Arte en contexto: Session #4
Three Readings on Venezuelan Art and Computers
November 10, 2018, 10:00 am

Centro de Arte Los Galpones
Galpón 17
29-11 Transversal 8
Caracas 1071, Miranda, Venezuela

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The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, in collaboration with the Centro de Arte Los Galpones, is pleased to invite you to the fourth edition of Arte en contexto "Three Readings on Venezuelan Art and Computers: Perspectives on the Relationship Between Art and Computers." This edition will feature the participation of researcher and curator Sandra Pinardi, audiovisual artist and producer Augusto Gerardi, and artist Elías Crespín.

The event will be held on Saturday, November 10 at 10:00 am in Galpón 17, located at Los Galpones in Caracas.

This edition aims to propose different readings of the relationship between art and computers. There are many universal references concerning the various media and formats through which art and computers intersect, not only as means of representation, but also as data, generating an image or an object that will be later be considered a work of art.

The artist and researcher Augusto Gerardi will present some historical references of this visual relationship from exhibitions and experiences that became milestones in Venezuela during the 1970s.

Researcher and curator Sandra Pinardi will propose a theoretical exploration that allows us to recognize some characteristics of the "fields" opened by technological advances. We will consider two theoretical perspectives that deal with this problem. On the one hand, in ontological terms, we will explore the idea of "meta-technical logos" proposed by Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla, and on the other hand, we will approach the idea of the "numerical image" proposed by Edmond Couchot.

Finally, Elías Crespín, a Venezuelan artist based in Paris, will speak about the importance of the computer as a tool for art and its capabilities for modeling, simulating, drawing and participating in the process of creating his electrokinetic sculptures.

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About the Participants
Sandra Pinardi holds a Ph.D. from the Universidad Simón Bolívar (2000); Director of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Universidad Simón Bolívar, and Professor at the Universidad Católica Andres Bello, Caracas, Venezuela. She participated in the creation of the Instituto Universitario de Estudios Superiores de Artes Plásticas Armando Reverón for which she was also Director.

Augusto Gerardi (Caracas, 1989) is a Venezuelan researcher and artist who digitizes and restores multimedia files. He has restored phonographic archives and made ethnographic field recordings, resulting in two discographic productions edited by the Centro Nacional del Disco, and digitized the catalogs of the exhibition Aire (1970) and Arte por computador (1974), two key experiences to understand the relationship of media in the service of art. He worked together with Nodo CCS and Iván Candeo in the digitization of the video art collection of Sala Mendoza. He won an honorable mention in digital art in the I Bienal de Arte Emergente- El legado cinético en el Museo De Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas (2012). Gerardi has also participated in group exhibitions in Caracas, New York and Berlin with his web interfaces and video installations, and participated in the 2017 Seminario Fundación Cisneros, with research about the exhibition Imagen de Caracas. That same year, together with Los Galpones Art Center, he carried out the Access Strategies project. He also worked as coordinator in the project Busca tu espacio, a social development project carried out by the British Council Venezuela, The European Union, and Collectivox, through which he was able to carry out the promotion of artists and the realization of projects linking art and technology.

Elías Crespín (Caracas, 1965) lives and works in Paris. Crespín was originally trained as a computer engineer. His work integrates two personal universes–science and art. In 2002, after working for twenty years in software programming, he began to develop his first artwork, which took two years of research to finalize.

Crespín uses motors controlled by custom software to animate modular geometric structures that he creates. His work questions the concept of form, space, movement and time, and is often associated with the study of color, experimentation with different materials and textures, as well as light and shadow.

Since 2004, his pieces have been exhibited in international institutions and spaces such as the Astana International Exhibition 2017, the Cuenca Biennial 2016, the Busan Biennial in Korea 2014, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Maison de l'Amérique Latine, the Grand Palais, the Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton in Paris, and the Boghossian Foundation in Brussels. Crespín's works can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, El Museo del Barrio of New York, and The Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires (MALBA).

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Arte en contexto is a series of meetings open to the public to discuss and debate current issues in the field of art and its trans-disciplinary connections. It aims to bring the artistic community together to foster reflection and debate on art practices in a context of production, distribution, and spaces of mediation. Through partnerships with cultural institutions, the FC/CPPC will promote dialogue and critical thinking to give visibility to art issues within their own context, while offering tools that contribute to the generation of knowledge among its attendees.

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