 |
| Juan Salas Carreño, In the Shadow of the Sun, 2013. Courtesy of the artist |
Experiments in Art and Technology, the New York-centric collective of the 1970s, was not unique. The premonition of a shared future for art and science was global. For evidence see the Museum of Latin American Art's "Arteônica: Art, Science and Technology in Latin America Today."
Its jumping-off point is Arteônica, a term coined by Italian-born Brazilian artist Waldemar Cordeiro. The word, a portmanteau of Portuguese for art and electronic, named a manifesto, an exhibition, and a movement. The MoLAA show is split between historic works from the 1960s/70s and contemporary pieces. The artists work in Mexico, Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. Some use relatively low-tech means to plumb the cosmic, while others explore new technologies in collaboration with scientists and engineers.
Peruvian artist Juan Salas Carreño's In the Shadow of the Sun (top of post) is a Plato's cave centering on a revered artifact of Inca culture, the "Twelve-Angled Stone." The masterfully cut stone, an irregular polygon, was part of Inca palace in Cuzco. It has become a national icon, a tourist attraction, and an exemplar of indigenous knowledge. Carreño's piece project a light beam on a rotating replica of the stone, casting a succession of ever-changing shadows. The viewer is left to decide what it says about time, culture, and so-called reality.
"Arteônica: Art, Science and Technology in Latin America Today" is at MoLAA, Long Beach, through Feb. 23, 2025.
 |
| Gyula Kosice, Objeto, 1968. Ducker Collection |
Born in Czechoslovakia, Gyula Kosice spent most of a long career on Buenos Aires. He is best known for kinetic works involving water, neon light, plastic, and bubbles.
 |
| Martha Boto, Déplacements Chromocinétiques, 1971. Courtesy of Maman Fine Art Gallery |
 |
| Rejane Cantoni and Leonardo Crescenti, SPEAK, 2011-2024. Courtesy of the artists and Itau Cultural Fundação Itaù |
Rejane Cantoni and Leonardo Crescenti's SPEAK is an open mike in which the visitor's spoken words are duplicated, translated, and replaced with synonyms in a forest of phone screens.
 |
| Tania Candiani, Máquina Telar, 2011-2012. Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo DiGAV–Universidad Autónoma de México |
 |
| Mariano Sardón, in collaboration with Mariano Sigman, The Wall of Gazes (detail), 2017. |
Argentinan artist Mariano Sardón and neuroscientist Mariano Sigman collaborated on this piece, in which experimental volunteers viewed portraits for 15 seconds as their eye movements were tracked. The portraits were then reconstructed from the eye movements.
 |
| Constanza Piña, Khipu Prehispanic Electrotextile (detail), 2018 |
The khipu is the classic Andean mode of digital storage, information encoded on knotted cords of cotton or alpaca. Constanza Piña imagineered an alpaca "electrotextile" with copper wires to serve as an antennae. It amplifies obscure parts of the electromagnetic spectrum into ambient brown noise.
Comments