“I dreamed that no one could dream.” Henrique Faría Fine Art is pleased to present Dreaming, a new iteration of Álvaro Barrios’ ongoing series of Popular Prints. Álvaro Barrios (Columbia, b. 1945) began making art in the mid-1960s for the Mexican journal El Corno Emplumado, which published many of the Columbian Nadaísta poets with whom he later associated. Barrios was drawn to the existentialism of this group but also to surrealism and the nascent Pop movement. First conceived of in 1972, Barrios’ “Popular Prints” enable the mass production and circulation of unique works of art. Barrios selects an image and creates a large-edition print that can be reproduced or altered by the public, challenging the authenticity of the original work of art. In over three decades, Barrios has created more than fifty prints which have been published and distributed throughout Latin America.
In this exhibition, the Popular Print Sueños con Duchamp pairs a silkscreened portrait of Duchamp with several empty lines in which Barrios has composed texts in Spanish and English. These texts function as a kind of surrealist poetry and describe dreams in which the artist Marcel Duchamp dispenses advice, orchestrates strange performances, and appears in dialogue with other masters of 20th-century Western art. Sueños combines the anxieties of Pop art with a surrealist’s fascination with games and the unconscious.
However, like most of Barrios’ oeuvre, there is a deep irony and caustic sense of humor at work here, mostly directed toward the eurocentric canon of modern and contemporary art. The ostensibly random and unlikely pairings of artists and artworks in Sueños con Duchamp erode the seriousness and inevitability of the Western canon. Barrios’ Pop-like appropriations force a critical re-evaluation of the history of modernism as it has developed and been inhabited in Latin America.
El Mar Caribe, (1971-2004), a 1971 installation recreated for the first San Juan Poly/Graphic Triennial in 2004 will be also be on view in the gallery. This monumental piece has clear affinities with the work of Osvaldo Romberg. A dense network of blue silkscreens hangs from the ceiling, suspended by wooden clothespins. For the exhibition at Henrique Faría, the prints have been inscribed with the geographic coordinates of the sea that separates Cuba from the United States. The installation maps the conceptual distance and continuity between the island and the continents of North and South America. Barrios explores the sea as sign for both Cuba’s isolation and its historical relationship with the mainland.
Prints from both Sueños con Duchamp and El Mar Caribe will be available in the gallery as takeaways.
ALVARO BARRIOS, Colombian, born 1945
STUDIES:
Escuela de Bellas Artes, Barranquilla, Colombia.
Universitá Italiana per Stranieri, Perugia, Italy.
Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, Italy.
EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION):
2005 “I Trienal Poligráfica de San Juan, América Latina y el Caribe.” San Juan, Puerto Rico.
2004 “MoMA at El Museo: Latin American and Caribbean Art from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art.” El Museo del Barrio, New York.
2002 “Los Cincuenta Caminos de la Vida.” Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2001 “I Bienal de Buenos Aires.” Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2000 “Los Cincuenta Caminos de la Vida.” Centro de Artes Visuales, Lima, Perú.
1999 “América Latina: Das Vanguardas ao Fin do Milenio.” Culturgest Center, Lisboa, Portugal.
1998 “Obra Gráfica de Alvaro Barrios.” Museo Nacional de la Estampa, Ciudad de México, México.
1997 “Do It.” Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Bogotá, Colombia.
1996 “América Latina 96.” Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1991 “Latin American Drawings Today.” San Diego Museum of Modern Art, San Diego, California.
1990 “Great Cultural Exhibition of Colombia.” The Fuji Museum, Tokyo, Japan.
1986 “Colombian Contemporary Art.” Mall Galleries, London, England; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, Belgium.
II Bienal de La Habana, Cuba.
“Cien Años de Arte Colombiano.” Palacio Imperial, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.
“Cien Años de Arte Colombiano.” Instituto Italo-Latinoamericano, Roma, Italia.
1985 Norwegian International Print Biennial.
1983 “Multiples by Latin American Artists.” Franklin Furnace Archives, New York.
1982 “Kunster aus Lateinamerika.” Daad Galerie, Berlin, Germany
1981 IV Bienal de Grabado de San Juan, Puerto Rico.
1979 Trienal Latinoamericana de Grabado, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1977 “Los Novísimos Colombianos.” Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Sofia Imbert, Caracas, Venezuela.
1976 “Colombian Figurative Graphics.” University of Texas Art Museum.
1975 XIII Bienal de Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo, Brasil.
1974 IX Biennial of Prints of Tokyo. Tokyo, Japan.
1971 VII Biennale de Paris. Paris, France.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS (SELECTION)
The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York.
National Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.
Franklin Furnace Archives, New York.
Museum of Modern Art of Latin America, Washington.
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Lima, Perú.
Centro Wifredo Lam, Havana, Cuba.
Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia.
Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Colombia.
Museo Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia.
DISTINCTIONS
2001. Latin American First Prize in Paintings and Installations.
I Bienal de Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1979. First Prize, I Trienal Latinoamericana de Grabado, Buenos Aires, Argentina.