Zona Maco: Artwork Selections 2022
Zona Maco, Latin America's largest fair platform, returns with over 130 galleries from around the world. Running between 9 and 13 February 2022, international heavy hitters at the fair include Gagosian, Sabrina Amrani, Zilberman, König Galerie, and Kasmin alongside galleries from Latin America such as OMR, kurimanzutto, and PROYECTOS MONCLAVA. We select our favourite works from this diverse presentation.
Anastasia Samoylova at Sabrina Amrani
Anastasia Samoylova's practice shifts between observational photography, studio practice, and installation. Exploring the complexities of human-nature relationships, Samoylova presents three prints on metal at Zona Maco.
Her ongoing photographic series 'FloodZone', a project responding to the rising sea levels, has won her a number of grants, and was published as a book by Steidl in 2019.
Having travelled around U.S. institutions, including Orlando Museum of Art and Contemporary Museum of Art, Tampa, 'FloodZone' is currently on view at The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, before it moves to Eastman Museum, Rochester, N.Y., later this year.
Gabriel Orozco at kurimanzutto
With a practice spanning drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and installation, Gabriel Orozco uses diverse means to blur artistic boundaries.
In this painting, a luminescent interplay of colour has been emphasised through the application of gold leaf. Orozco uses the circle as a means of bridging organic and geometric realms, creating a dynamic image in the process.
Working across Tokyo, Mexico City, and New York, Orozco's lack of fixed address reflects a concerted effort towards porosity in his practice. The artist is Officer of the Order of Arts ans letters (2012), and has received the Americas Society's Cultural Achievement Award (2014).
Julio Larraz at Marlborough
Through dystopian painted scenes, Julio Larraz creates allegories of his life experiences, notably a childhood spent in Havana, Cuba, before his relocation to Miami in his teenage years.
Lei é Lá, translating as 'She is there', is characteristically fantastical, with a style reminiscent of the 20th-century Surrealist movement. A house is perched atop a looming cliff, with its chimney blowing out smoke into the starry night.
Larraz's first museum retrospective in the U.S., showing his early works from the 1960s in addition to current work, is now on view at Coral Gables Museum in Florida until 30 April.
Paul Jenkins at Ronchini
American abstract artist Paul Jenkins moved from his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, to New York in 1948, where he studied at the Arts Student League alongside fellow students Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.
A student of Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Jenkins went on to help pioneer novel approaches to the Abstract Expressionist movement.
Today, his paintings are characterised by rich pools of pigments that have been pushed and rolled around the canvas, guided with a knife.
Carlos Cruz-Diez at Galería RGR and König Galerie
Venezuelan-born artist Carlos Cruz-Diez is a pioneer of the Op Art movement. With a practice centred on the perceptual experience of art, his research repositioned colour as the primary force in guiding an artwork's visual response.
Physichromie Panam 166 is one of four works showing at Galería RGR and König Galerie's joint booth, and an example of a serial process that the artist adopted in 1959 called 'Physichromies', which focused on the idea of chromatic autonomy and the way colour manipulated one's surrounding spatial perceptions.
In 1965, Cruz-Diez's prominence in the field of Optical Art was recognised by his inclusion in a landmark exhibition The Responsive Eye at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
Alicja Kwade at Galería RGR and König Galerie
Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade has gained widespread recognition for a practice dedicated to investigating the perception of time and space.
Recalling Alexander Calder's memorising mobiles, Rocking is rendered in brass wire and stones and reflects Kwade's interest in planetary phenomena.
Looking at the artist's works on view in a co-presented exhibition in Seoul by König Galerie and Pace Gallery, Ocula Magazine explained, 'In a world that tends to make order out of its absence (or at least tries to), Kwade observes countless earthly phenomena and places them in the context of their entropic chaos.'
Mariana Rocha at HOA Galeria
Based in Niterói, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, Mariana Rocha is an emerging artist and teacher whose practice looks at the body, exploring the depths that lie beneath the surface.
In her latest series of paintings on view with HOA Galeria, the ocean is used as a metaphor to explore these depths, with forms resembling molluscs and sea anemones stretching across each canvas in vibrant colours.
In 2019, Rocha received the prize for best artistic research at the III Meeting of Undergraduate Students in the Arts of the State of Rio de Janeiro, followed by the Erika Ferreira Prize for Creation and Development from the Municipal Secretariat of Cultures of Niterói in 2020.
Conny Maier at Galería RGR and König Galerie
Splitting her time between Berlin and Baleal, Portugal, Conny Maier's neo-expressive style humorously tackles socio-cultural topics inspired by her encounters while travelling the world.
Over the last couple of years, König Galerie has showcased Maier's work at gallery presentations and fairs. In 2020, the artist was included in the gallery's Art Cologne presentation, while in 2021, the gallery hosted her first solo exhibition in Asia at their newly opened Seoul space.
In 2020, Maier received Deutsche Bank's coveted 'Artist of the Year' Award, making her the first German artist to have received it.
Main image: Anastasia Samoylova, Dolphins in Venice (2021). Dye sublimation on metal. 102 x 127 cm. Edition 1 of 5. Courtesy the artist and Sabrina Amrani.
