Chicago Cultural Center) We recently enjoyed an exhibit here called Present Standard that coincided with the Spring of Latino Art and wanted to share one image that was particularly arresting: Ghost by Mariano Chavez. Chavez created it in 2015 using snake shed, paper, and beeswax. Vaya con Dios!
Present Standard, a group show at the Chicago Cultural Center
PRESENT STANDARD
Curated by Edra Soto and Josue Pellot
January 30 - April 24, 2016
Chicago Cultural Center
Artists: Alberto Aguilar, Cándida Álvarez, Luis Miguel Bendaña, Paola Cabal, Juan Ángel Chavez, Mariano Chávez, Alejandro Figueredo Díaz-Perera, Dianna Frid, Diana Gabriel, Maria Gaspar, Melissa Leandro, José Lerma, Ivan Lozano, Jorge Lucero, Victoria Martínez, Harold Méndez, Sofía Moreno, Nora Nieves, Josué Pellot, Maddie Reyna, Luis Romero, Luis Sahagun, Chris Silva, Edra Soto, Rafael E. Vera
PRESENT STANDARD gathers 25 works by 25 contemporary, US-based Latino artists who are in one way or another identified as native, linguistic or geographic immigrants. The artists each play with the manifold meanings of "present" – as in contemporary, attending or existing – and "standard" – referring to a flag or pennant, measuring tactic, guiding principle or a potent symbol of national identity.
The work in this exhibition reflects through a filter of Latino immigrant experiences and the artists’ connection with and separation from their homes, their ancestry and their language. However, beyond this generalized and arbitrary commonality, they share little else – not artistic practice, gender identification or sexuality, or place of origin. The inescapable label “Latino/a” insists that whatever these artists do will be read through a screen of “identity” and “representation. Present Standard carefully seeks to underscore the pluralism that exists in contemporary art made by Latino/a artists.
The decision of move from one’s homeland is never simple and immigrating, or any act of moving to a new country, can both produce moments of settling and endless questioning for the rest of an individual’s life. Present Standard gathers a group of twenty-five contemporary, US-based Latino artists who are in one way or another identified as native, linguistic, or geographic immigrants. They are also artists with rich connections to Chicago who carry the impact of mainstream and cosmopolitan influences in their work that converses at a global level. Present Standard subsequently focuses on how these artists work within the centuries-old patriotic art tradition of flag-making to convey the wide range of experiences of moving in, out, and away—and their limitless tangents.
Present, meaning today or contemporary, Standard—meaning a pennant, measuring tactic, or guiding principle—queries the symbolic registers of flags as both intimate and personal reflections, and as the official embodiment of a nation. The artists gathered in this exhibition surely reflect the contemporary art world’s growing interest in the idyllic and imagined symbolism of flag formats. At the same time, they interrogate the historic political, civic, corporate weight embedded within flags as bountiful sites to diverge from their conventional function and presentation, and to comment upon questions of place, identity, and nationhood. Through the filter of Latino immigrant artists’ experiences, contemporary traditions of flag-making take on new bearings as they simultaneously homogenize and reveal the spectral range of interpreting migration, home, and patriotism in art.
A rich collection of five experts in Chicago’s art and culture spheres has been invited to contribute descriptive essays of five artists with whom they share stylistic or conceptual commonalities. Critical writer, curator, and editor Stephanie Cristello explores the work of Candida Alvarez, Melissa Leandro, Nora Nieves, Luis Romero and Edra Soto, which gestures to modern and contemporary decorative arts and abstraction. Dr. Allison Fraunhar’s work as a professor of Latin American art and cinema speaks well to the work of Alejandro Figueredo Diaz-Perera, Diana Gabriel, Ivan Lozano, Sofía Moreno, and Luis Sahagun, who variously interrogate body politics and the physicality in their work. The researcher and curator Kristin Korolowicz discusses the conceptual based works of Luis Miguel Bendaña, José Lerma, Victoria Martínez, Josué Pellot, and Maddie Reyna, whereas collaborators, researchers, and curators J. Gibrán Villalobos and William A. Ruggiero (JGV/WAR) elaborate on Alberto Aguilar, Juan Angel Chavez, Maria Gaspar, Chris Silva, and Rafael E. Vera—artists whose work is impacted by collaborative and social practices. Finally, the curator andDirector of Exhibitions & Residencies with the Chicago Artists Coalition Teresa Silva focuses on the interdisciplinary artists Paola Cabal, Mariano Chavez, Dianna Frid, Jorge Lucero and Harold Mendez.
