On Friday June 25^th started the second "Taller Vivo" as part of the commemorative exposition "Careos / Relevos: 25 years of the Contemporary Art Museum of Puerto Rico". Entitled "DocMac", this exposition promises to fusion several art variations and involve 100 per cent the audience with the artists while the creation process takes place. Keep reading to find out all the details that this marvelous exposition brings to impulse the arts on the Island.

All senses into art appreciation

SAN JUAN - The second edition of this exhibition will count with the artist, filmmaker and independent curator Carmen Oquendo-Villar who was recently awarded with the Guggenheim Scholarship. It will also count on the participation of the artists Nayda Collazo-Lloréns, Anaida Hernández, Sofía Maldonado, Darren Brass and Miguel Villafañe.

The title "DocMac" refers as much as the gestation to the consumption of the workshop on behalf of the audience. On one side, it documents the exposition "Careos/Relevos" under a cure that it’s not strictly institutional, it means independent, but that answers to the invitation of the Museum. On the other side, refers to the quickness of consumption, 'Mc Donald's style', with it may interpret the same side that the artists must create, and present to the audience a quick reaction piece to one or more pieces that belongs to the permanent collection of the MAC in a reduced amount of time.

Miguel Villafañe will start this workshop, presenting his project "Muxejs/Museo", from June 25 to july 4^th. Villafañe will document the exposition with a short film, in which he will mix fiction and reality, such as actors playing fictitious rolls, staff from the MAC and its visitors. The plot will have a love triangle that will be solved once the star of the short film visits the Museum; look at a painting and then faints. All the action of the short film will be happening in the institution and it will be filmed right in front of the eyes of the visitors. The artist, who has been dedicated to the documentation of related visual arts and performance subjects, invites the audience who wants to collaborate with this film, reacting to the star faint act, to assist to the MAC on June 25, 26, and 27 on the opening hours of the Museum. Who comes up with the most imaginative interviews "alternative solutions and interesting variations of the main plot", will be included in this work. The premier of the short film will be on June 30 at 8:30 PM.

The workshop will continue with the project of the artist Anaida Hernández, who will establish a dialogue with the piece: "Secret Formula: The truth and nothing but the truth", made by her and also part of the MAC's permanent collection. Hernández will be painting "live" at the New Tendencies Room on July 7^th and 8^th from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. The people assisting will have the opportunity to write on a paper their requests and questions and throw them in an urn that will be at the room while the artist paints. The project will be integrated also by a documentary taped the night of the fashion event "Proyecto MAC", where the artist's piece was part of it. The opening will be on July 9^th at 2:00 PM until July 15. That day there will be a talk with Hernández and the reading of all the requests made by the visitors.

Sofía Maldonado (painter) and Darren Brass (tattoo artist) will work together for the first time to collaborate with the project: "Dreamy Mess: Paint & Ink…" The artist will be working "in site", with a big scale skirt, a design inspired on the piece "Triptych of Wonder" by Nelson Sambolín from July 20 to the 23. On Friday July 23 there will be live performances by the artists: Sofía will paint a mural "live", while Brass will take that painting to the skin of a model. This show will also have a special presentation of José G. Maldonado with a baroque orchestra.

Bras, will also be tattooing, with previous appointments, designs inspired on the pieces from the permanent collection of the Museum.

"Dreamy Mess: Paint & Ink…" chases to bring the discussion and documentation with the graffiti and tattoo art, that even though they are both urban expressions, they turn out to be contradictories since the first one is ephemeral and the second one is permanent. The multimedia documentation and the pieces created during the art performance; also the images of the tattoos made by Brass at the Museum, will be shown on July 28 and 29.

The multiple skill artist, Nayda Collazo-Lloréns, will use the Museum as a subject and a context to produce a series of video installations that will take place in several spaces of the institution in her project called: "Reverberación".

Collazo-Lloréns, will work in site from August 1^st to the 6^th at the regular schedule of the Museum. The visitors, besides being witnesses, they will also be participants of the artistic process of Collazo-Lloréns, who will explore situations that the spectator may not perceive.

She will digitally manipulates the recorded material to exhibit it again to "suggest a new look and create an echo between the subject and a new representation". On Friday August 6^th at 7:00 PM will be the closure of the project. The visitors will have the opportunity to watch one more time the videos produced by the artist on August 7^th and 8^th.

"DocMac" follows the "Taller Vivo: Diagramas Maquínicos" of Javier Román presented last month. "The program Taller Vivo was established by the MAC with the purpose to project the institution as a vital centre of emergent art. Being that noticeable characteristic of the contemporary art, it emphasis on the processes of concept, invoice, the fact of the pieces to be seen and their intervention. The vital centre must be, despite of everything, a workshop where the artists could work, giving the audience full access to this dimension of art and settling this way its education about contemporary. The invitation made by MAC to the curators that develop emergent art projects fills this request and propitiates the direct contact between the artists and our visitors" said Marianne Ramírez Aponte, Executive Director of the Museum.

This is an event that truly impulse the way the Puerto Rican population appreciates art, and it sure promise to maintain this direct link between the artists and the visitors of the Museum, in many exhibitions to come. For more information call 787 977 4030.