The Museo de Acarigua celebrates its 25th anniversary with the exhibition 5 x 5 Real Unreal

Between November 24, 2012 and May 3, 2013, the Museo de Arte Acarigua-Araure hosted the show 5 x 5 Real Unreal. The MAAA is located in the Venezuelan plains and is supported through the private initiative of local entrepreneurs. One particularity of this institution is the emphasis it places on contemporary art, in a constant struggle to transcend stereotypical models of circulation that split the world between center and periphery. 5 x 5 is a collaboration with The Venezuelan-American Endowment for the Arts (VAEA), intended to promote cultural exchanges between Venezuela and the US, bringing together artists and curators from both countries around topics of mutual interests.

5 x 5 Real Unreal is the project's fourth edition, curated by Rolando J. Carmona and Connor Rich, and it explores the relationship between the notion of truth and established power, questioning a perception of reality built through apparent truths erected from the power structure.

The American artists represented in the show are Henry Fair with his series Industrial Scars; Daniel Shea, who reconstructs fictitious stories of progress; Justin Maxon, whose work explores domestic violence; Nathan Anspaurgh, who uses "graffitied" posters in his collages; and Zibago Dunkan, a Chicano artist who creates fictional natural landscapes.

The Venezuelan selection aspired to demonstrate what Carmona sees as the five main lines of investigation in the country's current art scene: Richard Gared reformulates the concrete-art tradition with neo-formalist works; Nayari Castillo uses the archive in a project at the boundary between curatorship and artistic practice; Juan Carlos Rodríguez explores neo-conceptualism with media dominated by vulnerability and precariousness; Pepe López activates alter-modern dynamics; and Yucef Merhi uses numerical processes to recode information in a sustained, random way.