BIENALSUR 2019, the second edition of the cultural event of contemporary art from Argentina to the world, opens next June 25 at 6 p.m. the exhibition "Resident Foreigner, a selection of works from the Marin Karmitz Collection", in the KM 0 of its cartography symbolically located at the MUNTREF Contemporary Art Center and Museum of Immigration (Hotel de Inmigrantes Headquarters).
Organized by the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF), the second edition of the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of South America gathers from May to November, simultaneously, exhibitions of 400 artists in 43 cities of twenty countries, through more than a hundred venues with which it works jointly and collaboratively.
A selection of one hundred pieces, chosen by Karmitz himself -among photographs, paintings, drawings, videos and installations- will be shown for the first time in Latin America, under the auspices of the French Embassy and the Institut français d'Argentine, as part of BIENALSUR 2019.
Over the past 30 years, while building a prestigious career as a filmmaker, screenwriter and producer of films by Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Abbas Kiarostami and so many others, Romanian-born Frenchman Marin Karmitz patiently formed a collection that holds more than 1,500 works of art.
"The chosen pieces question our way of being in the world and resonate with the history of the building that houses them and that received, at the beginning of the 20th century, thousands of immigrants arriving in search of a better future," explains the curator of the exhibition Paula Aisemberg.
Karmitz began his career as a filmmaker and it is in this key that he imagined the way of presenting the works. Like any collection, it is configured as a possible self-portrait of the collector. Each work informs about some aspect of his interests.
Several stories intersect in the exhibition, and its journey reveals the collector's choices: the artists who moved him, such as Lewis Hine or Roman Vishniac; the patient constitution of coherent groups of the same artist, be it a photographer like Christer Strömholm or a visual artist like Ceija Stojka; and the permanent dialogue established with some of them, as in the case of Annette Messager, with whom he maintains a close friendship.
The works chosen also evoke an era (the 20th century and its tragedies), places, media (photography, painting, drawing, video and several large-scale installations, such as those of Christian Boltanski or Abbas Kiarostami) among which black and white dominate.
Definitely personal, committed, demanding, this collection, which is being exhibited for the first time in Latin America, will reveal a particularly significant look at recent history through works of intense resonance.
The exhibition includes works by artists Karin Berger (AUT), Christian Boltanski (FRA), Beatriz Gonzalez (COL) and Annette Messager (FRA), Michael Ackerman (ISR), Dieter Appelt (DEU), Carolle Bénitah (FRA/MAR), Gao Bo (CHN), Antoine D'Agata (FRA), Gérard Fromanger (FRA), David Goldblatt (ZAF), Beatriz González (Col), Lewis Hine (USA), Françoise Janicot (FRA), Abbas Kiarostami (IRN), Anna Kutera (POL), Annette Messager (FRA), Moï Ver (LTU/ISR), Philong Sovan (KHM), Mak Remissa (KHM), Ceija Stojka (AUT), Christer Strömholm (SWE), Virgilio Viéitez (ESP) and Roman Vishniac (RUS).
The exhibition "Resident Foreigner, selection of works from the Marin Karmitz collection" can be visited until November 30 at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Hotel de Inmigrantes (Avenida Antártida Argentina 1355,) and joins the remarkable program of BIENALSUR 2019 in the city of Buenos Aires, which from June 22 to 29 concentrates numerous openings in museums, institutions and emblematic public spaces, with the support of the city's Ministry of Culture.
