Faena Arts Center announces two spring exhibitions of distinguished international artists Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich and Agustina Woodgate at the historic flour mill-turned-arts center in Buenos Aires. Within the rich architectural and historical backdrop of the Faena Arts Center, Russian artist Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich will present a multi-layered performance piece in the Los Molinos Room, while Argentinian artist Agustina Woodgate will present a new site-specific work that will surpass the walls of the arts center and spill into the city with urban interventions. Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich: Fyodor’s Performance Carousel and Agustina Woodgate: GPS / Poetic Social Geometry will be on view beginning May 20.
Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich: Carousel
Pavlov-Andreevich’s Carousel consists of a spectacular circular stage divided into nine parts, which will be installed for the first time in FAC’s Los Molinos Room. As it revolves, the carousel unveils various individual performances, challenging the usual concept of space and time in the visual arts. In his use of dizzying speed, which seeks to break the boundary of purely aesthetic experience, the artist pays homage to the Soviet movement known in the West as “Down with Shame,” which organized nudist marches and evenings to sweep away bourgeois morality. His work spans various media and disciplines, delving into the relationship between the hidden and the conspicuous, while emphasizing the communication between an artist and his public, and the role of rituals in the visual arts.
Born in Moscow, Pavlov-Andreevich divides his time between his native city, London, and São Paulo. His major works include: My Mouth Is A Temple (2009, part of Marina Abramovic Presents at the Manchester International Festival, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Maria Balshaw); Hygiene (2009, Deitch Projects, New York); and Egobox (2010, curated by Klaus Biesenbach and RoseLee Goldberg).
GPS / Poetic Social Geometry
Agustina Woodgate was born in Buenos Aires and has lived in the United States for over a decade. Her work explores and encourages collective human encounters, rather than individual contemplation of produced objects. Her interdisciplinary and site-specific work GPS / Poetic Social Geometry will burst out from the confines of the Cathedral Room, with performances and interventions in the public spaces surrounding the installation itself, where visitors will encounter ordinary objects worn down or altered to the point of being intriguingly unrecognizable.
Following her graduation from the National University Institute of Art (IUNA) in 2004, Woodgate moved to Miami where she developed an artistic practice that combines disciplines like textile art and street performance. Her individual projects include Organic (2005, Liquid Blue Gallery, Miami), Letting Down (2008, Spinello Gallery, Miami), Endlessly Falling (2009, Dimensions Variable, Miami), Growing Up (2010, Miami-Dade Public Library, Miami), If These Walls Could Talk (2011, Spinello Projects, Miami), New Landscapes (2012, Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami), and Rugs (2014, Arts and Culture Center of Hollywood, Florida).
Faena Arts Center Buenos Aires
Under the guidance and overarching vision of Director/Chief Curator Ximena Caminos, the FAC is a center for arts and artistic experimentation, which presents groundbreaking site-specific installations and generates ideas and conversation with the international contemporary art world, and within its surrounding community of Buenos Aires. With 4,000m² of exhibition space in an emblematic turn-of-the-century building, the FAC fosters and encourages bold creativity on a monumental scale and is the heart and soul of the art district. The FAC is generously supported in its mission by HSBC and Citroën.
Inaugurated in 2011, the Faena Art Center has commissioned avant-garde artists to envision and realize major site-specific works, such as: O bicho suspenso na paisagem, by Ernesto Neto (September 2011); Los Carpinteros by the Cuban collective of the same name (May 2012); Walking South by Franz Ackermann (November 2012); and The liminal space trilogy by the Russian collective AES+F (May 2013).