Contemporary Colombian Artists’ Recent Work
Xaltemba Gallery
April 5 – April 27, 2008
Artists Libia Posada Restrepo, Julian Urrego & Albany Henao from Medellin, Colombia present work at Xalltemba Gallery addressing very different themes with the common thread of embroidery as drawing, decoration and weaving. Their work plays with the references of this medium as a craft, or 'women's work," with exquisite obsessive-compulsiveness about surfaces and devotion to the hand-made object. Posada is a doctor and surgeon as well as an established artist in performance, installation, photography and mixed media. In her series "Neurografias," she picks apart and reweaves surgical bandages so they appear as xrays of the human nervous system, bones and/or the instruments of their destruction such as tanks and guns. The fragility and complexity of interior human space is always an allusion to the pathology of violence and warfare in Colombia (and everywhere else.) She has shown in the Havana Biennal, the Medellin Encuentro 07 and the 08 Fotofest, Houston as well as galleries and museums in New York and Bogota. She is currently working on a residency project in Venezuela. Libia Posada's current show at the Station Contemporary Museum, houston (14 colombian photographers in conjunction with Fotofest www.stationmuseum.com. Julian Urrego obsessively repeats an image of a young boy and girl in their bathing suits ---siblings who appear constantly similar yet different. The artist is the son of a dressmaker and he obfuscates and reveals the pair with delicate patterning and details of brocades, collage and and drawing, often using the scraps from his mother's work. Urrego was an invited artist to the Dream Project in Cork, Ireland, showed at the museum of Arte Moderno in Bogota and galleries in Bogota and Medellin. He has worked on murals, installations and various collective and individual exhibits of drawing and painting. Albany Henao presents a series of portraits of punkeros, drawings of edgy Medellin young people whose hipness is contrasted by clunky embroidery and tender patterning. Her outsider style literally "suits" her subjects. Henao has has worked on public mural projects in popular barrios in Medellin, shown at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogota and the Colombian Consulate in New York. Both Henao and Urrego are associated with Taller 7 in Medellin, a collective of young artists who share studios, gallery space, energy and constant individual and group projects.