Dedicated to Julio Cortázar and to the city of Buenos Aires, who present a unique and special setting for this project, with deep thanks to all who made this residence and interventions possible and to the people who called on the radio to offer their walls and sidewalks to the artist.

In Concrete, urban graphics is an experimental graphic work that the Puerto Rican artist Rafael Trelles has been working on since the summer of 2004,  when he started it on the walls, sidewalks and posts of the cities of San Juan, Mayagüez, Ponce and the island municipality of Vieques in Puerto Rico. Originally designed to integrate into the poor and abandoned sectors of Puerto Rican cities, it later spread to other neighborhoods as well as to other cities. Starting from the concrete darkened by the fungus and dirt from the street, the “prints” are achieved using a high pressure washing machine on polycarbonate stencils. The relatively ephemeral designs are outlined on the dirty surface when washed through the cut holes in the template, exposing the original color of the wall.

Within this framework, Proyecto ´ace invited the artist to make an edition in the city of Buenos Aires as a guest artist-in-residence. Trelles was working during the month of August on mural interventions and on the sidewalks of Caballito, Colegiales and San Telmo neighborhoods. He visited an elementary school and carried out interventions on public streets. Within the educational field, there were meetings between the students and the artist as well as the artist and the public. In addition, through the collaboration of Rock&Pop Radio and the program False Impostor, conducted by musician and radio speaker Marcelo Rodríguez (Gillespi), an interview was carried out with the artist and summoned the public to offer their walls, facades and sidewalks to be intervened. In this way, the project involved the entire community of the city of Buenos Aires.

Thematically, En Concreto in Buenos Aires presented images that propose metaphorically synthesizing some of Cortázar’s short stories: The Southern Highway, Whats Up López ?, Season of the Hand and The Night Face Up, in addition to the great Hopscotch. The pieces were accompanied by a quote from Cortazar´s written that served as a complement to the image, as well as offering a clue to the viewer about the nature of the work. With the integration of the image and the word, Trelles joins the long tradition of art and communications that begins with the origin of language, the use of pre-Columbian ideograms and codices, and ends today with contemporary advertising media. This also rescues the strong Puerto Rican tradition of the cartel that began in the 1950s and continues to the present.

Puerto Rican documentary filmmaker Roberto Otero accompanied the artist to record the creation process of the work. The video was ready and edited for the opening of the exhibition “Tying Up Stories” in the Políglota Room at Proyecto´ace on August 30th, 2007. Later on, in ´ace print studio, a portfolio in an edition of 30 copies, rescued the images that the artist left onto the walls.

On September 1st and under the name “VI Belgrade Encounters: Latin America meets Serbia” ​​will begin the sixth edition of the International Printmaking Workshop and Symposium 2011. The event has a packed agenda, which includes the residence of 6 Latin American artists, the production of a portfolio in collaboration with 7 Serbian artists, a guest artists exhibition and a symposium with lectures and demonstrations.

“Akademija” Research Center Visual and Graphic Arts “(Centar za grafiku i vizuelna istrazivanja” Akademija “) has been organizing on biennial basis these encounters during the past 10 years. The purpose of these meetings is to establish organizational and artistic links between different countries, helping to position Belgrade among the leading cities on the international map of new media and printmaking.

‘ace and Latin American artists related with our center will be the guest of honor at the 2011 event,  being the first time that the invited institution and region do not belong to Europe. The Argentinean artist Alicia Candiani, who is the founder and director of ‘ace, is in capacity of curator and liaison with the Latin American group of artists, and her colleague from Belgrade, the curator Ljiljana Tašić, is in charge of the selection of Serbian artists.

In addition,  Rafael Trelles (Puerto Rico) and Alicia Candiani will lead the symposium, hosted by the Instituto Cervantes de Belgrado,  that will focus on heterogeneity, multiplicity, connection and rupture as marks of contemporary printmaking. Finally, ´ace will increase its collection with one of the portfolios, which will be exhibited in Buenos Aires in the future as well as several projects will be launched inspired by these contacts between artists and art associations.

The “meetings” have taken place during the last 10 years on a biennial basis organized by “Akademija”: Center for Visual Research and Graphic Arts (Centar za grafiku i vizuelna istrazivanja “Akademija”), under the Faculty of Fine Arts of Belgrade El The objective of these meetings is to establish organizational and artistic ties between different countries, helping to position Belgrade among the leading cities on the international map of new media and graphic arts.