A-153167 (Aníbal López)

B. GUATEMALA 1964. LIVES AND WORKS IN GUATEMALA CITY

A pioneer of performance art in Central America,Aníbal López (also known as A-153167, his identification number) has become notorious for his extreme actions and disruptive urban interventions. Generally aimed at immersing viewers into the region’s social and political tensions, his works combine the dry language of 1960/1970s conceptual art with the revolutionary ethos of a Latin American guerrillero. Turning his native Guatemala City into a stage for urban interventions, López engages unwitting passersby disrupting cultural codes and challenging institutional power. 

WORKS

In One Ton of Books Dumped on Reforma Avenue (2003), the artist provoked a gigantic traffic jam by dumping exactly one ton of books onto the capital’s main thoroughfare at rush hour. A blatant act of vandalism, the blockade was quickly cleared away as pedestrians rushed to pick up books. Evidently alluding to Smithson’s Asphalt Rundown, López’s urban intervention questioned the high illiteracy rates and unequal access to culture in Guatemala. [WATCH VIDEO HERE]

Sculpture Composed of 500 Boxes of smuggled from Paraguay to Brazil (2007)
Investigating the routes of illegal contraband from Paraguay to Brazil, A-1 53167 hired a band of local smugglers to transport empty boxes along their route across the border. The boxes were subsequently used to create a minimalist-like sculpture, reminiscent of the works of Tony Smith and Carl Andre.

Liston Negro. Black Ribbon (2003)
In response to General Efrain Rios Montt dubious candidacy for Guatemala’s 2003 democratic elections, numerous citizens took the streets over with small black ribbons in remembrance of the Army’s massacres of civilians. With that same intention, López hanged a monumental 120 x 4 m black plastic ribbon from the capital’s highest bridge, the famous Puente del Incienso.
 
Arma de Defensa Personal (2005)
In Arma de Defensa Personal (Weapon of Self-Defense), A-153167 hired a street vendor to offer/ peddle stones among his display of natural remedies and magic potions. An expert in the trade, López’s accomplice improvised a discourse on the numerous benefits and long spanning function of the stone as a weapon of self-defense. Combining sales tricks,  inaccurate biological terminology and references to the recent history of Guatemala, the bizarre sales discourse ended up being a call to arms – and of course, to buy his product-

Text: Jamie Kulhanek

Abstract Atlas

Abstract Atlas uses the concept of "mapping" as a point of departure for considerations of place, sites of meaning and representations of space. Located along LaGuardia Place in Lower Manhattan in the Kimmel Building windows of NYU, Abstract Atlas will be on view from April 25th to May 30th, 2009.

For Immediate Release:

Goodman and Johae create and recreate maps but in very different ways. Goodman's paintings included within this exhibition could be interpreted as a fragmented map of North Shore Long Island, the place where she was raised and from which she draws inspiration. Her flattened depiction of Long Island's topography, as well as her bold use of color, careens notions of place into an area of painterly abstraction. Johae works in the opposite direction by literalizing places within actual maps. Through a multi-media series titled Tourists' Paths, Johae considers the significance of being on or off a map.

Julia Goodman describes her paintings as "an abstract field of mark making, a perceptible world with which to enter and to ultimately get lost." The perceptible world Goodman refers to is symbolic of the cartographer's view of the world from above, which she methodically utilizes in her artistic explorations of her home, her family and herself. She calls each painting a self-portrait perhaps because each painting is an abstraction of representation, which is also arguably a characteristic of maps. By implementing methods of color field painting akin to abstract expressionists and maintaining a semblance of mapped space, Goodman oscillates between the known and uncharted. Maps are a point of departure for Goodman, but the result is a place she made herself. Julia Goodman is a senior in the BFA program at NYU Steinhardt.

A selection of three parts from a series of work by Bettina Johae entitled Tourists' Paths, Berlin (2007-ongoing) documents sites along proscribed walking tour maps routinely dispensed for those visiting Berlin. As a native of that city, Johae engages the "official" view of Berlin and how destination sites are designated as meaningful. A work installed within this exhibition, entitled walking tours, is a layered map of 27 pre-drawn walking routes Johae found in guidebooks of Berlin, which illustrates the concentration of paths deemed suitable for representing the city's culture. Johae's photographs reveal locations of friction, where dominant perceptions of place may not correspond to the current lives and experiences entwined with that place. Off the Path, a collection of photographs taken by Johae as she traveled along the tourists' paths, at times venturing far off the proscribed route, inverts the map-making process. She deconstructs the supposed meaning inherent in maps of culture and brings the concept of place into the abstract. Bettina Johae graduated from NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development's Master's Program in Studio Art.

Curated by Molly Shea, Jamie Kulhanek, and Tricia Owlett