Patricio Álvarez Aragón - Portfolio Selection, 2021

Patricio Álvarez Aragón Projects Portfolio (selection, 2021)

INDEX 3 4-7 8 - 11 12 - 19 20 - 25

2

Biography / Statement #Mattalab. Digital Production & Collaborative Art Laboratory Encounter “Recovering Memory” Solo Exhibition at the Bunker Gallery CAPA 2017 (the Collective Automatic Painting Amsterdam) Dark Painting - International Surrealism: Seminar & Exhibition

BIOGRAPHY / STATEMENT

Patricio Álvarez Aragón (born in 1984, Santiago de Chile) is an art historian, experimental artist and emerging curator based in the city of Dublin, Ireland, since 2018.

During his life he has also lived in Santiago de Chile, Palma de Mallorca, Amsterdam and Miami. He actively participates in the presentation of international contemporary artists acting as a catalyst for new artistic proposals and generator of new content as an emerging curator and, on the other hand, is very interested in the research and development of “automatism” as a key to creation and research concept critical within the history of art and the latest artistic trends. With a background in Art History (University of the Balearic Islands, Spain / University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain 2008-2015) a Specialization in Contemporary Culture (University of the Balearic Islands, 2015) and a Master/Specialization in Curatorship and Exhibitions Management (Node Center for Curatorial Studies, Berlín, 2019); he is also interested in the collectives contexts in which art is produced and meditated, having a special interest in the objects of self-organization, culture of collaboration and cooperativism. His practice is oriented towards the development of new co-creation formats in collaborative and networked environments, via archival research, exhibition projects, design research and informative activities (seminars, art laboratories, talks, round-tables) open to the participation of general and artists communities. He understands his researcher/curator role as an active mediation of thought-processes derived from the experience of encountering art.

In addition, He is also an active member of CAPA -acting as a chief curator and art researcher- (the Collective Automatic Painting Amsterdam, since 2017) founded in Amsterdam in 1991.

lumne col·laborador SAC– Servei de Activitats Culturals, University of the Balearic Islands (between, October 2013 – June 2015); Mobility Grant - Leonardo Da Vinci / Erasmus + Grant (CCHA – Hispanic Speakers Cultural Centre) Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2014; UIB Collaboration internship (Pilar & Joam Miró Foundation / Museum, Cala Major, Spain, 2014. Research Residency / Joan Miro’s personal file cataloguing.

Statement

Collaboration means being a stranger in the presence / practice / territory / language of another person. And we are all familiar with being strangers in new situations, so I start with a question, the same one that is asked when you arrive at a new place. This is important for the communication of the project and all the phases of production, to find a symmetry between what is in the artist’s mind and the future participating audience. To collaborate is to develop an empathic ear: * What do we have in common? This question becomes a reflected research tool.

Now the issues addressed by these questions are several: its partners, collaborators, the target community involved in the project (realization and subsequent reception), the site where the project will take place. Collaboration is a way of receiving others, which implies the recognition of where they come from and the projection of a new line that marks the horizon, towards which the practice as a whole will be directed. The first act of translation is a matter of identification and positions all participants at the same level: the “I who wonders”, the status of the investigation and the position of the skeptic (the “negotiating self ”). To collaborate means to deter territorialize the identity, to remain open to the “space of the propositional”. Being in the “search” (skeptics in Greek: search). That is the benefit and the quantifiable result of the participatory process.

The immeasurable benefit always has an Grants and Collaboration Awards with aesthetic nature (art as experience), therefoMuseums and Institutions re, subjective. The ability to “form a world” SICUE/SENECA Mobility Grant (exchan- together (H.Arendt) under the ephemeral ge program for students in the Facultade de architecture of the meeting he is proposing Xeografia e Historia at the University of San- in the temporary community formed. tiago de Compsotela, 2011-2012; USC Collaboration Grant (Eugenio Granell Foundation /Museum. Santiago de Compostela, Galicia 2012. Research Residency / Eugenio Granell’s personal file cataloguing; Grant A-

3

#Mattalab.

Digital Production & Collaborative Art Laboratory Meeting

Selected artists Marcos Vidal Font Javiera San Martín “Javirüs” Karen Pinto de la Calle María Eugenia Akel Elby Huerta Hernán Paravic Ana Rodriguez Álvarez Luz Bon-tzi Jorge J. Herrera Fuentealba Carmen Gloria Chaparro Regina Bittencourt Héctor Antúnez Ávalos Adriana Mercado Andrés G. Figueroa “Ixul” Maria Francisca Jara Esteban Córdova Laly Bustamente Laura Marte Roberta Requena René Poblete Urquieta Andrea Zuckermann Zoila Schrojel Susana Pradenas Amada Navarrete Gabriela Luchsinger Sergio Arredondo Salgado Héctor Ibáñez Ibáñez Charlotte Cabezas Marcia Bravo Mercado Project curator Patricio Álvarez Aragón Project mediator Sebastian Zapata Gutierrez Project organizer Francisco Guerra

#Mattalab website https://mattalab.blogspot.com/

This project emerged as a response to the current context of crisis and confinement due to the Covid-19 virus pandemic in Santiago de Chile, with the aim of generating a new type of artistic production that works within the collaborative dimension in the online territory. During the course of the laboratory, all participants were encouraged to make use of any type of digital creation tool that would allow research and experimentation for the creation and production of new works of art. The lab took place in four sessions (1, 8, 15 and 22 October). During the first two sessions, emphasis was placed on the figure of Roberto Matta, as a precursor of the last European avant-gardes, and the European artistic circles he frequented and the artistic keys he exercised were discussed.

