previously been viewed through Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Now we see the contemporary art horizon extending beyond the Andes.” Brunson has worked with this group of artists independently for the last decade through North and South America. Regarding the collection and collector: “I celebrate this exciting collection brought together by such a young person (he is 26 years old). The collection demonstrates courage in the acquisition of challenging collectible work and I admire Juan’s commitment to the art scene of his native Chile.”
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The 26 -year-old Juan Yarur is a descendent of Amador Yarur (part of the Chilean Yarur family). He has been collecting international artists such as Damien Hirst, Marc Quinn, Cindy Sherman,Takashi Murakami since 2006. He is the youngest patron participating in the Latin American Acquisitions Committee at Tate Modern. Today he is the most prominent patron of Chile’s contemporary art scene. In 2008, he founded AMA fellowship, a grant that supports Chilean art residencies abroad. Yarur has also been attracting the art world’s elite to Chile, inviting international curators every year to visit the AMA fellowship exhibition, which takes place at the MAVI museum of art in Santiago. Here curators see the artists that, once selected by an international committee, have won the scholarship and participated in residencies such as Gasworks in London, APT in New York, and RIAA in Buenos Aires.
Cecilia Brunson is an independent curator based in London. For more than a decade she has worked in New York and Latin America. Her career began in 1991 in New York at the age of nineteen. For ten years she built a collection of Latin American art with the Edwards publishing family. In 2001 after graduating from the Centre for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, she was appointed Coordinator of Exhibitions at The Americas Society in New York. This was followed by an invitation to be Associate Curator of Latin American Art at The Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. Because of her interest in supporting emerging artists and bringing to light the work of up-and-coming curators she founded INCUBO in Chile. This was a residency program for international curators to innovate and experiment with different formats for exhibitions, lectures and publications. She recently directs the AMA Fellowship, a grant that facilitates residencies abroad for Chilean artists. In 2010 she curated a series of solo-exhibitions by Chilean artists at House of Propellers, London.
This exhibition has been made possible thanks to the courtesy and support of Dirección de Asuntos Culturales - DIRAC- Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Chile.
Artists: Magdalena Atria, Catalina Bauer, Cristóbal Lehyt, Livia Marin, Josefina Guilisasti, Alvaro Oyarzún, Gerardo Pulido, Tomás Rivas, Pablo Rivera, Cristián Silva, Malu Stewart and Paz Errazuriz.
Reception: Thursday 13 January 2011 6-8pm
