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Indepth Arts News:
"Martin Sastre: American as well"
2004-05-01 until 2004-06-26
Site Gallery
Sheffield, ,
UK United Kingdom
This will be the first UK one-person exhibition of Uruguayan artist, Martin
Sastre. His work is an ironic and humorous commentary on the international
art scene, from the eyes of a Latin American artist trying to establish
himself in the mainstream art world. Sastre set up the Martin Sastre
Foundation for Super-Poor Latin American artists, with the slogan, ‘Adopt a
Latin American Artist’. The foundation has at its heart the opportunity to
sponsor artists ‘from the periphery who normally do not have the economic
means of access to international circuits’.
The Foundation highlights a set
of values regarding status and fame that have become the local currency of
the contemporary art world. (www.martinsastre.com)
For his first show in the UK, Sastre will be showing his most recently
commissioned videos. Videoart: The Iberoamerican Legend is a high-art
history lesson, in which Sastre blames the death of video art on Matthew
Barney – and claims a profitable afterlife for himself. With the aim of
restructuring the grand narratives & their audiences, Martin Sastre begins
by presenting a frozen narrator from the end of time. ‘The Iberoamerican
Legend’ is the story of a Latin American who tells true lies and exhibits a
handful of bizarre fetish / cult objects for an era that doesn’t know what
to worship anymore.
The accompanying video, 'Montevideo, The Dark Side of The Pop' for which
Sastre has just won the best young video artist award at ARCO,
Madrid,continues the story, but now set in the year 2092. A teenage
prodigy is sent to Montevideo by the ‘European Centre of Intelligence,’ to
find out the secret behind Martin Sastre’s success. As everybody knows
behind every success there is always a secret, a pact. In following the
route of this Uruguayan artist the teenage investigator discovers a deserted
capital city, a forgotten place in far South America that could be hiding
more than a simple secret of success, an occidental experiment which could
be a vision of the future European Union.
Martin Sastre was recently selected for the 2003 Havanna Bienale. His recent
solo shows include ARCO 04 Project Room, Madrid 2004; Ruth Benzacar Gallery,
Buenos Aires 2003; Casa de America, Madrid 2002 and Engelman Ost Collection,
Montevideo.
More information can be found at www.martinsastre.com
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