exhibitions - calm complexities
Eduardo Santiere: Calm Complexities
April 4 - May 2, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 4
6:30 - 8 pm
Curator's Office is pleased to present works on paper by noted Argentine artist Eduardo Santiere. In these days of maddening economic, political, and social convolutions, Eduardo Santiere lays bare the complexities beneath the surface in an elegant abstract language. Eduardo Santiere's drawings are about the subtle, the minimal. Yet they contain universes within universes. Mind-blowingly delicate and intricate yet intimate in scale, these works appeal to true drawing connoisseurs and artists alike. The viewer is transported through the mysterious macrocosms and microcosms by way of their intricate circuitry of graphite markings. Santiere, who works exclusively in graphite, color pencil and incising, also has an ability to transfix the observer with dream-like colors and patterns.
Santiere creates tiny microcosms and vast mappings by marking and scratching the surface of the paper. In this context, minute puffs of cotton paper seem to soar like mountains. Of his purely scratched drawings Holland Cotter wrote for The New York Times that "Eduardo Santiere ... gracefully messes up formal distinctions by using a needle to scratch a paper surface into all-but-invisible sculptural relief."
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Santiere's background in computer science has deepened his understanding of constantly evolving and dying systems, such as languages, political ideologies, and life spans. According to the artist, the works address "an uncertain vision of the future - fragmented and abstract; a vision expressed with ambiguity yet one that still looks for beauty in spite of it all." In his drawings, as one system appears to advance and grow in one direction, another bio-morphic or linear geometric system disappears into a visual whisper. The simultaneity of complexity is evident across the surface and bears witness to the dense times we currently live in. Territories of appearance and disappearance come into view simultaneously, all mapped succinctly by the artist's sure hand.
Eduardo Santiere has had solo exhibitions at Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY; Wendy Cooper Gallery, Chicago, IL; 734 Gallery, Madison, WI; Bascom Hall, Madison, WI; Red Mill Gallery, Johnson, VT; and Listasafn Arnesinga Art Museum, Selfoss, Iceland. His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Museo de Arte de Brasilia, Brasilia, Brazil; Frederieke Taylor Gallery, New York, NY; Curator's Office, Washington, DC; Galerie Thomas, Munich, Germany; Bleu Acier, Tampa, FL; Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY; Centro Cultural de España in Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Bienal AAGA in the Visual Arts, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Southfirst Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Wendy Cooper Gallery, Chicago, IL and Madison, WI; Gallery Casa Thomas Jefferson, Brasilia, Brazil; Madison CitiArts, Madison, WI among others. He has exhibited his work in numerous international art fairs such as PULSE NY, Scope Miami and Scope NY, ArteBA, ArtParis, Arte Americas, NADA, Bogota International Art Fair, Year 06 London, Iberoamerican Art Fair, Art Brussels, Preview Berlin, and Art Chicago. His work is included in the Progressive Art Collection, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Hafnarborg Museum of Art, Iceland. A winner of numerous grants and residencies, Santiere earned his MFA in 2003 at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
image above: Eduardo Santiere, Bio construction 15, (extreme detail) graphite & color pencil on paper, 15" x 11.5", 2008