Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation Proudly Announces the 2014 CIFO Grants & Commissions Program Recipients

-All works will be exhibited at the CIFO Art Space in September 2014-

Miami, FL. - April 2014 - The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) is proud to announce the recipients of this year's Grants & Commissions Program. As it is customary, the winners will be part of an annual exhibition dedicated to the Program at the CIFO Art Space. This year's exhibition will open to the public in September.

The CIFO Grants & Commissions Program offers emerging, mid-career and established contemporary artists, from Latin America, the opportunity to develop and present new work to both local and international audiences in Miami. Each year, the artists are nominated by CIFO's Honorary Advisory Committee of leading art professionals, curators and artists from Latin America, the United States and Europe. After a rigorous review process, the winners are chosen by the Selection Committee and ratified by CIFO's Board of Directors.

The program has been known to springboard its recipients into the next level of their careers. The awards recognize outstanding special projects by emerging artists and honors the trajectory of mid-career artists. This year, the Foundation presented two Achievement awards, recognizing the contributions of established artists who will benefit from significant international exposure and recognition.

The 2014 CIFO Grants & Commissions Program award recipients are:

Emerging Artists

Pablo Accinelli is an Argentinean artist who develops analytical mechanisms to create artistic investigations. With the language and tools of geometry, Accinelli explores the dichotomy between order and chaos, the external and the internal, present and past, the literal and the metaphorical.The artist has developed a program with a modular typography which varies with the context of the letters and its use. Because the typography ultimately changes, Accinelli had to develop a specific software with the help of a programmer. The invented typography is actuated and exported as vector files and then printed to its desired size on a variety of materials as needed.For his proposed project, Positive, he will install 8 typography works within different parts of the CIFO Art Space, and compose verses and choruses using Reggae lyrics from songs by: Alton Ellis, Black Uhuru, Abyssinians, Bob Marley and The Wailers, Yellowman, Ken Boothe, Jimmy Cliff and others. The randomly linked lyrics explore the various aspects of the typography (the importance of light and the sonority of the images produced) like many of Accinelli's pieces that use enumerations to evoke knowledge born from the observation.

Nayarí Castillo comes from a new generation of Venezuelan artists. The opportunity to generate a coherent body of work and a thoughtful set of questions on the experience of identities are what drives her proposal. Castillo's proposed project, Postcards from the Post Revolution: Notations from a PTSD Mapping, investigates sensible processes of contemporary transformation in a series of drawings that will be exhibited at the CIFO Art Space. In her process, science and art have come together in an amalgam of knowledge. A project with a year of research represents an ideal length for a deep experimentation methodology, resulting in a contemporary statement on displacement, diasporas and identity.

Marcellvs L. is a young Berlin-based artist fromBrazil who works with audio and video. For his latest project, The Narrow Boat Project (Provisory Title), Marcellvs L. will travel canals in England on a narrow boat. Over the course of a month, he will transform the narrow boat into a small studio for the production of audio and video pieces that will be exhibited at CIFO Art Space. Marcellvs L. is specifically interested in exploring four fundamental concepts that might emerge in his travels. Presence and Absence: the artist believes there is a strong presence of history on the canals manifested in their current lack of importance. He wants to investigate the consistency and inconsistency of this reality, dealing with its social and political implications while building a resistance against its established and shared spheres. Duration: Because his narrow boat cannot travel faster than four miles per hour, the journey will be extremely slow thereby extending the duration which will allow him to record new forms of perception and visualization. Encounters: Marcellvs L. believes that a true encounter must be one beyond that which is established and familiar. Consequently, traveling around the canals will engender indefinable and unknown boundaries.

