CROSSOVER [KC – Bs As] is the 4th edition of an in-progress international collaborative printmaking project between artists questioning the established norms of the original production and authorship of artistic works. In this project one’s work, property and egos became irrelevant, as artists have to trust each other allowing themselves and their counterparts to place their hand-marks, images and matrices on one’s previous works.

Adriana Moracci, ´ace‘s Master Printer, inspired by a set of woodcuts matrixes that artist Miguel Rivera left behind during his residency with us in 2011, launched the ideas that initiated this CROSSOVER session.  The international project was completed at Proyecto ’ace/Artist-in-Residence International Program in Buenos Aires Argentina, and directed by Alicia Candiani, from February to June 2013.

Crossover has been designed as a collaborative project between artists questioning the established norms of the original production and authorship of artistic work ,leading to the collaborative work between artists from around the world.One’s work, property and egos became irrelevant, as artists have to trust each other allowing themselves and their counterparts to place their hand-marks, images and matrices on one’s previous works. Each piece made in this series is unique, these works are not editions, as individual pieces are worked on and circulated among its participants. All artists aimed to evolve in their own practice by finding common points of view and theoretical discourse. CROSSOVER [KC – Bs As] re-semantized 15 woodcut plates carved with digital techniques by artist Miguel Rivera at KCAI workshops in the USA. During three different sessions, participants joined to create new works based in Rivera’s matrixes.

Last but not least, Rivera himself participated in the different sessions in Buenos Aires given talks and delivering critiques via video-conference. Later on, he travelled for the opening of the exhibition at Sala Políglota in ‘ace on May 15th, 2013. The exhibition travelled to the USA and was exhibited at Maller Gallery, Kansas City Artist Coalition, Kansas City and Western Gallery, Western Washington University in Bellingham.

Click HERE to see pictures of the three sessions @ ´ace

ABOUT CROSSOVER

Crossover is an ongoing art project started by artists Cara Jaye and Miguel Rivera. It began as goal oriented project in 2006 in the US and in Mexico, with Cara Jaye working in Bellingham, Washington and Miguel Angel Rivera in the historic city of Guanajuato, Mexico. Both artists traveled between their home countries to create these layered works on paper, which use various printmaking and photography techniques, Vandyke brown print, digital imagery, collage, fur, drawing and painting.

After having two successful shows in Guanajuato and Seattle, a continuation of that initial project became necessary after Rivera moved to Kansas City. This new body of work included a broader range of artistic practices using the immediate dialogue among artists.The project continued in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2011, during the residency that Miguel Rivera did in Proyecto´ace where he started some pieces in collaboration with artist and ´ace director Alicia Candiani. The pieces was overtaken later while Alicia was in the Kansas City Art Institute as a visiting artist, where it was finished and exhibited as part of the Candiani solo show in Maller Gallery in the Kansas City Art Coalition in October 2011.

In 2012 a new group included its two initial artists in addition to Patricia Villalobos Echeverria, a Nicaraguan-American artist working in Kalamazoo, Missouri; Melanie Yazzie, a Navajo artist working in Boulder, Colorado, and Michael Schonhoff, artist and curator from Kansas City, Missouri in the USA. Crossover at the Kansas City Artists Coalition residency required artists to trade “half finished” works at the beginning of the residency and allowing their counterparts to intervene their pieces and finishing them. One’s work, property and egos became irrelevant, as they had to trust each other allowing ourselves and our counterparts to place their hand-marks, images and matrices on one’s previous works. Each piece made in this series is unique, these works are not editions, as individual pieces are worked on and circulated among its participants. All artists aimed to evolve in their own practice by finding common points of view and theoretical discourse. Jaye addressed issues of migration and adaptation to harsh environments while Yazzie used a trickster approach to bring attention to Native American political unsolved issues. Villalobos, Schonhoff and Rivera shared similar opinions about place, borders, language, conflict and fear towards unknown entities such as violence, viral threats and identity.

This workshop transgrafía exploration aims to modify the initial process of developing ideas in the graph. This process takes lithography fundamentals such as drawing, resistance between water and oil, gouache and paper substrate. It also adapts indirect production methods such as digital design and fotografía.Todos these modalities own creative process combined with the use of laser printing and photocopying liquid toner, leading to immediate issues results and low cost.

Transgrafia-or laser-transfer prints is characterized hues achieved by crosslinking of the particles of plasticized photocopier toner powder. The use of this technique has been focused by transgrafía mainly Rivera monotype and method of image transfer plates of metal, plastic and wood. Its cost is relatively low and toxicity is zero, which makes it a viable expression method and assimilated by most artists interested in reliable results.

From April 06 to May 16, 2015 the works produced in the International Project CROSSOVER [KC – BsAs] were exhibited in the Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Washington State, USA.

Organized by Cara Jaye, one of the creators of the project, CROSSOVER [KC-Bs As] was in this oportunity part of a larger exhibition and event. It included the pieces of all the Crossovers sessions as well as artists Miguel Rivera, Alicia Candiani, Melanie Yazzie and Patricia Villalobos Echeverria’s residencies, lectures scheduled for April 7, 8, 9, 21 and May 5 and 7,  in addition to gallery talks with the artists explaining the project.

Created by Cara Jaye (Washington, USA) and Miguel Rivera (Guanajuato, Mexico) in 2004 as a spontaneous collaboration that has now expanded to include the taking and trading of artworks by more than 30 artists from over ten countries, Crossover/Cruce de Vías addresses issues of exchange, borders, authorship, travel and the interplay within collaboration. The diverse body of more than 150 works incorporate drawing, collage, photography, painting and printmaking techniques as artists use layers and multiple viewpoints to form an active and ongoing dialogue on crossing borders and nationalities, bridging differences and expressing commonalities while sending work across actual borders.

