‘Amnesia’ an Often Unforgettable Trip South

“Amnesia” is a stunning name for an ambitious, vigorous and often stunning exhibition divided between the Christopher Grimes Gallery and Track 16.

Grimes, who curated the show, summons the notion of amnesia to force the contemplation of loss and absence, the confrontation of a void. What has been forgotten in the contemporary art world, he contends, is the continent of South America.

In the ‘90s, especially, more than a few artists from below the equator--Doris Salcedo, Alfredo Jaar and Guillermo Kuitca, for instance--have become darlings of the cognoscenti up north, but the art world’s so-called new globalism has not managed to displace the tried-and-true model of a center and periphery.

Grimes and the other authors of the show’s thoughtful catalog charge that bias against the countries of the south is built into our language, culture and transmitted history--a charge as familiar as it is valid. But argument is one thing and art another, and fortunately the twain meet only sporadically in the “Amnesia” exhibition.

Post-colonialism and its concomitant identity politics do come into play here, but only as part of a broader mix of issues and approaches. If Grimes were willing to sacrifice the political jolt of the exhibition’s title, he could just as easily have gathered these 16 artists from Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina under the neutral rubric “Introductions,” since most have had only minimal exposure in the U.S.

Inclusion in such a group show is double-edged. The art gets exposure, certainly, but in gaining a new context, it gets orphaned from its own, cut off from its natural relations and native language, which often makes it difficult to access. Some of the work here suffers as a result, but much is able to transcend this liability--none more so than Colombian Oscar Mun~oz’s extraordinary “Simulacros,” a sequence of three shallow plexiglass boxes, each a meter square, filled with water and bearing--through a variant on the silk-screen process--a photographic self-portrait on its liquid surface. Inspired by the myth of Narcissus, Mun~oz creates seductive, palpable reflections that epitomize the painful beauty of life’s ephemerality.

Other highlights of the show include Argentine Sergio Vega’s coy take on St. Francis preaching to the birds; Venezuelan Jose Gabriel Fernandez’s schematic deconstructions of the bullfight ritual; Argentine Monica Giron’s poignant beeswax sculpture incorporating the body of a deer; and Venezuelan Alfredo Ramirez’s de-romanticization of the kiss in a startling video shot from the inside of one of the participating mouths.

Ten years ago, Brazilian artist Tunga had an “intoxication vision” that he translated into a filmed performance. Several haunting stills from the film are on view in the show, and one, showing a cast of the artist’s head floating in a pool of water, appears on the cover of the “Amnesia” catalog. The mesmerizing image brings home the show’s message about a north/south split with poetic vengeance through vivid depiction of one man’s dissociation from a vital part of his own self.

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* Christopher Grimes Gallery, 916 Colorado Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 587-3373, and Track 16 Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 264-4678, through Sept. 12. Both locations closed Sundays and Mondays.