BRIEF: calls / exhibitions / collecting / projects / publications

ARCOmadrid and Your Heineken® call on the 1^st Contest on Heineken’s bottle design. A jury made up of Tania Pardo, commissioner and critic; artist Eugenio Ampudia; Ferran Barenbilt, director of CA2M; Carlos Urroz, director of ARCOmadrid, and one representative of Heineken España, will judge and select the best work. The prize will be delivered on February 18, and the winner artist will be given a 3,000 euro check. February 15 sets the deadline. Further information: http://www.heineken.es/home/concursoarco/#/home

“Wifredo Lam” Contemporary Art Center will be showcasing this month an outlook on contemporary art through traditional expressions by exhibiting works from Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the US and the Caribbean, which have attended in different editions of Havana Biennial from 1984 to 2009.

The opening in March of Carlos Saura (Huesca, 1932)’s exhibition will kick off the program of Oscar Niemeyer International Cultural Center (CCION), in Aviles. The center counts on an advisory council made up of intellectuals such as moviemaker Woody Allen, scientist Stephen Hawking, writer Paulo Coelho and Internet creator and Google vice president Vinton Cerf, and there are already collaboration agreements inked with the Middle East Center for Culture and Development (MECCAD). The building project was a gift given by Brazilian architect to the Principe de Asturias Foundation in appreciation for the 1989 prize in the Arts category.

British artist Damien Hirst –famous for his chemically-preserved animals– puts together a significant art collection for a future museum housed in a mansion which is being restored by English Gloucestershire County (he bought it for 3.2 million pounds, 6.3 million dollars).

A self-portrait made by American artist Andy Warhol has been basking in the limelight (before Christie’s auction this month), as it remained in a collector’s house for several decades. The big-scale work is one of the ten historic self-portraits made by the father of pop art, and it dates back to 1967.

The exhibition Menos Tiempo que Lugar (Less Time than Space) will be showcased at Santiago de Chile’s Fine Arts National Museum up to February 20. El Arte de la Independencia: Ecos Contemporáneos (The Art of Independence: Contemporary Echoes),a project created by Goethe-Institut with the support of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Foreign Relations and curated by prestigious intellectual Alfons Hug. The exhibition will be exposed in American cities after its presentation in Europe.

The 17^th International Festival of Contemporary Art SESC_Videobrasil will be held in September and October 2011, including this time around installations, performances, artistic experiments and object-books, produced since May 2009 by visual artists who were born in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Oceania. The call will be open through March 10, 2011. Handpicked works will compete for the Grand Prize (monetary) and eight prizes which are artistic residences, awarded in collaboration with institutions in Latin America, Europe and Asia. The Festival is promoted by SESC São Paulo and Associação Cultural Videobrasil. Also check other prizes and the entire information at: 17Festival@videobrasil.org.br, info@videobrasil.org.br, y www.videobrasil.org.br.

ON QUAN QUI? is the proposal introduced by Valid Foto BCN Gallery, Barcelona, up to February 26. The collective exhibition made up of photographers Ariadna Arnes and Jordi Canosa, Roger Grasas, Cesar Ordoñez and Alvaro Sanchez-Montañes, shows a raw and sometimes cynical vision of Barcelona, California, Riyadh, Tokyo, Miami, through images of transience sites (such as fairs, roads, lonely corners) spaces coined by French anthropologist Marc Augé as “non-places”.

Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma already counts on a modern interactive website, equipped with tools such as blogs, newsletters and social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Tuenti, Youtube and Flickr). Es Baluard becomes one of the few Spanish museums with online store where catalogues can be obtained, as well as information on activities carried out by the museum over the past seven years and details on its publications: www.esbaluard.org

Perímetro (Perimeter), by Gerardo Custance (Madrid, 1976), is the latest volume of Proyectos collection, EXIT. Landscapes from Madrid are put together here, previously delimited by the author and an essay where writer Rosa Olivares delves into this artist’s working style who, as she says, expresses his world “without dramatic character, maybe with some sadness”.

Cubafoto Cultural Project and the Photographic Library of Cuba recommend you to compete in the Photography, Graphic Humor and Photogram 11 contests. Check the rules at: www.concursocladem.blogspot.com, www.educacion-nosexista.org and www.cladem.orgfotograma11@gmail.com, http://cmdf.montevideo.gub.uy, http://indexfoto.montevideo.gub.uy.

The 26^th edition of 2011 Chelsea International Contest of Fine Arts- Agora Gallery is underway since February 2^nd. Prizes add up to $38,000 and cash is included, along with web promotion for winning artists and the participation in a collective exhibition at a gallery in Chelsea, the art district in New York. Check details at: http://www.agora-gallery.com/competition or write to: electrónico concurso@agora-gallery.com