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Hugo Crosthwaite at Mason Murer Fine Art
Atlanta, Georgia

February 15 - April 24, 2008



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TRANSactions - Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia

February 9 - May 4, 2008




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After premiering at the Museum of Contemporary Art - San Diego last year, TRANSactions - Contemporary Latin American and Latino Artwill open at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia on February 9, 2008. The exhibition will be on view through May 4 before continuing on to the University of North Carolina's Weatherspoon Art Museum on Greensboro and finally the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Hugo Crosthwaite's Linea - Escaparates de Tijuana 1-4 is among the artworks traveling with TRANSactions.

TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art is the brainchild of Stephanie Hanor, MCASD curator, and showcases artworks of the last two decades from MCASD's collection, chronicling the museum's extensive engagement with Latin American and Latino art. The Rochester leg of the exhibition features 36 artists from the US, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Columbia, Argentina and Chile. Stephanie Hanor wrote in the exhibition catalogue essay, "TRANSactions - Across and Beyond Border", "TRANSactions seeks to demonstrate the broad gamut of expressive artistic modes and styles and to examine the zones of convergence, tension and expansion seen in the various paths taken by each artist." Using diverse media, the included artists celebrate the heterogeneous nature of contemporary art, while dismantling preconceptions and promoting new interpretations of "Latin American" and "Latino" work.

TRANSactions is intended to be an exhibit dispelling the myth that Latino artists are a homogeneous group with common experiences and ambitions, it is not meant to be an encyclopedia exhibition of Latin American and Latino art. MCASD Director, Hugh Davies, states, "[The exhibition] barely scrape[s] the surface of Latino and Latin American art, but there is sufficient evidence within the exhibition to demonstrate the extraordinary breadth and depth of cultural achievement in this vast and highly diverse region and to attest to artistic accomplishment of the highest order."

No single overarching theme can be applied to the pieces included in the exhibition however, cultural blending and international exchange appear as recurring motifs. Ms. Hanor selected art that moves across and beyond geographical, cultural, political and aesthetic borders and explains, "These artists create works that tell stories of cultural hybrids, political collisions and universal consequences." TRANSactions attempts to promote understanding through the experience of art and culture.

Crosthwaite's Linea - Escaparates de Tijuana 1-4 is a graphite and charcoal drawing on four wood panels depicting urban images including apartment blocks, city skylines, and power lines. These drawings play with the contrast of classical representation and the surrounding chaos and improvisation that epitomizes the city of Tijuana. The complex multi-faceted planes and floating texts of Crosthwaite's composition represent the haphazard architecture and lack of urban planning that are characteristic of this border city where construction seems to form layers resembling a kind of abstract urban sediment.

Other artworks included in TRANSactions include: Wrasling Girls in which Luis Gispart exploits viewers' misconceptions about women and American iconography; Perry Vasquez's Keep on Crossin' encourages all people to cross borders of all kinds; James Luna's Half Indian/Half Mexican self portraits raising issues of ethnic identity; and catalogue cover artist, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle's Paternity Test in which the artist uses renderings of colorful DNA samples to challenge the boundaries between art and science.

For more information on the High Museum of Art's presentation of TRANSactions - Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, please visit their website. To learn more about the itinerary of TRANSactions, please contact the Museum of Contemporary Art - San Diego.