Carlos Martiel is a controversial Cuban artist whose artistic performances are often driven by self-inflicted physical pain, thereby exposing his body to severe and intense conditions. These experiences challenge and alter Martiel's creative vision, redefining his relationship with art. He has come to realize that his own body is the axis of his conflicts, and the medium through which he evokes his ontological and philosophical concerns. For his most recent project, Condecoracion Martiel, Carlos, he uses his own skin as a container element that transcends personal memory, impregnating a symbolic object that raises the question of what it's like to be a black man in Cuba. To do this, Martiel will surgically remove 6 square centimeters of skin tissue. The tissue will then be dehydrated and dried by a professional taxidermist to prepare a medal similar in shape and proportions to the medal the Cuban government grants to select citizens. After the healing process and post-operative recovery, the technical details of the work will be tattooed around the scar, leaving a record of the award on his body. A video documentary, photographs and the actual "skin medal," will be exhibited at the CIFO Art Space during the 2014 Grants & Commissions exhibit.

Mateo Pizarro is a Colombian artist who is fascinated with images that are ambiguous, contradictory and draw on the beauty that arises from an incomplete drawing. For his project, Bestiario de Animales Inexistentes, Pizarro will work hand-in-hand with Maria del Mar Gámiz, a student of novohispanas at UNAM (Mexico City). She will collect selected writings from such historians, writers and scholars as: Bernardino de Sahagun, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Jose Durand and Antonio Pigafetta. Pizarro will create a series of fantastic drawings based on the descriptions of each animal. The outcome of this project will be a series of 8 - 15 drawings which will be exhibited at the CIFO Art Space. The artist is interested in expanding this project and subsequently creating book in the near future.

Adrian Regnier is a Mexican artist who works with a variety of mediums including: computer arts/animation, drawing and video. The theme of his latest project, C Multiple Interpretation of the Stellar Order revolves around the analysis, practice and connection made between astronomy and music. The project consists of video-art production, sound/audio experimentation and panoramic star mapping based on observation and tracking of the sky at night. Regnier is creating on a system that can map star movements, converting them into a pentagram pattern. As the pattern is read, it will provide a unique sound and melody to the stellar order of the spring. This two phase video project will be exhibited at the CIFO Art Space.

Mid-Career Artists

Claudia Joskowicz is a Bolivian artist who lives and works between New York and Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. Joskowicz is an internationally recognized artist. Her video art has been exhibited in a variety of exclusive galleries throughout the United States and Latin America. For her latest project, Joskowicz will be presenting Los Rastreadores - a very loose Bolivian adaptation of John Ford's American western classic film, The Searchers. This project does not attempt to recreate the original film; however, Joskowicz's interpretation will adapt some of the major themes in the original film exploring the issues of race, kinship, identity, status, responsibility and how they relate to those of present day Bolivia. Joskowicz's Los Rastreadores (30 minutes) will be exhibited at the CIFO Art Space.

Rosângela Rennó was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil and lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. For her latest project, Waiting for, Rennó will be editing unpublished images of video she recorded in Lagos, Nigeria in 2009 and will create text in Morse code language to be incorporated in the video work. The video will then be musicalized with sound editing software and the subsequent transliteration will be completed during the final editing stages. Once completed, Rennó will be integrating Waiting For into the Transcendental Tourist video series she started in 2006.

Achievement Award

This year the prestigious Achievement Award goes to two recognized Latin American artists, two women who have earned the prestige and admiration of the contemporary art world.

Teresa Burga is a Peruvian multimedia artist whose conceptualist pieces from the 1960s and 1970s have positioned her as a precursor in the arts. Burga graduated from Lima's Catholic University in 1965. She came to be actively linked to pop and experimental art in Lima through Grupo Arte Nuevo and has developed a reputation as a leading-edge, trend-setting artist. Her art has been exhibited throughout Latin America. Burga's latest project, Estructuras de Aire (Structures in Air) represents the first variation of her original 1970 artwork of the same name. With this new variation, she proposes the construction of an invisible and intangible sculpture held together by two columns of air. In essence, Estructuras de Aire is an impossible piece to see and it is entirely delivered to the other senses. Once the perceived air structure is felt, it is instantly deconstructed. This project represents one of the more experimental and unexplored paths in the history of Peruvian art within the last half century that have been linked to the global processes of dematerialization.

