Curator: Sebastián Vidal Valenzuela (CL)
Mezza: Archivo Liberado is a curatorial project that reviews the archives and works (1969-1990) of the Chilean artist, Gonzalo Mezza (1949-), a pioneer of media art. For sixty years, his innovative work has been focused on the implementation of media technologies in Chile. He has stood out for critically modifying the visual language, through video art, performance, installation, Polaroid photography, photocopy and the use of computers, among others, being one of the first to carry out this type of practice in Chile and beyond. His poetic approach to the landscape, his reformist reading of art history, photographic exploration and multimedia installation, among other topics, led him to consolidate a body of work that opens complex readings about ecology, geopolitics, spirituality and media culture. This exhibition highlights how documents and works are now combined in a conceptual proposal that configures a retroactive archive, as input for the artist himself.
Mezza: Archivo Liberado reviews, in the eyes of a media art pioneer, the initial processes of technological implementation in Chilean art. By a selection of documents and works, the exhibition offers a revisionist view, presented as an exercise in media archeology, exploring one’s own history (of middle age) under different layers through a body of work that progressively models and anticipates important conflicts of today’s society.
Project Credits:
Project supported by:
- Chile National Fund for the Arts (Fondart 2018), Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Heritage of Chile
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile
- Foreign Office Board of Cultural Affairs (DIRAC)
- Ars Electronica Festival 2019
- Art Gallery D21 Proyectos de Arte
- Center for Art Studies, CEdA Foundation
- Alberto Hurtado University
- Special thanks to Simón Pérez Wilson, Varinia Brodsky, Pedro Montes, Sergio Parra, Mariairis Flores, and Fernanda Pizarro.
Biographies:
Gonzalo Mezza (CL) Chilean conceptual artist specialized in media and information technologies, such as video art, analog and digital photography, computers, and early use of the Internet. With his interactive cyber installations, he expanded the concept of media art to new publics and institutions. He is considered one of the forerunners of digital art and net art in Latin America.
Sebastián Vidal Valenzuela (CL) PhD in Art History at the University of Texas at Austin and independent art curator. He has worked as an art curator with important Chilean artists in different museums and galleries. He currently is a scholar at the Alberto Hurtado University in Santiago, Chile and Director of the Center for Art Studies Foundation CEdA.
