Carolina Lara B.

AAlfons Hug came from Ushuaia to our country in a search for new talents and to add them to Sebastián Preece and Claudia Aravena, who already integrated their projects.

“The world should be contemplated from its margins”, declares Alfons Hug, curator of the 2nd Biennial of The End of the World. The event goes on till May 25 in Ushuaia (Tierra del Fuego, Argentina), Punta Arenas and the Antarctic, proposing new views about the contemporary situation. Hug sees the biennial in the actual context of financial crisis.

Since it has firstly affected the situation of painting in the market, an answer from art is the pre-eminence of the video, of projects in situ and low tech strategies, present tendencies in Ushuaia. “In front of the traditional metropolis crisis and the modernist project, other development systems and human interactions are possible. And this territory, one of the most extreme of the planet, is propitious of thinking of a new world”, insists the German expert, curator of two versions of the biennial of Sao Paulo and director of the Goethe Institute in Río de Janiero, Brazil.

This Biennial has a utopian meaning. Also an unusual poetic tone for the actual art, proposing -under the concept “In the open”- forms that work with the landscape and a reflection about the relation between men with nature. “It’s a return to the landscape not so much about the contingency or concepts, but more about the ‘climatic change’ and the ecology”, says the curator. Very interested in our country, he was in Santiago just after inaugurating the reunion in late April.

“Events like the Biennial of Ushuaia and the future Triennial of Chile (October – December) should contribute with creativity to new readings of art”, he adds. “I see here a very productive scene, diversified in the canvas, conceptually original and rich”, he writes. The author already works with Chilean artists. Within the 43 international artists, the Biennial of The End of the World integrates three nationals: painter Patricia Claro with a video as a central proposal; Pol Taylor, Scottish architect, Valparaíso resident, designing the construction of a multidisciplinary project in the Antarctic; and, in the Regional Museum of Magallanes (Punta Arenas) until June 15, Sebastián Preece with “The greenhouse man”, installation that picks found objects and structures used by fishermen and farmers from the zone. Hug has followed Preece for some years.

“Within the field of the sculpture and installation, he is an important artist in South America. He knows how to grasp visual spark from any material”, he highlights. In 2010, he will take it to an exhibition in Brazil. For that same year, with Goethe he prepares an itinerant exhibition in commemoration of the Bicentenary of 10 Latin-American Countries. Within the selection of the 10 respective artists, he includes “because of quality and affinity to the topic” a Chilean woman, Claudia Aravena. The piece of work “Less time than place” will talk about “the option of freedom in history and the independence of South America through a contemporary reading”, it will be coming in May to Matucana 100.