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Exhibition Archive


Contemporary Uruguayan Photography: Uruguay Possible

Jun 02, 2005 to Jun 26, 2005

Opening: Sunday, June 5th at 4 PM
Opening words by Juan C. Tajes.

This Uruguay Possible project is an initiative created by curators Diana Blok and Juan Carlos Tajes - both Uruguayan born artists residing in Amsterdam for the past 30 years - with the purpose of promoting Uruguayan culture in The Netherlands. This particular exhibition will show exclusively photography.
The participating artists are: Magela Ferrero, Matilde Campod-Nico, Cristina Barœ, Carlos Costa, Daniel Machado, Roberto Fernandez, Juan Angel Urruzola.

All of the artists are photographers, either by vocation or profession. The content of their work is a personal reflection of the values of being Uruguayan. They question the values, they relate to the history of Uruguay during the 30 past years of crisis and bankruptcy. Their diverse forms of expression range from the poetry of the subconscious to the more conceptual, esthetic expression of themselves. They look outside, they see inside. The eye focuses on fragments of reality which evoke memory.

In researching contemporary Uruguayan photography we came upon a selection of dedicated artists which we believe should be shared with a larger public. Uruguay may be for many people an invisible spot on the planet. This is an opportunity to reveal it.

The President of the Republic Uruguay, Dr. Tabare Vazquez together with the Minister of Education and Culture declared the exhibition "Contemporary Uruguayan Photography" to be of national interest, in resolution 726/005 of the Presidency of the Republic.

We would like to thank the artists for their participation, and the Uruguayan Embassy in The Netherlands for their support.




Cristina Baru

Montevideo, Uruguay (1950)

Where there is intention , there is reference.
When the attention chooses the memory
When the perception allows me to feel
I can use the photography as a creative way for self- reference.

Thus

How to look at?
Where to look at?
When to look at?
What to look at?
To whom to look at?
There is an only way,
Feeling?

The photographs selected for this exhibtion were taken with expired film and printed on metalized paper. As a result the colors are altered creating an illusion of color other than what we normailly percieve.

Cristina studied in the Academy of Fine Arts and simultaneously at the Fotoclub Uruguayo.Her photographs and installations have been shown in galleries and art spaces in Uruguay, Buenos Aires and New York. She has also recieved 6 photographic awards.

contact: cristinabaru@hotmail.com










Matilde Campodonico

Montevideo, Uruguay (1969)

This exhibition is a selection of work I made during the past five years. It shows three aspects of my photography which together represent the person I am. Two series show the documentary aspect of my work: one is about my country Uruguay, seen through its urban landscapes, the other -"Miguelete"- shows an abandoned prison for minors: walls and structures that kept lives in confinement and tell their stories. The last series "Groundwater" is of a more conceptual kind, questioning our ways of seeing. It is like an aesthetic essay which led me to the insight that every time we start work on another theme, a new world opens up. We human beings are the evidence that any material can turn into another. When we fix our gaze a new realm appears, different to what we had imagined. Nothing is ever what it seems.

It is the eye of inner experience which molds reality. Matter changes and can be immensely liquid, hard, dark or simply cease to be to become something else.

Her fascination for photography began in 1994. She studied under various private teachers and also followed workshops at the Foto Club Uruguayo and other fine arts centers. Since 1998 she is active as a photographic reporter for the daily newspaper, El Observador. She also makes CD covers for local musicians.

She has held several group and solo exhibitions in Uruguay.






Carlos Costa

Paysandu, Uruguay (1964)

2002 was the worst year of the economic history of Uruguay. The consequences of the crisis on the social level are still immense. I chose to portray this period of Uruguayan history through the whiteness of the empty billboards in my work "2002". The publicity market was not immune to the crisis and exterior billboards remained empty. From my point of view, the white of the billboards takes on the role of a white page which has to be rewritten. After all, the word crisis comes from the Greek "Krisis", which means decision and/or opportunity.
Carlos is a professional economist and specializes in the economy of energy; studied in Holland( 1991-1993) and England (1996-96).
Photography became his vocacion since 1997 and soon after he began to discover and explore the panoramic format.
His work has been shown and collected in Uruguay, Colombia, Hongkong, England, Turkey and the Netherlands. On 2002 he recieved the First Prize in the plastic arts competition of the Uruguayan Professional Pension Fund.
EMPTY BILLBOARDS is also showing at this moment in the Historical Museum of Montevido, Uruguay.

contact: c.costa@chasque.net








Roberto Fernandez

Montevideo, Uruguay (1955)

Pendent Photographs / Fotografias Pendientes
Man that questions / Hombre que se pregunta

These two portfolios which I developed during the past years are antipodes not only in their conception, but also in their concretion.