Antonieta Sosa has a long and rich history in Venezuela. She was awarded the Venezuelan National Arts Award in 2000. Sosa has worked with a variety of mediums including painting, photography, video and dance. She believes that art is energy, and that her work emerges from the relationship between the rational and the irrational. Sosa's latest project, Punto Cero de la Silla Invertida en Clanco y Negro (Homenaje a Malevich y Juan Ledezma), serves as a bookend piece to her original Silla Invertida (part of the Ella Fontanals- Cisneros Collection) which borrows its concept from the original ̶ a three piece sculpture that when inverted, the center piece has the design of a cross. This piece will be displayed inverted and the center cross will appear black upon a white background, much like a Malevich masterpiece.

More About the Artists

Pablo Accinelli (Argentina, 1983) was mentored by such artists as Alejandro Puente and Diana Aisenberg. Since 2006, along with Leandro Tartaglia, Accinelli has been part of the group dedicated to writing books about young Argentine artists (Vicente Grondona, Luciana Lamothe, Verónica Gómez, and Tomas Maglione). In 2009, he participated in the Puerto Rico Polygraphic Triennial curated by Julieta González. In 2011, he performed at Frame-Frieze in London and for the second time at Luisa Strina Gallery in São Paulo. In 2012 he was invited to participate in the São Paulo Biennial, where he first introduced his program of modular Accinelli is also the recipient of the Lucio Fontana award. In 2006 he received the annual scholarship of poetry from the Ricardo Rojas Cultural Center and in 2007 obtained a scholarship from the Intercampos Telefónica Foundation. Accinelli participated as an assistant to the Annual Clinic for Artists, led by Jorge Macchi at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella for the 2009 and 2011 editions.

Nayarí Castillo (Venezuela, 1977) is a molecular biologist and artist. She has an MFA in Contemporary Visual Systems from UNEARTE ̶ Universidad Nacional Experimental de las Artes (Caracas, VE). As well as a MFA in Public Art in Fine Arts from Bauhaus University, Weimar, DE. Castillo currently resides and works in between Austria and Germany. Individual exhibitions include: Sound Epigrams at the Experimental Art Space (2012), Contrabando al Paraíso at Oficina # 1 (Caracas, 2010), Los Galpones de Arte en el Centro Cultural (Caracas, 2010), Orientación Norte: En busca de un Lemming perdido en el Museo at the L. C. Bates Museum (Hinckley, 2010) and Victoria Regia at the Galería Cuadra (Caracas, 2008). Group exhibitions include: Aquatopia-Das Kinderforschungs U- boot (Karmeliterplatz Graz, Austria 2013), Desfase at Institut für Zeit Verschiebung (Graz, Austria, 2013), Visual Antology at GBG Arts Gallery (Caracas, 2013), Formado at the Galería G69 (KulturService Steiermark, Graz, Austria, 2012), Diálogos contemporáneos de la colección at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Caracas, 2012), 11 Tipos at la Galería de Mendoza (Caracas, 2011) and Monumentos Latinoamericanos at el Jardin de las Esculturas (Xalapa Veracruz, 2011), Los Galpones de Arte at el Centro Cultural de Caracas (Caracas, 2011). Residencies include: Casino Luxemburgo Art Workshop (Luxembourg, 2011) and RIA Centro Rural de las Artes (Buenos Aires, 2011).

Marcellvs L. (Brazil, 1980) is a renowned artist that works with audio and video. Marcellvs L. has exhibited internationally since the mid 2000s. Recent solo exhibitions include: COMMA 34 at the Bloomberg Space (London, 2011), VideoRhizome at Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna, 2010), Infinitesimal at Carlier/Gebauer (Berlin, 2010), Berlinische Galerie (Berlin, 2011), The Living Art Museum (Reykjavik, 2011), PhotoEspana (Madrid, 2008), Museu de Arte da Pampulha (Belo Horizonte, 2007) and at the Galleria Luisa Strina (São Paulo, 2007).Biennials include: 16th Biennale of Sydney (Sydney, 2008), 9th Biennale of Lyon (Lyon, 2007) and 27th Biennale of São Paulo (São Paulo, 2006). Group exhibitions include: Singapore Art Museum (Singapore, 2009), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid, 2008), ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art (Karlsruhe, 2008) and Museu de Arte Moderna (Sao Paulo, 2007).

