Six artists working in art and technology from across Latin America debut major new commissions within the Ars Electronica Festival at the Lentos Art Museum. 

This exhibition reflects CIFO’s generational structure, showcasing established, mid-career, and emerging artists.

The exhibition reflects multiple forms of resistance embedded in the region’s art. It challenges any simplistic categorization of Latin American identity, proposing instead a nuanced and dynamic interplay of cultural processes.

These Latin American narratives are constructed through the filtering and negation of symbols, of discoveries in the continual flux of identities.

The narrative of the everyday emerges on the horizon in the 1990’s, a decade marked by a “socialization of survival,” which incorporated the need for a refuge from the growing violence, in the face of the long years of economic crisis.

What is contemporary Latin American art? Who are its exponents? What is the role of art collectors in this sphere? These are extremely difficult questions to answer, but they allow us to relay with concision the content of the exhibition

Together with the important legacy of the Brazilian concretism and new-concretist movements, the abstract poetics that flourished in other countries from the 1930s onwards will be on display.

The 2018 Grants & Commissions exhibition, traditionally held at CIFO Art Space in Miami, will evolve into an international traveling exhibition program.

Features nearly 50 works created between 1979 and the late 1980s, highlighting the artist's prolific output during his final decade in Cuba.

An exhibition showcasing the works of three pivotal figures in Cuban geometric art.

This exhibition showcases over 100 significant works of painting, graphic design, photography, video, installation, and performance from Cuban artists spanning the last six decades. It explores how Cuba’s revolutionary aspirations for a social utopia—and the subsequent disillusionment—have shaped its artistic landscape.

The exhibition title references a 1953 statement by John Cage about Robert Rauschenberg's White Paintings (1951) and highlights the realities of contemporary Latin America.

The collection brings to Brazil a comprehensive view of abstraction across our continent. It showcases the significant legacy of Brazilian concretism and neo-concretism alongside the abstract poetics that emerged in various countries starting in the 1930s. This exploration highlights Brazil’s contributions to geometric art within a broader regional context rather than as an isolated phenomenon.

The overriding desire of most little brats, on the other hand, is to get at and see the soul of their toys, either at the end of a certain period of use or on occasion straightaway. The more or less swift invasion of this desire depends on the lifetime of the toy.

Fluids easily move, slip, overflow, filter, and even dissolve solids. Its mobility explains the association between liquidity, changeability, lightness, transience, and volatility.

Present a solo exhibition by Gustavo Pérez Monzón at the CIFO Art Space in Miami, the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States.

Caught in the dilemma of being both the edge and the center, of being surface and symbol, the idea of reinventing Miami as ‘the capital of Latin America’ presents challenges.

Since its emergence in the early twentieth century, abstraction has transcended being just an art movement to become an aesthetic category.

This exhibition reflects the evolution of imagination and the symbolic creation of shared images. While we often associate images with distinct cultures or identities as if they were clearly defined, the truth is that imaginaries are inherently uncertain entities.

Power in balance. Exchange across borders. Freedom to occupy and participate. Vigilant witness to history. These ideals of a "global" world, one which values equal engagement across cultures, differ starkly from the unequal realities of globalization.

Features a curated selection of the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection video works, showcasing artists from diverse nationalities and backgrounds. These pieces were chosen for their ability to interrogate the medium of video itself. Ranging from documentation to fiction, the works employ hybrid narrative forms that explore the integration of time within their artistic practice.

Deferred Archive explores the concept that memory is constructed retrospectively—not simply from the past to the future, but rather from the future back to the past. This idea suggests that the events we experience are fluid, shifting from one perspective to another.

This exhibition highlights the new wave of Spanish sculpture from the 1970s and 80s, which drew inspiration from masters like Julio González. This movement expanded the scope of sculpture to include installation art and interventions that engage with nature and the human body.

The exhibition features approximately 38 works by 24 artists from diverse generations and regions, all of whom are committed to promoting and transforming art practices.

The exhibition’s title is loosely inspired by Donald Winnicott’s psychoanalytic theory of the first “not my possession,” which refers to a transitional object that helps a child understand their body as an independent entity. This transition marks a shift from a sense of supremacy—where the child believes it can fulfill its needs at will—to a shared world filled with successes and disillusionments in the quest for control over desires.

Una Mirada Múltiple takes a unique approach by avoiding a traditional chronological organization of the artworks, which span from the latter half of the twentieth century to the present. Instead, the exhibition offers a curated cross-section of the collection, presenting a compilation of works by over 65 artists from North America, Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia—individuals who have witnessed and contributed to significant shifts in artistic trends over the past fifty years.

The exhibition, with its multiple geographical and chronological intersections, allows the audience to explore the artist's journey as a historian through an institutional critique (Frames) and their ability to challenge our relationship with memory (Documents).

The exhibition features works from all recipients except Tania Bruguera, whose thought-provoking performance is scheduled for January 2012. The showcased pieces, representing a range of artistic experiences from emerging to established, delve into the relationships and shared themes among artists with diverse conceptual approaches and generational backgrounds.

Selections from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection is co-curated by Simon Baker and Tanya Barson. This exhibition, drawn from the photographic holdings of the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, investigates the dynamic relationship between the camera lens and the processes of constructing, producing, and deconstructing form. It explores the myriad ways form can be created and dismantled through the lens.

