New exhibitions arrive at the Museum of Modern Art of Bogotá

Samples that stand out for the contrast between the ideals and realities of the modern Latin American dream

THREE ARTISTS will stage the rise and decline of the modern Latin American dream in the first exhibition cycle of 2024 at the Museum of Modern Art of Bogotá, Mambo.
While the work of Carlos Cruz-Diez, especially in its public and urban dimension, symbolizes the curiosity and optimism of Latin America in the years of the Venezuelan economic boom, that of Alexander Apóstol reflects on the glorious past and the deterioration of this dream. , questioning the model of modernity that was once celebrated on the South American continent. Additionally, Carlos Castro Arias's research focuses on the appropriation and recontextualization of historical images related to Colombian and Latin American facts and myths.
This new exhibition cycle promises a dialogue between the dream of Gran Colombia with colonial legacies, archeology of geometries, and echoes of social and political struggles.

Exhibition cycles

The first cycle (March 14 - June 9) brings together the works of the Colombian Carlos Castro Arias, the Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez and the Spanish-Venezuelan Alexander Apóstol.

The past never dies. It is not even the past, it is the first institutional exhibition in Bogotá of the Colombian artist Carlos Castro Arias, where the figures, idols and references that in different periods have brought together a narrative of the nation are put into dialogue.

color master

While the exhibition titled Cromofilia (from the Greek for intense passion/deep appreciation for color), is an exhibition that commemorates the centenary of the birth of one of the main references of Latin American optical art: Carlos Cruz-Diez (Caracas, 1923 - Paris, 2019). The Venezuelan artist is internationally recognized for his explorations with light, color and space, producing dynamic and captivating works from chromatic interactions that take place in the plane, space and retina of the viewer.

The Venezuelan artist was the winner of numerous awards; distinguished in 2012 with the French Legion of Honor and his works are part of the collections of the main museums around the world, such as the MOMA in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Center Pompidou in Paris or the Museum of Fine Arts from Houston (USA).

He starred from his Caribbean country, along with other artists such as Jesús Soto or Juvenal Ravelo, in a powerful current in kineticism. His “physichromies”, mixtures of colors that dance to the rhythm of the observer's movement, became symbols of “op art” or optical art.

“He has an invention: the metamorphosis of color. It occurs with the movement of the viewer, with ranges of colors that are not perceived if you are static in front of the work. Once the movement begins, the metamorphosis occurs,” Ravelo, a disciple and friend of the master, told AFP a few years ago.

Color is “an ephemeral situation, an autonomous reality in continuous mutation” and, like events, it takes place “in space and real time, without past or future, in a perpetual present,” commented Cruz-Diez when analyzing his own work.

Winner of the National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1971, he acquired worldwide fame with recognition in Argentina, Brazil, France, Spain and the United States, among other countries.

Posture and geometry in the era of tropical autocracy is the first institutional exhibition of CEN in the country, where it addresses national identities related to sexuality and gender, examines the decline of urban and industrial modernism in Latin America, offering a critical analysis of the processes aesthetics of political construction in a tropical environment increasingly prone to autocracy.