IN CONVERSATION: MONUMENTAL CHANGE
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10
12:30PM
ARMORY LIVE THEATER
Featuring artists Iván Argote, Reynier Leyva Novo, and Ebony G. Patterson; with Susanna V. Temkin, Curator at El Museo del Barrio—moderated by Tobias Ostrander, Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator, Latin American Art at Tate.
In partnership with Maestro Dobel Tequila.
The 2022 Platform section, titled Monumental Change, addresses how recent revisionist practices related to the dismantling, defacing, and replacement of public monuments influences artists’ engagement with sculptural form. In conversation with participating Platform artists, the panel will address themes within the curated section, further examining the institution’s role in facilitating new conversations around questions such as: What subjects might we collectively look to venerate now? With which materials? And in what form?
Iván Argote, Wild Flowers, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Perrotin. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
IVÁN ARGOTE
Iván Argote is a Colombian artist and film director based in Paris. Through his sculptures, installations, films and interventions, he questions our relation with others, with power structures and belief systems. He develops strategies based on tenderness, affect and humour through which he generates critical approaches to dominant historical narratives. In his interventions on monuments, large-scale ephemeral and permanent public artworks, Iván Argote proposes new symbolic and political uses of public space. Iván Argote studied graphic design, photography and new media at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá and holds an MFA from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Art (ENSBA) in Paris. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Albarrán Bourdais Gallery (Madrid, 2022), Dortmunder Kunstverein (Dortmund, 2021), Perrotin Gallery (New York, 2021 & Paris, 2018), Artpace (San Antonio, TX, 2021), ASU Museum (Phoenix, 2019), MALBA (Buenos Aires, 2018), Museo Universitario del Chopo (Mexico City, 2017), Galeria Vermelho (Sao Paulo, 2017), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2013) and CA2M (Madrid, 2012). Works by the artist are included in the permanent collections of numerous prestigious institutions worldwide, including the Guggenheim Museum (New York, US); Centre Pompidou (Paris, France); ASU Art Museum (Phoenix, US); Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (Miami, US); Colección de Arte del Banco de la República (Bogotá, Colombia); Kadist (San Francisco, US); MACBA (Barcelona, Spain).
Image courtesy of the speaker.
EBONY G. PATTERSON
Ebony G. Patterson's multilayered practice– in painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and video– uses beauty as a tool to address global social and political injustices. Her immersive gardens grow out of a complex entanglement of race, gender, class, and violence. Patterson seduces the viewer into acknowledging a darker truth lurking ominously beneath the surface. Upon closer inspection, the figures in these embellished paper works are disembodied, un-whole. While the bright, effusive visual cues on the surface of her work suggest vivifying celebration, these signifiers point to the opposite. Their ghostly forms hover amidst a tangle of flora and fauna, plants which themselves might harbor a secret poison. Patterson’s gardens are never far from notions of violence, of memorial, of blood and tears. Patterson received her BFA in painting from Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica in 2004. She received an MFA degree in 2006 in printmaking and drawing from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Patterson has taught at the University of Virginia, Edna Manley College School of Visual and Performing Arts, Associate Professor in Painting and Mixed Media at the University of Kentucky, and was the Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is in the public collections of 21c Museum and Foundation, Louisville, Kentucky, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, Nasher Museum, Duke University, Durham, NC, National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL, Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, and Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI, Lubeznik Center for the Arts, IN, among others. In 2021 Patterson was included in both the Liverpool and Athens Biennials. Currently she lives and works in both Chicago and Kingston, Jamaica.
Image courtesy of the speaker.
SUSANNA V. TEMKIN
Susanna V. Temkin (she/her) is an art historian and Curator at El Museo del Barrio, where she co-curated the museum’s inaugural Trienal exhibition, ESTAMOS BIEN (2020-2021). At El Museo, she also co-curated the exhibitions EN FOCO: The New York Puerto Rican Experience, 1973-1974 (2021-2022); Popular Painters & Other Visionaries (2021-2022); as well as the museum’s fiftieth anniversary exhibition, Culture and the People: El Museo del Barrio, 1969-2019 (2019). Temkin earned her master’s and PhD degrees from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where her research focused on modern art in the Americas. Prior to El Museo, she served as Assistant Curator at Americas Society in New York, as well as the research and archive specialist at the Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., where she co-authored the digital catalogue raisonné of artist Joaquín Torres-García. Essays and reviews by Temkin have been published in numerous exhibition catalogues and scholarly publications.
Image courtesy of the speaker.
Reynier Leyva Novo
Reynier Leyva Novo (b. 1983, Havana, Cuba) is one of Cuba’s leading conceptual Artists. He has distinguished himself internationally in biennials and museum shows since 2010. His multidisciplinary practice includes mining historical data and official documents, the content of which he transforms into formally minimalist and conceptually charged sculptures and multimedia installations. Novo’s practice challenges ideology and symbols of power, uprooting notions of an individual’s ability to affect change. Among the Artist’s best-known series is The Weight of History (2014-15), a project born of software he devised to compute the mass and volume of ink used to print the ideological texts that underpin five totalitarian regimes in the 20th century, among them Cuba. His commitment to deconstructing myths, while highlighting the fragments of reality and the lived experiences that generate them, has led him to political activism by way of art. He has also actively participated in recent social movements on the island advocating for the freedom of expression and civic and political rights, including the artist-activist group 27N.
Image courtesy of the speaker.
Tobias Ostrander
Tobias Ostrander is the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator, Latin American Art at Tate. He is additionally Curatorial Advisor for the Aichi Triennale 2022, Japan. His survey exhibition, Cisco Jiménez: ANATÓMICA, is currently on view at the Museo Amparo, Puebla, México. He is the former Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (2011—2019). Major exhibitions developed for PAMM include Beatriz González: A Retrospective; Beatriz Milhazes: Jardin Botânico; On the Horizon: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection; Ebony G. Patterson: …while the dew is still on the roses…, Mario Garcia Torres: R.R. and the Expansion of The Tropics; and Poetics of Relation, a group exhibition inspired by the writings of Édouard Glissant, among others. Ostrander was a founding member of Tilting Axis, a platform for artists, curators, and creatives from the greater Caribbean region (2014—2019). Ostrander served as the Director at the Museo Experimental El Eco (2009—2011) and Chief Curator at Museo Tamayo (2001—2009), both in Mexico City, and Associate Curator of inSITE2000 in San Diego and Tijuana (1999—2001). He was a founding member of the inter-institutional Museum of Hub initiated by the New Museum (2007—2012). He has additionally held positions at XXIV Bienal de São Paulo, El Museo del Barrio, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Image courtesy of the speaker.
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