This showcase features new works by this year's mid-career Commission recipients, Marco Maggi and Elida Tessler, alongside emerging Grant recipients Tatiana Blass, Eugenia Calvo, Runo Lagomarsino, Gisela Motta/Leandro Lima, Jorge Pedro Nuñez, and Gabriel Sierra. Each artist brings a unique perspective, promising a rich and varied experience for our audience.

The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) is excited to present Being in the World: Selections from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, an exhibition curated by Berta Sichel, on view from December 2, 2009, to March 7, 2010, coinciding with Art Basel Miami Beach.

The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation proudly presents Shifting Constructs, the exhibition for its 2009 Grants and Commissions Programs. This exhibition showcases new works by the award recipients from both programs, creating a unique opportunity for dynamic dialogue between artists of different generations on a single platform.

Throughout history, artists have employed various methods to expose and resist oppressive regimes and power structures. This is evident in a range of well-known examples—from contemporary drawings and medieval tapestries illustrating the 10th Century Sack of Tunis to Rubens's The Rape of the Sabine Women and Goya's Disasters of War, as well as post-World War II films by Roberto Rossellini and Vietnam-era works by Jean-Luc Godard, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, and others. These pieces continue to resonate and provoke strong emotions, even after hundreds of years.

The exhibition delves into diverse and complex themes through innovative drawing, installation, painting, and video forms. Mid-career Commission Program artists Pablo Cardoso and Federico Herrero each present large-scale painting installations. Cardoso explores the 'fictions' involved in landscape representation, while Herrero engages in a dialectical exchange between high art and the popular painting found in urban contexts.

Fortunate Objects is an exhibition that showcases familiar items—domestic and industrial, intimate and impersonal, private and public—that undergo radical conceptual and aesthetic transformations through the intervention of contemporary artists. In this exhibition, these objects become contingent, uncertain, expanded, and improbable while paradoxically growing more authentic as they connect the realms of art and everyday life.

The exhibition Jump Cuts. Venezuelan Contemporary Art. Colección Mercantil not only aligns perfectly with this mission but also significantly contributes to it. It offers a dynamic perspective that transcends clichés and presents a thoroughly modern view of the complexity and diversity of Venezuela's contemporary artistic production, thereby keeping you, our esteemed audience, informed and connected.

The selection of artists for this exhibition was not aimed at creating a unified curatorial narrative; instead, it highlights a shared foundation among their works. Each artist engages in contextual or site-specific practices that delve into cultural, political, geographical, and human contexts. These emerging talents foster an unexpected conceptual dialogue with their own cultures, among themselves as a collective of disparate artists and contemporary culture and art.

The exhibition showcases three remarkable artists awarded the CIFO 2007 Commission: Eugenio Espinoza, Alvaro Oyarzún, and José Alejandro Restrepo. Although their artistic styles differ significantly, they all share extensive and notable careers—over thirty years for Espinoza and two decades for Oyarzún and Restrepo—producing work deeply rooted in contemporary critical discourse.

The exhibition aims to explore a seldom-discussed aspect of Latin American abstract art: How did the concurrent emergence of abstract movements in various artistic hubs (Argentina and Uruguay, Brazil, and Venezuela) address the cultural and socio-political imperative to reevaluate Latin American identity through the lens of modernist art?

The artists featured in Forms of Classification address many of these topics in diverse ways, challenging scientific logic and methodology while offering unconventional, unpredictable perspectives on "knowledge." The selected artworks provide opportunities to suspend, expand, and question our understanding of accepted knowledge, proposing alternative ways of thinking about ourselves, our world, culture, and history.

10 Defining Experiments, CIFO’s inaugural Grants Program exhibition, embodies the foundation's core mission: to enhance global understanding of contemporary artists from Latin America and challenge traditional stereotypes associated with Latin American art.

The exhibition Savage Modern by Alexander Apóstol centers on revealing the contradictions and complexities of modernism and modernity in a Third World country like Venezuela. The exhibition's title also refers to a video included in the show. / Magdalena Fernández's Surfaces represent a sophisticated exploration of the sculptural possibilities within geometric abstraction, extending beyond the accepted boundaries of modernism.

Indeterminate States.
As video art has evolved from its performance-based origins, artists have increasingly adopted an idea-driven approach that leans toward the abstract and poetic—merging the non-narrative essence of James Joyce with Marcel Duchamp's expansive view of what constitutes art, contemporary media artists—equipped with elegant concepts and solid techniques—craft filmical experiences distinct from traditional movies and television. Like many of their peers grounded in contemporary conceptualism, these artists often embrace a more enigmatic style, offering suggestive rather than definitive works.

Beyond Delirious.
Architecture and urbanism have become central themes in contemporary art, as highlighted by Beyond Delirious, a selection of photographic works from the Ella Fontanals Cisneros Collection. This exhibition features pieces ranging in scale from intimate to monumental and in mood from coolly objective to poetically expressive.

During his residency, Jarbas Lopes created a series of seascapes that were not only visually striking but also infused with playful irony. His work often involves a humorous "deconstruction" of the subjects he explores.