Fundación´ace para el Arte Contemporáneo opens the call for emerging Argentinian artists from all over the federal territory –who work with traditional and digital printmaking (both in serial and variable editions), printed art or expanded field graphic practices / installations– to participate in OPEN Buenos Aires, a professionalization event that includes an exhibition of their works, mentoring by guest curators, demonstrations for the public, a networking day, and a round table, which will be opening to the public from August 5th to 7th.

OPEN Buenos Aires –organized jointly by Fundación´ace para el Arte Contemporáneo and the Arthazi/FIG Bilbao Association of Spain– is part of a larger event: FIG Bilbao’s OPEN PORTFOLIO which has been held in the city of Bilbao since 2014. With its landing in Buenos Aires, this 9th Edition of the OPEN PORTFOLIO FIG, International Encounter of Emerging Printmaking, becomes even more international by celebrating two independent in-person editions: one in Buenos Aires, the OPEN BUENOS AIRES (exclusively for Argentinian artists) and the other in Bilbao, the OPEN PORTFOLIO FIG (for Spanish and international artists).

OPEN BUENOS AIRES will inhabit the impressive Casa de la Cultura-La Prensa building (in the same spaces where the print workshops of La Prensa newspaper used to be) during a week of intense programming, in which the activities will be carried out both for the artists (such as mentoring, portfolio review, professional advice on assembly, networking, etc.), and for the public (such as exhibition of the artists’ works, workshops and demonstrations given by the artists themselves, and talks).

Of all the applications we receive in this first phase, 16 artists will be selected to participate in these sessions in August. On August 7th, the last day of the OPEN Buenos Aires event, an international jury will select: four artists who will participate in the final phase of the program and will travel to Bilbao to exhibit at the FIG Bilbao XI Edition from November 24th to 27th, 2022; two artists to attend the residency offered by the CIEC Foundation of Galicia, Spain in 2023; one artist to attend a residency at the Basque bioDesign Center lab in Bilbao, Spain; and another for a residency at Fundación´ace’s ´acePIRAR Artist-in-Residency International Program.

Likewise, the artists who travel to Bilbao in November will also be able to compete for another residency at the CIEC Foundation and an exhibition space at FIGBilbao 2023. Finally, the selected artists will become part of the traveling exhibition Open Itinera, an exhibition program with multiple venues in the territory of the Basque Autonomous Community, which arises with the firm intention of supporting and further promoting the emerging printmaking work that the Open Portfolio and the FIG Bilbao International Festival of Engraving and Art on Paper has been doing since 2012.

HISTORY OF THE OPEN PORTFOLIO @ FIGBilbao

Open Portfolio was created with the aim of supporting and giving visibility to the work of new printmaking talents and promoting their professional career. This event is a platform for the promotion, dissemination and professionalization of emerging creators. Throughout these nine years, Open Portfolio has given space to more than 150 artists from all continents.

Between August 5th and 7th, 2022, we held the OPEN Buenos Aires: an international meeting of emerging graphics at the Casa de la Cultura—La Prensa Building in the City of Buenos Aires. Throughout its 3 days of opening to the public, the selected artists shared with the public not only their works in traditional and contemporary graphic and printmaking techniques, but they also offered workshops, demos, participatory practices and open talks.

OPEN Buenos Aires is a professionalization event for emerging artists and for the dissemination of graphic and printmaking practices for the local public, whether specialized in these fields or without previous knowledge in graphics in particular or contemporary art in general. As part of the application to the OPEN, it was the artists themselves who proposed different instances of exchange with the visitors of the event, bringing them closer to their techniques, their projects, their portfolios and their working methods.

The activities that the visitors of the event enjoyed are:

• Guided tour by Andrea Auzmendi (CABA).
• Pinhole camera demonstration by María Romero Alves (CABA).
• Approach to contemporary printmaking through the work of the selected artists, by Florencia REISZ (Mar del Plata).
• Fortune telling by Lautaro Parada (CABA): ask a question and the Black Mallet answers, and take your card as a gift at the end. Poetically appealing to the origins of xylography in the West – used to print playing cards and Tarot cards – the artist offered us a personal experience through his xylographic work Mazo Negro.
• Participatory workshop on perennial monotypes por Noelia Toscano (CABA), Wenceslao Paunero (Pcia. de Buenos Aires) y Rocío Barzola (Salta): taller de fabricación de tintas con tierra e impresión botánica con la técnica de monotipos.
• Demonstration on contemporary Gyotaku by Agustina Girardi (La Plata), Jorgelina Buchara (CABA) and Leticia Barbeito (La Plata): Gyotaku is a traditional Japanese method of naturally recording the best catch of the day. Inspired by his processes, this workshop proposed to discover the potential of the things that surround us as possible printable matrices to generate their own discourse from the imprint that they leave printed on paper—the public was invited to bring their everyday objects to print on them and take them with them.
• Intervened photography by Solange Baqués (Pcia. de Buenos Aires): the artist exchanged with the public her work process and photographic intervention on paper.
• Infinite patterns workshop by Mariana Gayoso (CABA) and Ale Giorgga (CABA): this workshop approached the notions of contemporary art through graphic experimentation to the public. From the superposition of various materials, textures and graphic qualities, the importance of repetition and fragmentation is recognized, knowing and internalizing what a pattern is and how it is created graphically and continuously (notion of rapport, stamp, impression and stamp).
• “Processing the digital weaving” talk by Julián Pesce (CABA) and Juan Pablo Ferlat (CABA): memory storage to create repeating patterns, physical and temporary units.
• Participatory workshop “Building a xilomural” by Agustín Begueri (Córdoba) and Ale Giorgga (CABA).

Geometría solar (Solar Geometry) is the project developed by Florencia Reisz during her residency at ‘ace as the winner of one of the grants awarded in OPEN BA. This work aims to reveal a situation of dimensional simultaneity, where the idea of duality and multiple universes coexisting at the same time is highlighted. It is carried out through a language that alludes to printmaking; through space (installations/specific sites), and paper (monoprints, drawings, and photographs). The construction of this work is based on the process of experimentation and deconstruction of graphic techniques, questioning traditional printmaking processes.

In her effort to bring together the borders of two formats, on the one hand, monoprints printed on paper and on the other, installations/site-specific works, the artist began working with machinery that projects light in an analog way (overhead projectors, slide projectors, reflectors, and sunlight), using the reflection of the same elements she previously used to make monoprints (tinted glasses, acetate matrices, cardboard cutouts). As a result, she obtained a series of photolithographs exposed directly to sunlight, using the reflection of geometric cutouts of 6mm tinted glass with graphic ink. They were later printed on Canson Edition paper using an intaglio press.