"Pendent Photographs" surged as a ludicrous exercise where the irreality of a photograph hanging to dry would come to life with yet another frame of unreality within the space. The guiding thread in this play of images interracting with one anotheris the cord from which they hand and at the same time the tight rope on which I walk, at a constant risk to loose my balance.

Beyond being a group of images, "Man that questions" is a life project. At a certain moment one realizes that finding answers to our questions is not enough and that in living the greatest mystery of our exsistence, with its enchantment and capacity of amazement, what we thought we knew, is again questioned.

The specific technique I am using for each print makes each photograph unique. This again confronts me with the question of "luck", uncertainty, impermanence... realizing that we are not the absolute masters of our destiny and that these elements of uncertainty and impermanence are perhaps our eternal companions along our life's journey.

In the meantime, I walk through life without expectation, with an old ,lazy camera and a haiku for each day.

" I am only seventeen sylables here , now"

Both my photographs and Haiku form part of permanent collections in Brasil and United States. My work has been exhibited in Uruguay, Argentina, Brasil, Spain, U.S.A and the Carribean.

All of this serves nothing if it does not create a bridge of empathy towards another human being.

contact: info@robertofernandez.com.uy
website: www.robertofernandez.com.uy








Magela Ferrero

Montevideo, Uruguay (1966)

This collection of photographs are my expression of discomfort and confusion which give a glimpse into the small existence thru which I walk.
My memories of Uruguay are posterior to the memories of myself.
First I was a daughter, innocent, satisfied and happy.
Then I was abandoned, curious, dissatisfied and filled with nostalgia.
In the second stage the conflicts began to unfold, with logic, and the beaches.
All of the possible and impossible poetry of Montevideo.

In my middle class family that progressed above all in their decadence one can fittingly say that crisis was a perservering visitor and we never truly succeeded in reaching any state of solvency only later to have experienced the authentic trauma of becoming bankrupt.

In the long run I was more preoccupied with discovering why my brain stores certain news and not others. I am constantly close to the shapes of the clouds and the sea which show us so well how to be, what one is and what one is not. I approach life with the importance of all events.

First I accept death and then I know how to fight for life.
Magela's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in Montevideo, New York and Brasil. Besides being an autonomous photographer she also works as a grafic artist and making the "stills" for various cinematographic productions.

contact: chiringuito007@hotmail.com








Daniel Machado

Montevideo, Uruguay

Uruguay-based Daniel Machado is an exceptional emerging photographer with an emphasis on experimental styles.

Trained in architecture and design, at the Republic University, Montevideo, Uruguay, this young photographer principally exhibits his works with architectural themes. These two series are a selection from his recent and successful experiments.

THE RODELU FAMILY

THE RODELU FAMILY is a piece of work which I developed in 2002 in a house of a prominent middle class family in Uruguay in the first half of the 20th. Century.

The relations between the public and the private environments drove me to choose this topic. This work deals with the relentless effect time has on a family, the exhaustion, the deterioration and the solitude in a house that gradually was inhabited by the absences.

SELF-PORTRAITS IN BODY AND SOUL

These self-portraits represent an existential anguish, a rupture with the past, and a desire to grow and expand my consciousness. They are images born of pain, of wounds which have healed, and of others which have not.

Therefore, this piece of work was, for me, a kind of "ultimate exorcism" which has shed light on certain thoughts I once had, and which has allowed me to find peace with my own body.

contact: d76@adinet.com.uy
website: www.picassomio.com/DanielMachado/






Juan Angel Urruzola


Montevideo, Uruguay

Looking and Seeing

In 1972, when I has held up by the Uruguayan military they covered my head with a hood, others where blindfolded. All of those who were detained where amputated from their vision. They were not allowed to look nor to see.

This perhaps was the most important drive in my search for " a way of seeing". On my return to Uruguay after the dictatorship , my passion for this search grew .

The absence of those which were " no longer there", the absence of the words which did not speak about had happened, allowed me to discover the phenomenom of " of this we do not speak"- omnipresent in a society which refused to see. It was a period in which president Sanguinetti accused those which searched for answers and those which had "eyes in the back of their heads".

What does all of this have to do with photography? Truly, I do not know the answer, except that it forms part of " my theme". This has been my main subject for the past few years and I intend to continue to the search, to deepen my way of seeing.

My years of exile France were an essential part of my photographic development. I was influenced by the booming growth of photo agencies during the 70's and 80's, but most of all by the visions of Raymond Depardon and that of Wim Wenders in his black and white films.

contact: juanangel@urruzola.net
website: www.urruzola.net


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