Artmedia Gallery is pleased to present Collaborative Art Projects, Milton Becerra with Claudio Perna and Luis Villamizar, an exhibition which gathers—through photographic records—four ephemeral art proposals produced in Caracas in the mid-70s, a decisive decade for the growth of Venezuelan contemporary art.

Milton Becerra participated in these proposals and also took the photographs in the exhibition. He joined the collective performance, directed by Claudio Perna, Tres tristes tigres (Three sad tigers), 1975, which explored the act of eating as a theme for celebrating companionship and communication of experiences, even artistic ones. However, Becerra accomplished the majority of his collaborative works with the same partner, Luis Villamizar, at the time a very close colleague and friend who shared a common interest in public space, nature, and ecology. The result of their combined art actions is represented in three exhibition proposals: Roca pintada (Painted rock), 1976; Cobijas para la hierba y Camino (Blankets for the grass and Path), 1976, and Silla (Chair), 1979.

The first two were spatial interventions that they executed at Lomas de Prados del Este, in Caracas,Venezuela, by then an area subjected to an accelerated process of urbanization but still partially preserved as the city’s border landscape. Both artists established there a receptive, humble, and direct relationship with nature. In Roca pintada and Camino they used pigments to emphasize the form and force of a natural element (the treatment of the rock by Becerra) or describe the human trace on the ground (the path underlined by Villamizar). Geometric constructivism (Becerra) or informalism (Villamizar) referenced conceptual procedures they employed. In the other cited work, Cobijas para la hierba, they covered the same rock with pieces of fabrics, each one in a different solid color. This spatial intervention, conceived by Becerra, functioned as a deconstruction of color with Mondrian as a mentor figure “behind” the artists.

Finally, Silla is a slideshow that Becerra prepared with a chair used by Villamizar in an artistic intervention at Universidad Central of Venezuela in 1979. Becerra displayed the “appropriated” chair in a rotational movement which stimulates ideas about the representation and perception of movement as a source of visual art practices.

About the artist:

Milton Becerra is a well-known Venezuelan artist based in Paris from 1980. He has exhibited extensively from 1970 forth. His work has been included in museum collections around the world, as well as in private collections. He has set permanent monumental works in places such as Castle of Nointel, France; Klinkverwartung Collection, Germany, and Ibirapuera Park, Sao Paulo.

About the curator:

José Antonio Navarrete has developed an extensive international career as curator, researcher, and critic of visual arts and culture. His lengthy bibliography focuses on topics of modern and contemporary art, with emphasis on how media technology has affected and transformed art practices. As an artist, he recently presented his first solo exhibition, What images can do, at ArtMedia Gallery.

About the gallery:

Artmedia Gallery was founded in 2012. With a location in Wynwood Art District, Miami, Florida, the gallery has the mission to exhibit and promote contemporary art. One of the gallery’s central objectives is to explore the vast possibilities of the expanded notion of art through media technology, with photography and video as its core interest.