Arteônica: Art, Science and Technology in Latin America Today
by Liz Goldner
Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, California
Exhibition continues through February 23, 2025
January 25, 2025
Waldemar Cordeiro, “Derivadas de uma Imagem: Transformação em Grau 1,” 1971, offset lithograph, 24 x 17 1/2”.
“Arteônica,” part of the Getty Foundation’s initiative, “PST ART: Art & Science Collide,” presents the relationship of art with science from a technological perspective. Exploring computer artistry in Latin America from the 1960s to the present, the exhibition goes way beyond the Latino and Chicano inspired narrative displays typically seen here, and it features work by lesser-known Latin American artists from the 1960s to the present. Several of these hi-tech works address social engagement, memory and global solidarity.
The central figure here is Waldemar Cordeiro (1925-1973), an electronic art pioneer, born in Italy, who spent his adult life in Brazil. With several of his computerized images containing unimaginative, hazy figurative images, didactics and research explain that he organized an international exhibition, also titled “Arteônica,” in 1971 to explore electronic and cybernetic arts, paving the way for this decades long movement. That show also included his treatise on “arteônica,” a term that he coined, and which he described as a verbal synthesis of electronic art.
Waldemar Cordeiro, “Arteônica Manifesto. Catalog Exhibition,” 1972, offset lithograph, Printed paper 106 pages.
Cordeiro worked tirelessly to promote the computer as an instrument for positive social change, capable of democratizing art and culture. He did so while Latin America was undergoing the challenging political and social conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s, including coups d'état, civil and military dictatorships, and economic crises. While his computer-created images may be difficult to comprehend, his intent and mission, as explained in the wall labels and catalog, are essential to understanding the M.O. of this show.
Argentine artist Gyula Kosice (1924-2016) was a sculptor, theorist and poet, and a member of the Latin American avant-garde in the 1940s.He worked with kinetic and light art, and infused water into his sculpture. Among his many magnificent pieces, “Object” (1968), containing water in an abstract drop-shaped transparent sculpture, employs water’s “tendency to disperse, due to its fluidity, providing it with a power of circulation through the displacement of air in all controllable directions.” The quote is from Kosice’s treatise, “The architecture of water in sculpture.” Similar to Cordeiro’s approach, Kosice seamlessly combined scientific experimentation with aesthetic intent.
Several more artists from the mid- to late-20th century are included. The work of the more contemporary artists combines the ethos of Cordeiro’s and Kosice’s early experimentation with 21st century themes. Works by Lucia Monge and Victoria Cribb are more accessible, visually and conceptually, than their predecessors.
Gyula Kosice, “Objeto,” 1968, sculpture (wood box with drop-shaped acrylic container, water, motor, light), 26 1/2 x 19 3/4 x 8”.
Monge, from Peru, contributes the installation “Primer Contacto” (2013-14) described as being, “about a first encounter with a plant — even if you think you’ve seen it a million times before,” as, “when you look at this specific plant, light enters your body through your eyes and exits as movement.” This unusual description, not to mention the art piece itself, causes us to think deeply about the importance of the natural world to our lives.
Monge’s piece, which is more about the relationship of art with nature than about art and science, diverges widely from the Arteônica theme. It is composed of a green glass topped worktable on which is placed a few house plants that are surrounded by many more plants on the floor around it. The installation includes a magnificent drawing of body parts, indicating that plants can heal, lower stress, clean air, or maybe even bring good luck. The table contains paper and drawing tools that invite us to write about or draw a particular plant. The table also features a drawing pen with a microphone inside it — the only technological component of this piece — that transforms viewers’ lines into sounds as they draw.
Lucia Monge “Primer Contacto,” 2013/24, drawing table, pen with microphone, plants, speakers, drawings, variable dimensions.
Victoria Cribb’s “Vigilante_Extended” (2022) is a digital animated short film that presents a beautiful woman, named Vigilante, who appears half Indigenous and half Black. The artist is herself half Haitian and half Brazilian. The fictional character is an avatar, that is an individual from a digital world that serves as a stand-in for Cribb. The avatar expresses the artist’s feelings about being stuck and confined in a digital world, especially during the pandemic and lockdown, when she conceived the piece.
With her many eyes and ears, which are mirrored by her long fingernails, and an expressive, frightened face, Vigilante talks (through text on the screen) about being observed by the otherworldly digital space that she inhabits, particularly as she creates her artwork online. Cribb or Vigilante, or both, explain that it is impossible to see or interact with what is watching us.
Vitória Cribb, “Vigilante_Extended,” 2022, short film with CGI Animation, 8 minutes and 32 seconds.
Written, directed, and animated by Vitória Cribb. Soundtrack by OLHO and Anelena Toku.
Cribb also asserts that she is comparing what is traditionally expected of a Black woman with the computer itself, which for her is a kind of overseer. She explains, “A sort of mirroring happens, identifying with that machine that is so similar to the place society expects me to occupy — a place of serving, of generating results and profit, and never being the owner of the final result.” Of all the works in this exhibition, “Vigilante_Extended” most clearly and personally expresses the PST initiative’s intent to present the collision of art and science.
Indeed, Cribb’s work seamlessly demonstrates the Getty Foundation’s mission to converge aesthetic and technological disciplines in a coherent manner. Yet other “Arteônica” displays, some exhibiting rows of cables or computer printouts, are more confusing than informative. There are similar pitfalls in other PST shows I’ve seen. Some exhibitions, while interesting to walk through, such as The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA’s “Olafur Eliasson OPEN,” with its large-scale optical devices, several as fractured mirrors, were more disorienting than satisfying. As Christopher Knight observed (Los Angeles Times, August 29, 2024), “Also, expect some muddle. Theme exhibitions are among the most notoriously difficult for curators to execute successfully. Simplifying art’s mysterious complexities to isolate a work’s basic scientific elements risks being reductive.” “Arteônica” is an exceptionally conceptual and esoteric exhibition that makes his point.