Carlos Martiel (Cuba, 1989) is a Cuban artist who graduated from the National School of Fine Arts "San Alejandro" (Havana). In 2009, he obtained the residency: Prenantes Parties (Paris). Martiel is the 2014 recipient of Cannonball Miami's visiting resident program in partnership with CIFO. He received the Arte Laguna award (Venice, 2013) and the Close Up Award (Vallarta, 2012). His works have been exhibited in group shows in Cuba, Italy, Estonia, Liverpool, Spain, USA, Senegal, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, France, Germany and Spain. Solo exhibitions include: Nitsch Museum (Naples), Teatro LUX (Guatemala City), Project Room (Quito) and the Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Center (Havana). Biennials include: IV Biennial Deformes at the Chile University, School of Theatre (Santiago de Chile, 2012), the Eleventh Havana Biennial (Havana, Cuba 2012), the 6th Liverpool Biennial (United Kingdom, 2010) and in the Biennial of Pontevedra XXXI (Galicia, 2010).

Matthew Pizarro (Colombia, 1984) graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Art and Media from the University of Los Andes (Bogotá, 2010). He currently lives and works in Mexico. Solo exhibitions include:No Hay peor ciego que el que no quiere oír at the Valenzuela y Klenner Art Gallery (Bogotá, 2011), El Cuadro Roto y Otras Imágenes Adulteradas at La Miscelanea Art Gallery (Mexico City, 2010). Group exhibitions include: Bidimensional en un Entorno de Video at the ArtBo Art Fair, Valenzuela Klenner Art Gallery (Bogotá, 2011), Qué Subasta!, in la Fundación Santiago Corazón (Medellín, 2011), ArtBo Art Fair at the Valenzuela y Klenner Art stand (Bogotá), Español Embajada - Colsanitas artistas emergentes muestran (Bogotá, 2011). Actividad Académica, Taller sobre la luz y la fotografía (in collaboration with Guillermo Santos and Bárbara Santos) and Residencia en la Tierra, (Quindío).

Adrian Regnier (Mexico, 1989) has a Degree in Visual Arts from La Esmeralda ̶̶  National School of Sculpture, Painting and Printmaking (Mexico). He was appointed official videographer to the Second Cycle of Contemporary Mexican Jazz, of Index MUAC. He is also a member of the network of artists Puerta Joven and Los Proyectos de Oro. His work has been internationally selected in the Adobe Design Achievement Awards as well as the massive experimental video installation Pantalla Globalat the Center of Contemporary Culture in Barcelona. He has participated in the V and VI International Animation Festival of Uruguay and Montevideo as well as the International Video Festival in Italy. Regnier's video work has been selected and awarded in multiple international film, video art and experimental animation festivals like:LANTERN Fest (2012), CROMA Fest (2012), CutOut Fest (2011 and 2012) and the International Animation Festival (Montevideo, 2011 and 2012). Group exhibitions include: Un mundo posible?, La felicidad es una esponja caliente (y fría) and 19 o así pulmones at the MUCA ROMA.

Claudia Joskowicz (Bolivia, 1968) lives and works between New York and Santa Cruz de la Sierra. She received her MFA from New York University in 2000. She currently teaches at the Steinhardt Department of Art at the University of New York. Her video work focuses on the lapses in narrative that are formed when texts or events are taken out of their original context and mediated through technology. Joskowicz recently received a 2011 Guggenheim fellowship in film/video, a Fulbright Scholar award, an East Harlem Arts Grant, an Urban Artists Initiative Fellowship, a full fellowship in photography from the Vermont Studio Center and the grand prize in the Digital Arts Salon awarded by the Fundación Simón I Patiño in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Solo exhibitions include: Thierry Goldberg Projects and Momenta Art (New York), Galeria ACBEU (Salvador), Espacio Simón Patiño (La Paz), Museo Nacional de Arte (La Paz), Centro Cultural (Santa Cruz), Galería Kiosko (Santa Cruz) and Lawndale Art Center (Houston). Group exhibitions include: Cartier Foundation (Paris), Tenth Sharjah Biennial (United Arab Emirates), 29th São Paulo Biennial (São Paulo), Tenth Habana Biennial (Havana), 17th Videobrasil Festival (São Paulo), LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial (Asturias), Asya Geisberg Gallery (New York), Sara Meltzer Gallery (New York), Center for Book Arts (New York), Socrates Sculpture Park (Long Island City ), Exit Art (New York) and Dukwon Gallery (Seoul).  

