MINUS SPACE en OAXACA
Panorama de 31 artistas internacionales

March 15 - April 30, 2012
Opening: Thursday, March 15, 7pm at IAGO (Macedonio)

Organized by artists Matthew Deleget (New York) and Emi Winter (Oaxaca), the exhibition MINUS SPACE en Oaxaca: Panorama de 31 artistas internacionales features 31 reductive artists from around the world associated with MINUS SPACE in Brooklyn, New York.

MINUS SPACE was founded as an online project in 2003 by artists Matthew Deleget and Rossana Martínez. It is one of very few venues internationally specifically dedicated to exhibiting and promoting reductive art. Reductive art is characterized by its use of simple materials, monochromatic or limited color, geometry and pattern, repetition and seriality, precise craftsmanship, and intellectual rigor.

While Mexico has a strong Modernist tradition of abstract, geometric, and conceptual art, the work by many contemporary reductive artists from abroad has not been exhibited locally. MINUS SPACE en Oaxaca is the first presentation of these artists' works in Mexico.

The exhibition MINUS SPACE en Oaxaca has two facets: a survey of recent editions and multiples by 31 artists at the Instituto de Artes Graficas de Oaxaca (IAGO), and four large-scale, site-specific works simultaneously presented at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca (MACO), Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños (MUPO), Biblioteca Henestrosa, and IAGO Juarez.

MINUS SPACE en Oaxaca is dedicated to the memory of artist Julian Dashper (1960-2009, Auckland, New Zealand), who was the catalyst for the exhibition.

Daniel Göttin: Oaxaca Tape
Biblioteca Andrés Henestrosa
Porfirio Díaz 115, Centro
Oaxaca, México, CP 68000

Daniel Göttin (b. 1959, Basel, Switzerland) creates temporary, site-specific interventions that examine the subjective nature of perception. His installations, often consisting of common industrial materials, such as tape, carpet, and paint, playfully respond to the specific characteristics of an architectural site and activate the viewer's relationship to it. Oaxaca Tape is part of an ongoing series of extensive environmental "paintings" utilizing different types of fabric and aluminum tape to cover the walls, floor, and ceiling of a given space.

Lynne Harlow: Measuring a Summer's Day
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (MACO)
Macedonio Alcalá 202, Centro
Oaxaca, México, CP 68000

Lynne Harlow (b. 1968, Attleboro, Massachusetts, USA) investigates the area between architectural installation and live performance. With as little physical material as possible, she creates site-sensitive environments that are intended to directly engage the viewer as an active participant in the work. Her installation at MACO, which consists of two colors and two materials - orange and blue paint and fabric - is conceived in direct response to the lucidity of the architecture and its bare openness to the sky. With Measuring a Summer's Day, Harlow creates a situation that enables the audience not just to see color in space, but to penetrate and become part of the color plane as well.


Russell Maltz: Painted/Stacked Oaxaca
Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños (MUPO)
Independencia 607, Centro
Oaxaca, México, CP 68000

For the past thirty years, Russell Maltz (b. 1952, Brooklyn, NY, USA) has produced sculpture and installations informed by the aesthetics of construction. Made with a broad array of unrefined construction materials, including sheets of plywood and glass, wall studs, lumber, and enamel paint, Maltz's installations are immersive environments that are carefully composed, although informal in appearance. Geometric in composition, high-keyed in color, and matter-of-fact in execution, individual art works are commonly subsumed into larger configurations, often overlapping and obscuring each other. His installations merge the space between two, three, and four dimensions and do away with any separation between object and space, artwork and the viewer.

Jan van der Ploeg: Tribute
Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca Juárez (IAGO)
Av. Juarez 222, Centro
Oaxaca, México, CP 68000

Jan van der Ploeg (b. 1959, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) creates large-scale, site-specific wall paintings in both interior and exterior architectural settings. Informed by a wide array of sources, including Maori motifs, Islamic ceramics, Portuguese azulejos, and Italian architectural marble design, his highly-chromatic, patterned paintings are devoid of narrative and are located at the intersection of pure visual sensation and abstract thought. The wall painting Tribute is an homage to New Zealand artists Gordon Walters (1919-1995) and Julian Dashper (1960-2009), and the composition specifically references the Maori koru motifs of Walters' paintings.


MINUS SPACE en Oaxaca
Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca Alcalá (IAGO)
Macedonio Alcalá No 507, Centro
Oaxaca, México, CP 68000

MINUS SPACE en Oaxaca presents an overview of graphic arts strategies employed by 31 reductive artists working around the globe, including North and South America, Europe, and Australasia. Spanning multiple generations as well as divergent contexts, the artists on view in this exhibition share a core interest in the language of printmaking and editioned works of art.

The exhibition features an extensive array of printmaking methods, including monoprint, silkscreen, etching, woodcut, lithograph, letterpress, chine-collé, digital inkjet, and offset. The exhibition also includes works of art produced in multitude, such as artist books, record albums, postcards, paintings, and porcelain and wax objects. Many of the works on view extend printmaking's traditional boundaries by hybridizing two or more artistic media, including photography, computer arts, installation, performance, and written language, resulting in entirely new forms with multiple layers of meaning.

Participating Artists:
Josef Albers, Soledad Arias, Hartmut Böhm, Sharon Brant, Vicente Butron, Vincent Como, Mark Dagley, Julian Dashper, Linda Francis, Cris Gianakos, Daniel Göttin, Michelle Grabner, Lynne Harlow, Daniel G. Hill, Juan Raúl Hoyos, Gilbert Hsiao, Kyle Jenkins, Steve Lambert, Vincent Longo, Stephen Maine, Rossana Martínez, Russell Maltz, Manfred Mohr, Victoria Munro, Rose Nolan, Carrie Pollack, Erik Saxon, Robert Swain, Tilman, Jan van der Ploeg, Patricia Zarate

SUPPORT
We would like to sincerely thank Emi Winter and Steffen Boddeker for their unparalleled vision and commitment to this exhibition.

We would also like to thank the staff and funders of the Biblioteca Andrés Henestrosa, Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca (IAGO), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (MACO), and Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños (MUPO) for making this exhibition possible. Additional support was provided by Hotel Las Golondrinas, Casa Oaxaca, Casa de la Abuela, and Pan & Co.

Daniel Göttin's installation received generous support from the Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council; Kanton Basel-Landschaft Bildungs-, Kultur- und Sportdirektion; and Kultur Basel-Stadt.

MINUS SPACE's programming is made possible by the generous support of The Golden Rule Foundation, as well as individuals. We thank you!

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