International Crossover exhibitions

2015 | Crossover / Crossroads, Western Gallery, Western Washington University. Bellingham, Washington, USA.
2013 | Crossover [KC-BsAs], Proyecto´ace. Buenos Aires, Argentina
2012 | Crossover KC, Kansas City Artists Coalition. Kansas City, Missouri, USA
2006 | Crossover / Cruce de Vias, Shift Gallery. Seattle, Washington, USA and Jesús Garcia Gallery, Guanajuato, Mexico

From January 17 to 19 Miguel Rivera -mexican artist and professor of printmaking- was back in ‘ace with a group of students from the Kansas City Art Institute. Reed Anderson, Art History professor, also traveled to Buenos Aires.

The stay of the group at ‘ace was one of the last activities of the students. They traveled to Buenos Aires to develop the Argentina: the other immigration project. Accompanied by their teachers, students toured the city and relieved visual material for their projects which were finally carved and printed in two studio days in our workshops.

We open the doors for the first ´aceNITE of the year, in Crossroads artists and very diverse works will meet on this special night. On Wednesday May 15 from 7:00 p.m. the opening of the exhibitions of two artists in residence took place, the first exhibition of the international project Crossover [KS-Bs.As] and an open studio.

In the Sala Políglota we will present 123 | 234 | 345 works that the Greek artist Erini Boutasi made during her residency in May. Her works establish a game between the gestural, the free and the determined.

In the Central Hall we will exhibit the works of the more than 20 international artists who participated in Crossover [KS-Bs.As]. This project explored the possibilities of collaborative work, the artists worked from matrices left by Miguel Rivera (Mexico), the artist who started the project.

Into Gondwana is the project of the South African artist in residence Frederick Clarke, you will be able to know his works that explore the unity, human and geographical, between the African and Latin American continent. In addition, you will be able to interact and learn about the work in progress of Felipe García (Colombia), an artist who is carrying out an intervention residency within which she will paint a mural on the terrace of ´ace as part of her project The Joy of Rebelion.

The World IS a Handkerchief : El mundo es un pañuelo
A Wandering Genealogy curated by Claudia DeMonte & Cecilia Mandrile
The World IN a Handkerchief : El mundo en un pañuelo
Guest Curator, genealogy Proyecto’ace: Alicia Candiani
Exhibition of pieces
selected from the Fundación´ace´s collection and Alicia Candiani’s personal collection of the participating artists in “The world IN a handkerchief”

For a month and a half, the Políglota Room is hosting three exhibitions on a rotating basis. From March 23 to April 1, “The world IS a handkerchief” and “The world IN a handkerchief: the genealogy of ´ace” were exhibited simultaneously, paying special tribute to the Argentine artist Graciela Sacco. While the original  series returned to New York from where it will soon travel to England, the ‘ace genealogy collection was joined by a new exhibition of  large format pieces of the participating artists, some belonging to the Fundación’ace collection and others to the private collection of Alicia Candiani.

The World IS a Handkerchief is a travelling exhibition rooted in the Spanish saying ‘el mundo es un pañuelo,’ which translates into English as ‘this is such a small world’. The project traces serendipitous encounters, moments of discovering personal connections in distant places or unexpected contexts. The project began with the meeting of Claudia DeMonte and Cecilia Mandrile as a mentor and student respectively at the University of Maryland, United States in 1995 and has expanded through an international collaborative network between mentors, students and
peers.

The World IN a Handkerchief is a new chapter of the project, a graphic, soft and traveling portfolio curated by guests artists from the core genealogy. Artist and curator Alicia Candiani, essential mentor of this genealogy, Founder and Director of Proyecto´ace, has been invited to curate this new collection that reflects her close creative family.

ABOUT THE WORLD IN A HANDKERCHIEF  by  Cecilia Mandrile

Handkerchiefs have accompanied people in celebrations and farewells in many cultures for centuries, offered bodily protection and coverage, and sustained expressions of political tenets and spiritual beliefs. In this project, handkerchiefs become vessels of memories and itinerant narratives; containers of emotions; translators of wounds, signals of ideological resistance. Each piece epitomizes a soft space that holds disappearing recollections of homeland as well as reflections on displacement and identity that can be carried as a tangible memento. In times when touch appears as a dangerous sense, every single printed handkerchief means a meaningful testament of the continuous nurturing mentorship among artists and educators, reminding us that the soft touch remains both an intimate and universal need of communication.

To celebrate this constant and sustained creative dialogue, in 2019 the curators developed a portable exhibition of 50 handkerchiefs that explored the meaning of belonging and interconnectedness that this Spanish saying so tangibly evokes. In the reconstruction of this alternative family made up of artists and collectives from different latitudes and generations during the last two decades, both printed an edition of 25 handkerchiefs, and sent a printed handkerchief along with a blank handkerchief to 50 invited artists to intervene with their own reflections
on home, identity and belonging. From this exchange a “wandering genealogy” was born, a tribute to the strong threads that have woven this shared territory as itinerant artists and educators.

A limited edition catalogue including the work of 50 invited artists was published by Impact Press, Bristol, UK and includes an essay by Gill Saunders, Senior Curator of Prints, Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Currently, the catalogs of workshops and portfolios remain as digital publications, thus allowing to document the constant growth of this genealogy. Chris Knollmeyer, a sound artist in residence at ´ace at the same time, composed for this exhibition a special piece: “Sound of the Handkerchiefs”. The piece is a piano study made up of 25 melodies. Just as the handkerchiefs are tied to each artist’s history and sense of home, Chris feels a connection to the piano.