Artists

Puerto Rico

Víctor Vázquez
Guest artist

04.08.06 24.08.06

First it was the interest that his work caused me, then the mutual friends. Later the meetings in galleries and the streets of Old San Juan happened, finally the friendship and the desire to show his work in my country. Today with the co-sponsorship of the Seraphin Gallery in Philadelphia, United States and within the extraordinary framework of the XIV Open Photography Encounters / Festival of Light, we finalize a project developed over several months and imagined years ago. I welcome the artist and friend, and I invite them to participate in the activities that we have prepared during their stay in Argentina. ALICIA CANDIANI


Víctor Vázquez is a Puerto Rican artist considered one of the best contemporary artists in Puerto Rico and Latin America.

During the month of August 2006, Proyecto´ace has invited Vázquez to participate in our Residence Program of Visiting Artists and Curators.

Within the framework of planned activities, the artist will carry out a series of exhibitions, together with the delivery of conferences and workshops that will allow a complete presentation of his work, his person and his ideas to the public in Buenos Aires.


VÍCTOR VÁZQUEZ in Buenos Aires | Activities

August 3 7:00 p.m.
Reality (i) Reality
XIV Open Photography Encounters.
Recoleta Cultural Center.

August 4 7:00 p.m.
´aceNITE Liquids and Footprints
Polyglot Room, ´ace Project.

August 9, 5:00 p.m.
Week of meetings
Approaches around a reading (identity, body and memory)
French Alliance Conference – Headquarters.

August – September
Brief Encounters
Gigantographies Exhibition
National Exhibition Halls


Thanks:
Walter Otero, Alejandro Montes de Oca, Elda Harrington, Silvia Mangialardi, Bécquer Casaballe, Dolores Labiano Carbore, Gustavo Pavesi.

BIO
Víctor Vázquez
1950 | San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Lives and works between San Juan de Puerto Rico and Paris.

STUDIES
BFA School of Visual Arts, Maine Photographic Workshop. Maine, USA.
Doctorate in Education and Comparative Religion, New York University. USA.
BA in Psychology and Sociology, University of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico.

EXHIBITIONS
2004 | Liquids and Signs, Seraphin Gallery. Philadelphia, USA.
2003 | Requiem for / by a Culture, Museum of Art of Puerto Rico. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
2003 | L.A. International Biennial of Invitational Art Couturier Gallery. Los Angeles, USA.
2003 | Ancestors. Galerie Baudoin Lebon. Paris France.
2003 | Seraphin Gallery borders. Philadelphia, USA.
2001 | Body and memory, Installation, University of the Sacred Heart Gallery. San Juan Puerto Rico.

AWARDS
1995 | Acquisition Award for Flowers for a Death, Ángel Ramos Foundation, Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico.
1994 | Honorable Mention, Cuenca Biennial, International Association of Art Critics, Chapter of Puerto Rico.
1991 | Best Book Award for “The Realm of Waiting”, International Association of Art Critics, Puerto Rico Chapter.

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVALS
Photo September, Image Center. Mexico City, Mexico. | Noorderlicht Photo Festival, Fries Museum. Leeuwarden, Netherlands. | International Center of Photography. New York, USA. | FotoFest, Houston. Texas, USA.
1997 | Artist representing Puerto Rico at the Sixth Biennial of La Habana, Cuba.

Related Activities

Exhibitions

Fluids and Footprints
Víctor Vázquez

04.08.06 24.08.06

VÍCTOR VÁZQUEZ / Identity, body and memory (by Alicia Candiani)

Liquids and Footprints is the exhibition of photographs taken by Víctor Vázquez that is currently exhibited in the Polyglot Room of the Proyecto ´ace house. During the artist’s stay in Buenos Aires, this project was developed, and it involves -as its name indicates- a series of works that talk about body fluids (semen , feces, blood, milk), the receptacles that collect them and the candles that give light to these fluids.

