ICONOS METROPOLITANOS - Núcleo New York XXV Bienal de San Pablo 
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Organiza: Fundación Proa 
Curaduria: Danilo Zugazagoitia
Auspicia: Siat - Siderca - Confab- Tenaris - Organización Techint
1 de Junio - 1 de Agosto, 2002

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Beginning on June 29th and until the end of August, Fundación PROA presents the exhibition METROPOLITAN ICONS with works of Vanessa Beecroft, Nancy Davenport, Lucinda Devlin, Doug Hall and Shirin Neshat.

The material that is presented –and that was part of the New York nucleus at the Sao Paulo Biennial (2002)- is a sample of the different aesthetic approximations and experiences of the artists around the urban issue. Its curator, Julian Zugazagoitia gathers a group of works that offer the viewer many different points of view, methods and treatments that coexist with the same versatility, nuances and differences as in the city. The works of each one of these artists mean a new gaze about the city. The exhibition goes from corners of motels in Lucinda Devlin until Doug Hall´s virtual realities in his Hong Kong landscapes. All these works approach the city as the frame of infinite urban experiences.

Vanessa Beecroft presents an assembly of big format pictures taken on a performance, where she dialogs –with an astonishing technical ability- with the world of fashion, feminine stereotypes, the model as a machine lacking subjectivity. The video shows us the performance and gives us material to better understand her pictures.

Lucinda Devlin explores issues concerning leisure and recreation centers of the big city. Small format pictures of motels, sex shops, spas, show us the American kitsch and her appropriation of different popular aesthetics. Environments for leisure, pleasure, recreation, sex, motels and urban getaways.

Doug Hall presents a group of pictures taken in Southeast Asia. He was chosen to show the global world. His panoramic views of bridges in big cities reveal the anonymous in contemporary architecture and its peculiar details. His pictures on nature virtual spaces in the middle of the city, as the technological beaches of Hong King, are astonishing.

Nancy Davenport uses digital techniques to explore the boundaries between reality and fiction. Violence in the city appears as a weak frontier between humor and the dramatic. She opposes the solid modernist architecture of some buildings in New York to the loss of all certainties. Violence irrupts in her images as an exploration of the failure of ideologies.

Shirin Neshat´s video, focused on women´s situation in Islamic society nowadays, investigates the cultural conflicts aroused by the confrontation of East and West, modernity and tradition. Her work transcends the frontiers of nationality, culture and artistic resources to explore contemporary identity in the global world.

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