Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Art produced in the so-called Third World, or by non-European or North American artists, is usually seen as either traditional and folkloric, or a poor imitation of modernism. In art history, the avant-garde has always been associated with the Western metropolis, forgetting that every country has had its own particular relationship with modernity. This book describes a contemporary flourishing of radical artistic experiment in Argentine, Brazil and Chile (or by artists originating from there). The focus and priorities have been different to those of Europe and North America; at the same time, the work intensifies many of the issues which face us all.

The nine artists whose work is described and analysed here use a wide range of materials: from paint, silkscreen, and photography to potatoes, money, magnets, wire, bone, feathers. Each artist has a particular strategy; in fact the variety and sophistication of the devices they use makes this a dazzling anthology of a modern visual poetics. Each artist invents new and many-levelled metaphors which link the 'Latin American' with the 'global'.

This lucidly written, beautifully illustrated book is published to accompany an exhibition of the same title held at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham and Cornerhouse, Manchester in 1990.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Published as a companion catalog for the 1990 exhibition of the same title (Manchester, UK). This book focuses on the work of nine avant-garde artists from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile--Waltercio Caldas, Juan Davila, Eugenio Dittborn, Roberto Evangelista, Victor Grippo, Jac Leirner, Cildo Meireles, Tunga and Regina Vater--whose priorities reveal a particular "Latin American" relationship with modernity. In his brief but sensitive chapter, "Border Crossings," Brett discusses the idiosyncrasies of the ecological, financial, and intellectual cultures that differentiate the world of these artists from those of Europe and North America. There follows an anthology of prose and poetry by the artists themselves, and by Lu Menezes and Paul Venancio Filho, that offers important insights into the powerful and sometimes disturbing images with which each individual artist attempts to create new and multileveled metaphors that connect the "Latin American" with the global. Even the materials used, ranging from paint, silkscreen, and photography to real potatoes, bone, and feathers, give the world of reality a new poetical dimension. As stated in the preface, the exhibition and book "are about the relation, the tension, between the abstract/void and the contingent, localised, historical, urgent and conflicted." An elegant layout of fine black-and-white and color illustrations effectively complements the text. For undergraduates and above. -H. Rodriguez-Camilloni, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University