The concepts of Cadáver Exquisito (linked to his Surrealist period) and Modification Art (linked to his last period as a participating artist in Phases) were discussed. However, the themes were extended further to emphasise the importance of Roberto Matta

as a pioneer of electronic art in the International and Chilean contemporary art scene.

4

Screenshots of the lab during the second (top) and third (bottom) sessions of the encounter

5

#Mattalab exhibition poster

View of the opening of the exhibition, 17 December 2020

6

Francisco de Goya “La Poule aveugle” (c.1789) Oil on canvas, 269 cm × 350 cm

(Experimentation Proposal ) Héctor Ibañez Ibañez Modification over Goya’s “la Poule aveugle This work was created during the Laboratory in October 2020 View of the opening of the exhibition, 17 December 2020

7

Recovering Memory.

A dialectic with the childhood Solo exhibition at the Бункер/Bunker Gallery in Varna, Bulgaria 4 -18 August 2020 ‍

About Bunker Gallery The Bunker Gallery is a non-profit and experimental gallery that works in a low-budget format to be accessible to emergent artists and curators who are looking to develop a project. The exhibition’s space is a real/abandoned Bunker from the II World War, located in a forest next to Varna city center. The visits are made in guided tours where a meeting point is established. There is no electricity in the Bunker so it is required that all the guests bring their own cellphones to discover the paintings while are exploring the expositions. Bunker Gallery is also an audience-experience-focused project.

The work gathered here was made up of 20 automatic paintings (acrylic on paper, color copies) that acted as a subsitute of photographs and memories of my childhood.

Unfortunately, I could not save these in physical due to my circumstances of always Bunker Gallery meeting point and Instagram showcase moving house and country, but I could in my memory. I choose this topic because it also included the idea of the bunker as that of the mother’s womb, as my first home and space in constant vigilance where I could build my first human imaginary. All these reconstructions are strongly linked to the unconcern for a wild world and pleasure for discovering. When you are a child, you only think about enjoying, playing, the pure pleasure of existing, and toys are the distractive tool. Thus each of these paintings is a true and rough representation of the act of play and my memory of Chile in the early 80s.

Artist statement, 2020 I never understood the idea of having a style. I do not believe that an artist should be pigeonholed or labeled in a style, I believe that this is more related to a commercial activity than an artistic one. For me, Art is synonymous of a research laboratory, a way of living the present, express ideas, and materialize freely any thought. For me, the act of create means to establish a dialectic between meanings capable to make us navigate towards a new synthetic reflection, being a clear exercise of thought. I am very interested in writing, painting, and performance art because of its high degree of evocation. I also like the appropriation and intervention of spaces and objects, I think these are magnificent artistic tools to give shape to any poetic impulse that, like time gold, can make us paint things that could not be written. or write things that could not be painted.

8

Exhibition opening views, August 4th 2020 (up and down)

9

10

Exhibition view (main bunker hall) https://www.instagram.com/bunkerbunkerfranga/

11

CAPA 2017 The Collective Automatic Painting Amsterdam exhibiton at the Artists Run-Space “Espai Sant Marc” at Sineu, October 2017 CAPA 2017 was a little anthological exhibition curated by the CAPA component, art historian and emerging curator Patricio Álvarez Aragón in collaboration with the visual artist Marcos Vidal Font at his studio and exhibition space called “Espai Sant Marc”. A space for contemporary artists with a residency program andexhibition proposals. This exhibition brought together a little selection of works created between 2006 to 2016, as well as presenting new production created for this exhibition in 2017.

The current members of the CAPA collective are its founder Freddy Flores Knistoff, José Estevao, James Burns, Jorge J. Herrera Fuentealba and the curator/emerging artist Patricio Álvarez Aragón, now based in Dublin, Ireland.

CAPA (from, Collective Automatic Painting Amsterdam) is a Movement founded by the Chilean artist Freddy Flores Knistoff, exiled in Amsterdam in 1985 (after the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile), and the Dutch artist Rik Lina in 1991. In short, we can say that CAPA represents the direct continuation of the experimental movement CoBrA and Phases, the practice of the automatic painting, as well as the Modification Art, Roberto Matta’s research on collaborative painting (especially from his New York period which relates him to the artists of American Abstract Expressionism, including Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Louis Morris among others...). Since its foundation, CAPA has exhibited in France, Chile, Brazil, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Holland, with collaborative works and interventions linked to pictorial automatism.