From a deep poetic vision, Víctor Vázquez considers the body as a place destined to flow, leaving traces, symptoms, frayed scenes as in a dream, that move us and transport us to another place; in the pages of an open blank book, of a path to walk, of an egg to break, of a tattoo to engrave … a body, in short, that lives, that flows for death and that is its corporeality .

Born in Puerto Rico in 1950, the artist is currently living between San Juan de Puerto Rico and Paris. In the 1980s, like many Puerto Ricans, he lived and studied in New York City, where he completed a doctorate in comparative religions that also led him to travel through India, China and Japan. If we add to his condition of nomadic artist, the fact that he belongs to a country that has political status as an Associated State to the United States but with its own geography, language and culture, and it is immersed in the heat of the Caribbean, we should not be surprised to see in his work “a neurotic imperative” to produce a discourse that speaks of personal and collective identities, of Caribbean syncretism and as a corollary, of cultural survival.

The poetic and particular way in which these problems are articulated in his works and in his narrative about the body, have made him -without doubt- one of the most interesting artists that emerged from the artistic environment of Puerto Rico in recent years. This also earned him a prominent place in contemporary Latin American photography after his inclusion in “American Voices” in 1994.

Related artists


Other activities of Víctor Vázquez during the Festival of Light

August 3rd
Reality (i) Reality
Recoleta Cultural Center

August 9
Meeting week
French Alliance Conference – Headquarters.

August September
Brief Encounters
National Exhibition Halls

´aceNITE, Encounters, Exhibitions

Reality (i) Reality
XIV Festival of Light 2006

04.08.06 27.10.06

On Thursday, August 3, the XIV Edition of the Open Photography Encounters – Festival of Light 2006 was inaugurated. In this edition, ´ace Project is one of the spaces that are part of the photographic exhibitions that will take place from August 04 to 31 in museums, cultural centers, galleries and art spaces throughout Argentina.

At ´aceNITE we offer a private reception, among other important guests we have the presence of Wendy Watriss (Houston, Texas) Artistic Director and one of the founders of FotoFest; Juan Travnick, photographer and teacher; Rodrigo Alonso, curator, art critic and Professor at the University of Buenos Aires; Orly Benzacar, director of the Ruth Benzacar Gallery, art specialist.

Under the slogan Reality (i) Reality, 424 artists were invited to participate in the numerous exhibitions and parallel activities of the Festival. Only in Buenos Aires 91 samples are presented, 45 of them in private art galleries that join the Festival. It is a meeting place for photographers, curators, gallery owners, publishers, etc. The Open Encounters consist of various photographic activities, all of them free.

The exhibition Liquids and Footprints was inaugurated in the Polyglot Room on August 04, presenting the work of the Puerto Rican artist Víctor Vázquez, in the Transversal Space the work that Sebastián García Huidobro carried out during his residence Series of Politicians and in the Dialogue Space is presented Adriana Moracci Series of Embraces.

OPEN ENCOUNTERS – FESTIVAL OF LIGHT (by Elda Harrington)

The XIV edition of the Open Encounters – Festival of Light in Argentina, finds us once again immersed in the reality of art. A daily, ideal, intimate reality that was born in our spirit to stay and be flesh. to greet us every morning when we wake up, to give us a knowing wink before the mirror, reminding us that we are photographers and part of our essence is to capture this reality that often tries to elope to give us company with its clone: ​​unreality.

But as another part of our condition is curiosity, the need to see and explore, to experiment and catch, we allow ourselves to be seduced by the chimera of unreality, to the point of not being able to logically identify what experiences, what acts and what part of our creativity develop on the real plane.

If we stop to analyze in which context or passage we move, we lose the most important thing: our nature as creators. Our genius is limited and forced to reasoning that is alien to us, our prowling for everything that happens around us is restricted and limited, the hunger for images, which paradoxically is what feeds us, is satiated by a placebo.

We are artists, and in our world, reality and unreality are only an archetype of the same: our need to show through our works who we are, what we observe, what captivates us. And what do we indulge in.


Activities of Víctor Vázquez during the Festival of Light

August 3 7:00 p.m.
Reality (i) Reality
XIV Open Photography Encounters.
Recoleta Cultural Center.

