Corpus Delicti

The legal term "corpus delicti" is the conceptual starting point of this curatorship; understood as the physical evidence of a crime or offense, the corpus delicti must be reconstituted during the investigation, as it is often inscribed in the scene of a crime as a subtle print that compresses and encodes the violence of the act. In a sense, contemporary art, treated as a crime scene, has become a perfect crime, "the material evidence of the crime" the artwork has faded, has been supplanted or hidden behind a series of questions. This show poses the question of whether the contemporary artist commits a crime against corporeity and the unit of meaning that characterizes classical art, and if viewers become detectives or investigators. Thus the sacrificial aspect of contemporary art reaches a paroxysm or perfect crime when it makes us doubt its own existence or occurrence. The curator of the exhibition and art critic Ricardo Arcos-Palma explains: "While the selection of Colombian artists that participate in Corpus Delicti are, like in previous generations—Doris Salcedo and José Alejandro Salcedo—interested in the kind of political, religious, economic or military violence that is triggered in Colombian society, their views are not extremist and are resolved through the most diverse and ironic procedures." The exhibition features works by renowned Colombian artists like Leonardo Ramos, Carlos Castro, Eduard Moreno, Germán Arrubla, Ivan Argote, Nadia Granados, Fernando Pertuz and José Orlando Salgad. Their works question the political situation in their country in a way that is more poetic and less direct than the approach that characterized those works from the nineties and early this century. Through their works, each of these contemporary artists prefers to address the tensions and contradictions of our time without neglecting irony and humor. With this exhibition, the Mexican public is exposed to a select group of Colombian contemporary art. The exhibition will remain open to the public from September 24 to November 2, 2014 and it will offer guided tours and other parallel activities. More information available at: http://www.exteresa.bellasartes.gob.mx/