Eduardo Abaroa, Kenneth Kemble, Marcos Kurtycz, Ana Mendieta, Marta Minujín, Raphael Montañez Ortiz

“A deliberate wave of destruction travels over matter we consider permanent. Time corrodes matter and in the course of this corrosion, beauty emerges… Time is the great critic: terrible and implacable, it destroys the worthless and rescues from obscurity that which is truly valuable. All destruction releases an enormous amount of energy. It is through this dynamic impact, this driving action, that destruction lays the foundations for all future creation.”

Economic turmoil, technologies of violence, and militaristic regimes dominated Latin American politics and society during the 1950s and ’60s. In this context, a constellation of artists sought to neutralize the potential horror of such change by displacing destruction into the symbolic realm of art, seeking ritualistic experiences of mediated transformation. “Destruction is, for the artist, the supreme order of freedom,” wrote Argentine poet and art critic Aldo Pellegrini in his 1961 manifesto. This exhibition traces the archaeological remnants and histories of this movement as they continue to reverberate in our present.

March 20–May 1, 2015

Curated by Jennifer Burris Staton