12

During the inauguration, an artist’s book was presented, containing theoretical texts about CAPA and original works by the current members was published in a unique edition of 30 copies. It was also presented in the bookshop Rata Corner in Palma city center in collaboration with D. Perfecto Cuadrado (expert in International Surrealism and Professor at the University of the Balearic Islands) and a presentation and talk was given on the local Mallorquinian radio station IB3.

Exhibition poster (left) design credits: Wai Kit Lam CAPA 2017, artistbook presentation (right), photo credits: : Fernando Pastor

13

Exhibition view at the second floor of the gallery https://santmarcair.wordpress.com/2017/08/30/capa-2017/

14

15

16

14

CAPA 2017 Artistbook presentation, during the exhibition opening at the Espai Sant Marc

17

ArtistBook presenttion in Rata Corner Library at Palma city, Spain

18

Exhibition presentation / Talk in IB3 Radio “Els Entusiastas”, Palma city, Spain.

19

Plástica Negra.

The Surrealism in Chile. Homage to Enrique Gómez Correa (1915, in Talca - 1995, in Santiago de Chile) Seminar and exhibition at the University of the Balearic Islands, September 19 - October 14, 2016

‍ “Plástica Negra” (Dark Painting), the Surrealism in Chile ..., was an exhibition and seminar in tribute to the birth of the father of Surrealism in Chile, Enrique Gómez Correa (August 15, 2015). Enrique Gómez Correa is considered in South America, as one of the pioneers of the renewal of contemporary Chilean poetics through the founding of the Mandrágora magazine in the decade of the 30’s, in addition to bringing the historical avant-garde of Surrealism and its critical thinking and aesthetics to the Chilean artistic sphere and contribute to its international development.

The theoretical exposition of the seminar, as well as the works that make up the exhibition, was inspired by recent research on the phenomenon of Surrealism in South America with a special focus on Chile and a careful selection of critical texts, poetry and works of pictorial art, in its majority of Chilean artists, linked to the true spirit of Mandragora and the course of the events of the International Surrealist Movement to the present day.

Among the selected artists were two members of the CAPA Movement (the Collective Automatic Painting Amsterdam), one of its founders, Freddy Flores Knistoff (Viña del Mar, Chile, 1948) and Jorge J. Herrera Fuentealba (Concepción, Chile, 1970), who followed the steps of the experimental project of automatism in painting, assuming a role as true conservators of one of the primary keys of surrealism to go further in its pictorial aesthetics and meet the manifestations

20

of physical automatism, gestural painting, abstract expressionism, abstraction poetic ... However, it should be noted that CAPA is intimately linked to the experimental art movements of the 1950s and especially to CoBrA. On the other hand, towards a more literary and less experimental aspect, but more conservative of the purity of historical Surrealism, we find the work of two members of the immortal group Spill. Derrame is considered today the most important group of Surrealism in Chile and South America for its long career and its masterful collaborations with artists and thinkers linked to Surrealism, such as Eugenio F. Granell, Edouard Jaguer, Pierre Alechinsky, Guy Ducornet, among others. ... However, in the exhibition we will find two paintings by Enrique de Santiago (Santiago de Chile, 1961) and some exquisite collages by Rodrigo Verdugo (Santiago de Chile, 1970), who, in their exhibitions, their ideological postulates and magazine follow representing the most authentic continuity of the legendary Mandragora group in Chile within the panorama of international surrealism, being true conservatives of the surrealist alphabet, to continue expanding it and working on their artistic and literary vocabulary.

Finally, and not least, we also find the work of other great artists and thinkers who, from an independent base, also work and research on the heritage that Surrealism has meant in Chile and Mandragora magazine. Thus we find the reflective and introspective painting of Patricio Álvarez Aragón (Santiago de Chile, 1984), the Chilean artist living in Palma de Mallorca, Neco Beth (Santiago de Chile, 1951) who appears to us as one of the greatest representatives of the slogan of the unknown. Neco does a pictorial fieldwork, as if it were an anthropologist to search for the footprint of humanity in order to investigate automatic memory. And finally we have the emerging collegiate Singwan Chong Li (Santiago de Chile, 1989) who with a particular style, operates on the aesthetic models of traditional surrealism and its feminist decomposition. In short, three creators who also reveal themselves as true “secret followers” of the Mandragora.

Exhibition / Seminar Poster (left) Exhibition view at the University of the Balearic Islands (right)

21

22

Presentation of the project “Dark Painting” at the CAC Ses Voltes, Creation Artistic Centre at Palma de Mallorca, Spain (pictures, above and below)

23

Exhibition view

24

Seminar view next to the D. Perfecto Cuadrado

25

Contact Patricio G. Álvarez Aragón Art Historian / Curator Dublin, Ireland +353 899410344 alvarezaragon.patricio@gmail.com