'Preserved Memories' of Gustavo Rugeles

Today, Thursday, April 29, marks the opening of Art Beijing's 2010 Contemporary Art Fair and 2010 Photo Beijing, now in its 5th year. Venezuelan artist Gustavo Rugeles is one of about twenty international artists presenting his work this year as part of the fair's special "Foreign Artists in China" project.

CRI's Andrea Hunt has more:

The doors at the National Agriculture Exhibition Center in Beijing open at 6pm for a special VIP preview of Art Beijing's 2010 Contemporary Art Fair, which is set to receive public visitors from tomorrow (Friday).
The "Foreign Artists in China" project aims to integrate artistic perspectives from abroad, with this year's resident artists hailing from countries such as Finland, Germany, the USA, Italy and many more.

In collaboration with The Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, three Venezuelan artists, Karla Zapata, Felice Candilio and Gustavo Rugeles Guerrero are presenting an exhibit entitled, "Memorias Preservadas," meaning "Preserved Memories."

Using the idea of a container as the central metaphor in all three exhibits, the artists show how the container holds and preserves that which is absorbed through natural and emotional human senses.

Karla, Felice, and Gustavo have been in China for 3 years now producing art, and in this exposition, each utilizes his or her own artistic background to create visual art based largely on experiences here in China meshed with collective memories of the past.

Mr. Gustavo Rugeles explains the idea behind the theme.

"We decided on this title because of the importance of memory. For those of us from Latin America, it's all that remains of our past; it's what in our memory is always surrounding us, always alive, intense and romantic. And it occurred to us that we could use this aspect of memory. It's fed by the senses, and this process of collecting and developing it through internal perception."

Mr. Rugeles, who is from Merida, Venezuela, studied audio visual art which employs techniques such as photography, video, and motion graphics to create images. Yet, his comfort and expertise lies most with drawing and painting.

The other pieces by Felice and Karla use video to convey their theme, employing photography and audio visual art with colorful time-lapse images.

Rugeles reveals why he instead chose three drawings done on a cloth canvas to depict his "Preserved Memories."

"I have been working on a lot of drawings recently, anatomy, characters, faces. What generates my restlessness is what is imprinted in the memories and more than that, figuring out how to get rid of painful ones. In my case, I sometimes retain everything, so it's this process of trying to erase or get rid of this information that pressures us all from within."

The central canvas receives video beams filled with smoky images of winter. He says that everyone will interpret it differently, but for him it's about creating an image that shows an internal confrontation of emotions.

Rugeles suggests that the darkened lines and shadows represent an internal frustration that, at times, is about focusing on getting rid of acquired memories that do him more harm than good.

It's an exciting time to be an artist in China rather than in Venezuela, he affirms. While the behavior of the people in Beijing is tranquil and fluid for such an enormous city, the art movement here has an incomparable fervor that makes anything seem possible.

Over the course of his life, Asia and China have lured him to Beijing. Now, Mr. Rugeles enjoys the insight within the art movement that the local Chinese artists bring. He adds that they possess both a virtue and a skilled technique which they use to reflect a new identity and way of thinking.

Beijing's art environment is thriving, he maintains, and he sheds light on where its uniqueness lies.

"Foreigners and Chinese here have a creative artistic energy that feeds off one other. By nature, it's an exchange between the two cultures and their distinct ways of thinking, and of logic and perception. It's the way that we perceive the world, and this is all reflected in the art we create."

Art Beijing's 2010 Contemporary Art Fair will hold a special VIP opening tonight (Thursday night), and then run from Friday, April 30 to Sunday, May 2, 2010.

For CRI, I'm Andrea Hunt