Curated by Jesús Fuenmayor and Kaira Cabañas, Painting Situations: Sigfredo Chacón and Liliana Porter is the first exhibition of the ISLAA Artist Seminar Initiative at the University of Florida. For this iteration of the program, in the spring of 2022 students of art history and museum studies took part in a seminar led by curator Jesús Fuenmayor on the work of renowned artists Sigfredo Chacón and Liliana Porter. The students subsequently served as members of the curatorial advisory committee to the exhibition. 

Painting Situations showcases the work of two pioneers of Latin American Conceptualism. The curators chose to focus on Chacón and Porter’s most emblematic projects: his Pinturasparlantes (Speaking-paintings) and her Forced Labor series. In doing so, the exhibition highlights how, despite each artist’s deployment of radically different aesthetic strategies, the works on view share a common ambition. Each artist’s work critically comments on painting as a medium and as a situation that calls upon viewers’ lived experiences and attention to social contexts. Chacón’s practice focuses on dismantling painting’s modernist programs by inscribing language within its visual field, while Porter turns to the invisible labor of painting and how gender and class intersect beyond its traditional frame. 

The presentation is complemented by a second exhibition at the Gary R. Libby Focus Gallery, Más Situaciones: Sigfredo Chacón and Liliana Porter (parts I and II), curated by doctoral candidates Helena Chen and Laura Colkitt as part of the series “On View: Curatorial Studies.” A fully-illustrated catalogue with contributions by the curators and interviews with the artists will be published by University Galleries.

The exhibition program and publication are sponsored by the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) and the School of Art + Art History, University of Florida, Gainesville. Additional event sponsors include the University of Florida's Harn Eminent Scholar Chair in Art History and the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere (Rothman Endowment).

EXHIBITION RELATED PROGRAMMING

October 12, 5–7 PM

Opening of Painting Situations: Sigfredo Chacón and Liliana Porter and Más Situaciones: Sigfredo Chacón and Liliana Porter

October 28, 3 PM 

Exhibition tour of Painting Situations: Sigfredo Chacón and Liliana Porter and Más Situaciones (part 1), led by by Laura Colkitt

November 10, 5 PM

Exhibition tour of Painting Situations: Sigfredo Chacón and Liliana Porter and Más Situaciones (part 2), led by Helena Chen 

November 16, 5 PM

Exhibition tour of Painting Situations: Sigfredo Chacón and Liliana Porter, led by Jesús Fuenmayor

November 16, 6 PM

Lecture by Sérgio B. Martins: “Art as Project, Project as Art,” College of the Arts, University of Florida, Room FAB 105