August 4 7:00 p.m.
´aceNITE Liquids and Footprints
Polyglot Room, ´ace Project.

August 9, 5:00 p.m.
Week of meetings
Approaches around a reading (identity, body and memory)
French Alliance Conference – Headquarters.

August – September
Brief Encounters
Gigantographies Exhibition
National Exhibition Halls


 

Portfolio Review

Work Clinic
Víctor Vázquez

20.08.06

The phrase “first I am an artist, then a photographer” by Andrés Serrano could also be applied to Vázquez, who shares with the former the quality of an individual who lives assembled between various cultures and who uses photography as a strategy to speak of the universe from his individuality. For Vázquez, in addition, photography is a shuffled resource within a wide spectrum of artistic practices that include the construction of objects, pictorial intervention on large-scale photographs, installations and videos.

During his stay in Buenos Aires and within the framework of activities programmed by Proyecto ´ace, Vázquez carried out an individual work clinic with a group of local artists. Thus, the artists participating in the meetings had the opportunity to exchange and reflect on the work itself and establish a dialogue with one of the main references in the artistic field.

Related artists


The Work Clinic Program is part of one of the objectives of our project, which is to promote spaces for discussion and debate among colleagues.

Exhibitions

Territories
Group exhibition ´ace Collection

23.02.15 30.04.15

Territories is an exhibition curated by Adriana Moracci among artworks from the ‘ace collection. The aims of this selection is to allow us to reflect upon political, economic, linguistic and corporal territories. They have been interpreted by contemporary artists through photography, performance and printmaking.

ABOUT TERRITORIES (by Adriana Moracci

Territory is a defined, outlined and demarcated place that provides belonging and identity to whom occupy it. In some cases it is a place to access or emigrate. The territory notion goes beyond a determined border. Although the etymology of the word indicates land or field not every community has its own physical territory, but yes, all have their own idiosyncrasy, language and culture that unites and links. The body is also a territory, one that is always present and constantly changing. A territory that contains and links us with the other, through verbal and corporal language. A territory that enables encounter with the ancestral and the primary.

Proyecto´ace
Artist-in-Residence International Program

View map

International Airport

Ministro Pistarini- Ezeiza (EZE)
Buenos Aires
45' to 60' trip

Domestic Airport

Aeroparque Jorge Newbery
Buenos Aires

Buses

38, 39, 41, 42, 59, 63, 65, 67, 68, 151, 152, 161, 184, 194 and 168 (stop in the front door)

Subway/Metro

D Line (Green)
Olleros Station (4 blocks, 4')

Train

Mitre Line (either to Leon Suarez or Mitre)
Colegiales Station (1 block, 1')

The Latin America's Paris

Buenos Aires is Argentine Republic's capital city. With 15,000,000 inhabitants, it is one of the largest cities in Latin America and one of the 10 most populous urban centers in the world. Its cosmopolitan and urban character vibrates to the rhythm of a great cultural offer that includes monuments, churches, museums, art galleries, opera, music and theaters; squares, parks and gardens with old groves; characteristic neighborhoods; large shopping centers and fairs. Here we also find a very good lodging facilities, with accommodation ranging from hostels to five-star hotels of the main international chains. Buenos Aires also show off about its variety of restaurants with all the cuisines of the world, as well as to have cafes and flower kiosks on every corner.

A neighborhood founded on the Jesuit farms in the 17th century

We are located in Colegiales neighborhood where the tree-lined streets, some of which still have their original cobblestones, invite you to walk. Although the apartment buildings advance, low houses still predominate. It is a district of the city where about 20 TV production companies, design studios, artist workshops and the Rock&Pop radio have been located. The neighborhood also has six squares, one of which pays homage to Mafalda, the Flea Market, shops, restaurants and cafes like its neighboring Barrios de Palermo and Belgrano, with which it limits.

Proyecto´ace
Artist-in-Residence International Program

Open Call #1
Residencies 2025
Deadline 
January 31st, 2025

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