Avant-Garde: Italian portraits and Canadian jewelry
By Melanie Harris, Aug 25, 2006

Michelangelo Bastiani & Michelle Tilley Saturday, August 26, 6-9pm Galería/atelier, Fábrica la Aurora, Calzada de la Aurora

An unusual, interesting show highlighting a new trend in Italian avant-garde art is coming to San Miguel. Looking at Michelangelo Bastiani's art, the term "avant-garde" is here taken in its most exact meaning, as defined by Peter Burger in Theory of the Avant-Garde-not a negotiation of an earlier artistic form, or of a style, but rather criticism of art as an institution:

The European avant-garde movements can be defined as an attack on the status of art in bourgeois society. What is negated is not an earlier form of art (a style) but art as an institution that is not associated with the life praxis of men…. The demand is not raised at the level of individual works. Rather it directs itself to the way art functions in society. (1984, p. 49)

Keeping true to the genre, Bastiani is loyal to the exploration of new artistic aesthetic, and his work is charged with ironic criticism of a dramatic nature (drammaticità). In his portraits, Bastiani portrays iconic representations of a society that he analyzes and criticizes strongly-a society overburdened by rules and preordained traditions that lead us to be different from who we are by nature. His current body of work confronts themes such as cultural traditions, religion, origins, internal struggle and beauty. He combats the visual, communicative and conceptual environmental pollution of the media through the noble sword of critical art. The symbols, constraints and standardizations that are presently dictated to us are represented in the artists's work by a parallel universe in which the artist represents strange people in ordinary social situations to make us the spectator reflect on who they are, who they are supposed to be and what society expects of them. 

Also noteworthy is Bastiani's use of a fairly new product of the European art market, thermochromic paint, which responds to the temperature of the human body. 

Originally from Florence, Italy, Bastiani studied at the prestigious Academia di Belle Arti under the tutelage of one of Italy's leading pop artists and hyperrealists, Maestro Gustavo Giulietti. Whereas the term "Italian avant-garde" inspires visions of 1950 "Arte Povera," Dadaism, Futurism, and even Nihilism, this is the only term to describe these photopictures that are not "traditionally" beautiful yet are aesthetically appropriate in expression. 

Michelle Tilley, a young jeweler from Toronto, Canada, will complement Bastiani's work with a fashion parade of her untraditional jewelry. Tilley is best known for her found object jewelry.

Instead of using pricy precious stones derived from dirty labor practices in third-world countries, Tilley incorporates more humble elements into jewelry that is beautiful and simply executed.

Jalisco artists show at La Galería Aurora

Art opening and reception, Saturday, August 26, 12-8pm
Galería Aurora, Fábrica la Aurora, Calzada de la Aurora

Three of the most popular artists showing in Puerto Vallarta will be featured at La Galería Aurora, Brewster Brockmann, Marco Álvarez and Alfredo Langarica all work with the Galería Pacífico in Puerto Vallarta, that city's second-oldest of 43 galleries and a cosponsor of this event. This will mark the first time that La Galería Aurora has held an all-day reception and the first time that they have combined efforts with their neighbor at the Fábrica Aurora, the Florencia Riestra Gallery, which hosts a collective show of 13 artists' work provided by the gallery's main facility in Mexico City.

The exhibition at La Galería Aurora was conceived last November when its director and co-owner, Arturo Meade, exhibited his own paintings at a solo show in Puerto Vallarta at the Galería Pacífico. The gallery's owner, Gary Thompson, has been a summer resident of San Miguel for the last six years. The two first met six years ago when Thompson was having a show for another painter at Clandestino, when Meade was a partner there and the store had a large gallery section.

Of the featured artists, Brewster Brockmann and Alfredo Langarica are originally from Guadalajara, but Langarica also lived in San Miguel and Puerto Vallarta for extended periods before returning to Mexico's second largest city. Marco Álvarez, originally from Mexico City, and Brockmann both now live in the Puerto Vallarta area. Their backgrounds vary as much as their styles and paintings. Álvarez is also an architect, and his paintings in oil, acrylic or watercolor are abstract with dynamic colors and forms that range from natural and organic to modern and structural. He has had exhibitions in Denver, Colorado, New York and throughout Mexico, and his work is in several corporate collections in both countries. 

Langarica has the widest range of styles, although even his paintings that seem abstract at a distance usually reveal themselves upon closer examination to be comprised of scores of small figurative elements. Many of his paintings are devoted to a large, solitary figure, sometimes excessively skinny or fat, reflecting the keen sense of humor that permeates his work. Brewster has been collecting ceremonial masks and other Mexican folk art since was seven years old, and for the last several years he has owned Puerto Vallarta's leading folk art gallery, Galería Olinila. His paintings and sculptures reflect this interest both in theme and style. They have a primitive, "outsider art" feeling to them but are created with an expertise in materials and technique learned at Cranbrook Institute in the United States. During this event, he shows his paintings on canvas and paper.

Laura Begoña, a new addition to La Galería Aurora's group of artists, will be showing several cast-bronze sculptures during the collective show, and will be present at the cocktail reception along with the featured artists.

Student art chosen to grace Café Santa Ana's new menus

Four paintings by students taking art classes at the Biblioteca Pública have been chosen as cover illustrations to complement the Café Santa Ana's new menus.

The four young artists are Miriam Rico Sanchez, age 12 ("Café Santa Ana Night Scene"); Tatiana Hernández Enriquez, age 13 ("Big Coffee Cup"); Helen Alejandra Gutierrez R., age 14 ("Waiter and Couple at Table"); and Guadalupe Alvarado Olalde, age 18 ("Ice Cream").