Traces and Remains. Inquiries on the Present

Until October 19, 2015, the Museo Amparo presents the exhibition titled "Traces and Remains. Inquiries on the Present" curated by Tatiana Cuevas. With 114 works by 60 artists that belong to the Colección Isabel y Agustín Coppel (CIAC), the exhibition "Traces and Remains. Inquiries on the Present," proposes a reflection on art objects as tools for the study of contemporary history, from the point of view of an observer who is not familiarized with our culture or time. How would such observer, by looking at the traces that human beings from the 20th and 21st centuries have left behind, interpret the signs that are manifested in our culture? By presenting works created through several media—such as painting, sculpture, installation, photography and video—the CIAC and the Museo Amparo seek to offer diverse audiences a close look at the work of national and international contemporary artists that make the wealth of the collection. An official announcement informs that the curatorship proposes the possibility of using archeology to read a body of contemporary works. That is to say that, instead of looking to the past for fragments that give us the guidelines to build a story, the curatorial proposal looks at the present by regarding the works as cultural signs or metaphorically fossilized fragments of the contemporary world. According to Tatiana Cuevas, "The exhibition approaches a collection of contemporary art as signs that speak about our civilization. The pieces have been selected for their ability to evoke uninhabited scenarios or become traces subject to interpretation. Archaeology is the operating element of this exploration because of its ability to alter the original state of artifacts and transform them from mute objects into witnesses of the social and cultural environment." The exhibition is divided into two areas: The first concerns the traces left by bodies, organisms or language as if they were clues of an absent voice. This first section features works by Wolfgang Tillmans, Danh Vo, Andy Warhol, William Eggleston, Ana Mendieta, Teresa Margolles, On Kawara and Joseph Beuys that record the most loyal and intimate traces of habits, movements and rituals that form a person or a collectivity. Titled Remains, the second segment focuses on objects and their possible interpretations based on their use and appearance. This category features works that serve as remains to emphasize the process of estrangement, assimilation and deformation of readings or interpretations across cultures, contexts and times. Among the pieces presented are works by artists like Alighiero Boetti, Lothar Baumgarten, Gabriel Orozco, Pablo Vargas-Lugo, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Moris, Fritzia Irizar, Mona Hatoum, John Chamberlain, Carl Andre, and André Cadere. "Traces and Remains. Inquiries on the Present" also includes works by Gordon Matta-Clark, Carlos Garaicoa and Damián Ortega that focus on urban architectural ruins that constitute a series of archetypal remains suggestive of lifestyles, transit systems and growth processes in different societies. Also included in the exhibition are works by Santiago Sierra, Micea Cantor and Ramiro Chaves, which address the erosion of ideologies, the collapse of political regimes and economic platforms, or the deterioration of social structures. The exhibition is conceived as an incomplete catalog of enigmas and testimonies about the contemporary world. In this sense, the works by Tutto de Alighiero Boetti and Lawrence Weiner allow to synthesize the idea that gives rise to this exhibition, as both refer to the exercise of accumulation of various objects that represent the true evidence of a fleeting present that can never be grasped in all its dimensions, given that there will always be a part of history that will fall through the cracks of i...