Rosângela Rennó (Brazil, 1962) has a degree in fine arts from Guignard University of Art of Minas Gerais. She has a Doctorate in Arts from the School of Communication from the University of São Paulo. Solo Exhibitions Include: The Appel Foundation (Amsterdam, 1995), The Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, 1996) , Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney, 1999), Art Museum of Pampulha (Belo Horizonte, 2002), Centro Cultural Banco Brazil (Rio de Janeiro, 2003), (MAMAM) Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães (Recife, 2006), Galeria Vermelho (São Paulo, 2006), Galería La Fabrica (Madrid, 2007), Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art (Toronto, 2008), Pharos Center for Contemporary Art (Nicosia, 2009), Galería La Fabrica (Madrid, 2010), Centro de Fotografía (Montevideo, 2011), Center of Modern Art of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon, 2012), Fotomuseum (Winterthur, 2012). Group exhibitions include: Aperto93 ,45th Venice Biennial (Venice, 1993), Insite97 (San Diego and Tijuana, 1997), International Biennial of Johannesburg (Johannesburg, 1997), 2nd Berlin Biennial (Berlin, 2001), Brazilian Pavilion, 50th Venice Biennial (Venice, 2003) and Histoires des Amériques, Musée d' Art Contemporain de Montréal (Montreal, 2004). 

Teresa Burga (Peru, 1935) has a Master of Arts, from the School of the Art at the Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Solo exhibitions include: The Sixties (2013), Galerie Barbara Thumm (Berlin 2011), Die Chronologie der Teresa Burga, Berichte, Diagramme , Intervalle (2011), Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2010), Reports. Schemes. Intervals. (2010), Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano (1980-1981), Perfil de una Mujer Peruana (1974), Cuatro Postes at the Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano (1972), Autorretrato. Estructura, Informe (1972), Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano (1967), Objetos at the Cultura y Libertad (1966), Lima Imaginada at the Galeria Cultura y Libertad (1965) and Pinturas y Grabados at the Galeria Siglo. Group exhibitions include:Teresa Burga & Anna Oppermann at the Galerie Barbara Thumm (Berlin, 2012), the 12th Istanbul Biennial in Istanbul (2011), Prácticas subversivas: Arte bajo condiciones de represión política 60s - 80s (South America and Europe, 2009), Arte Nuevo y el resplandor de la Vanguardia (2008), Disidencia experimental transformación visual y cultural (2007) and Lima deshabitada at the Galeria John Harriman (2005).

Antonieta Sosa (USA/ Venezuela, 1940) studied psychology at the Central University of Venezuela for two years. She traveled to California where she continued her education at the University of California (UCLA) and ultimately changed her major to art. In 1966, Sosa graduated and returned to Venezuela. In 1969, she held her first exhibition at the Ateneo de Caracas. It was at that time, while sitting, drawing with crayons, in her studio, that the idea of the chairs began to appear. In 1978, Sosa returned to plastic and presented her second solo exhibition in Venezuela. The experience was recorded on the video, A través de mis sillas. Sosa was a professor at the Cristóbal Rojas School of Visual Arts and at the Armando Reveron University Institute of Advanced Studies in Fine Arts. Sosa won the National Prize of Plastic Arts in Venezuela (2000). Her work is ultimately and fundamentally analytical, though often irreverent, showing in her own words, that the problem is inside herself.

About CIFO

The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, CIFO, is a non-profit organization established in 2002 by Ella Fontanals-Cisneros and her family to support artists who are exploring new directions in contemporary art. CIFO fosters cultural understanding and educational exchange through three primary initiatives: a Grants and Commissions Program for emerging and mid-career visual artists from Latin America; an exhibitions program showcasing international contemporary art from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection at the CIFO Art Space; and foundation-initiated support for other arts and culture projects.

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