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

The work produced during Crossover [KC-Bs As] was exhibited in Fundación ‘ace during three months. 26 artists from different countries participated of this project which took place in ‘ace during the beginning of 2013.

On the exhibition’s opening, May 15th, Buenos Aires public enjoyed and shared an ‘aceNITE not only with many of the Crossover artists, but also with Miguel Rivera (initiator of the project) who came all the way from Kansas City in the USA to join us.

Essay on Crossover (by Daniela Ruiz Moreno)

To work in collaboration means to unite, merge, and contrast diverse ways of seeing and thinking. It implies openness to receive others expressive languages, allowing it to penetrate and challenge our own language.

In Theory of Modern Art, Paul Klee, reflects upon human’s creative strength and states “it is necessary to reveal this strength, its functions, in the same way it reveals in ourselves, this strength together with the matter, should embody, become shape, reality”. Is because of this that I believe that working in collaboration means to reveal and to force the emergence of the creative strength inside the others work. This is only achieved by activating one’s own strength.

Following this it is interesting to note the variety of “crossings” and overlaps, the different levels of permeability explored and revealed by each artist. In some cases each ones images suffered mutations, established dialogs in which each issuer maintains some distance, they relate but avoid infection (Viviana Sierra). Images crush or become flatten with the presence of the other, but at the same time a level of merging is achieved (Natalio Altube, Sol Massera, Paula Nahmod). In other case, both languages relate organically (Alejandro Scasso).

Artists appropriate the original for their own work (Alejandro Thornton), or use it as an impulse or stimulation to explore questionings already present in their search (Cristina Solía). Even chance was present in a piece in which a strong syncretism between Judaism, Muslim and Catholicism was achieved (Gabriela Zelentcher).  In other works, the link between the two expressions was documented in a video. This resource allowed registering the randomness and importance of the entailment as one expression was not perceptible without the other (María José Sánchez Chiappe).

The virus, fundamental concept in the previous editions of CROSSOVER was interpreted in multiple ways in this session. In one case, the work focused in rats, essential actors and victims of the experiments to resist and battle viruses (Sonia Sánchez Avelar). In other, the artist was interested in the reproductive capacity of the virus, finding in its embryonic state, formal similarities with other beings (Bárbara Vincenti). The duality life/death that the virus holds was explored (Maren Preston), also the social danger and horror that epidemics produce. Infection, destructive in the case of viruses was founded in other human expressions such as laughter, in this case as something positive and empowering. Infection could be related also with colonial processes, where not only physical destruction is implied but also cultural, social and religious (Jennifer Pickering).

Crossover [KC-Bs.As.] is a project in which each artist had the opportunity to explore in a creative environment. Individual expressions became challenged, stimulated and embraced. Each artist, free to invade and to be infected by others creations, achieved in this way new languages.

[CYCLES] Portfolio exchange – Caja Gráfica is an initiative that seeks to open spaces for the creation of graphic work, the interaction of artists of all nationalities with our neighborhood, the opening of places for exhibition and dissemination of work as well as interact with international artists. In this way [CYCLES] proposes the creation of a graphic portfolio-box with engravings / graphic pieces of each one of the participating artists and guests and offers the opportunity to exhibit that work both in Argentina and abroad.

The selected artists developed a one-week micro residency to develop their work in the Foundation’s ´ace workshop. Each of the artists will have a portfolio box with the work of all the participants at the end of the project. The works carried out and the box-portfolio will be exhibited at the Foundation in 2014. Some boxes will be donated to international collections and will start a traveling exhibition.

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For the Royal Spanish Academy [cycle] it is a period of history that is considered finished, the set of phenomena or operations that are repeated in an orderly manner, a group of epic traditions concerning a certain period of time or a series of phases through which a periodic phenomenon happens. On the other hand, the prefix “cycle” means “spins”, “spins”.

All disciplines, from anthropology to engineering, have cycles. As well as the cycles appear as processes that always follow the same phases in the same order. In this project we are inspired by the idea of ​​[cycles] from multiple perspectives, alluding to the idea of ​​movement, of turning, of beginning and end, of mythical return, of what left and ended, of what opens and It flourishes or repeats indefinitely giving rise to multiple visual interpretations. Beginning and end, return, stages, movement … will be some of the possibilities that artists can visually explore in this portfolio.

Cycles Portfolio was selected through an open call for exhibition during Frogman’s 35th Anniversary Print Workshop. The exhibition was featured at the University of Nebraska Omaha’s Weber Fine Arts Building . After the exhibition, the portfolio was donated by Fundación´ace to the Frogman´s Print Workshop collection.

ABOUT FROGMAN´S PRINT WORKSHOP

Frogman’s Print Workshop began humbly back in 1979 when Professor Lloyd Menard led five school teachers from Sioux City, Iowa to the Black Hills of South Dakota, USA, for a drawing class. Prints were first introduced in 1981 and the workshops evolved into the Black Hills Print Symposium which took place at various sites in Western South Dakota, USA.

The Black Hills set an amazingly beautiful backdrop to the workshops, but by 1996, the workshops had outgrown the confines of the Hills and were moved to Beresford, South Dakota, home of Frogman’s Press & Gallery. The workshops would only spend two years based out of Beresford before moving to nearby Vermillion and the University of South Dakota.  Frogman’s would call USD home for nearly twenty years.

Later on, in 2016, Frogman’s made the big leap to Nebraska and the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where the Frogman took his first ever print class over 50 years ago. Currently, Frogman is directed by Lloyd Menard´s son, Jeremy Menard who is also University of Nebraska at Omaha as their Curator & Visual Resource Manager.

ABOUT UNO (University of Nebraska)

UNO is Nebraska’s metropolitan university — a university with strong academic values and significant relationships with its community that transforms and improves the lives of those on a local, regional, national, and international level.

UNO is dedicated to the city and state of Nebraska. As the University of Nebraska’s metropolitan university campus, no fences or barriers separate students from the opportunities offered by the greater Omaha area. It addresses real issues, providing relevant learning opportunities that uniquely prepare our graduates as professionals and active members of their community.