This year one of Puerto Rico's most outstanding art institutions will get 25 years of been a remarkable reference and unique platform for young and consecrated local and international artists; to celebrate that, the Contemporary Art Museum will commemorate throughout a nine months season event this exceptional occasion. Keep reading and find out more details to be part of the celebration.

Birthday art

SAN JUAN - Since March 26, the Contemporary Art Museum of Puerto Rico (MAC by its abbreviations in Spanish) began to celebrate its twenty fifth anniversary with the inauguration of the exhibition "Careos/Relevos: 25 years of MAC", a mesmerizing display which presents a hundred exclusive pieces of the museum's private collection.

"After a long process of analysis the pieces were divided in three thematic zones according to their theme, technique, influence, support, materials and the aesthetic experience that each piece represent in order of time and its simultaneity with the world", said Dra. Lilliana Ramos, curator of the exhibition.

Divided in: Humano/Inhumano (Human/Inhuman), En Broma/En Serio (Playfully/Seriously) and Material/Inmaterial (Material/Immaterial), each section reflects with its own multifractal voice, the quasi-experimental sense of retrieving of the imaginary, shocked by the reality of the contemporary vision of the multicultural artists involved, presenting a variety in paintings, sculptures, instalations and object-art among other art techniques.

The first part of the exhibition offers a view inside pieces that debate matters about figuration and the battle with abstraction, being supported, resulting or causing controversies about themes like sexual gender or race.

The second part of the exhibition, corresponding to the section Playfully/Seriously, reunites pieces that in any point after being presented in their respective times, caused relevant polemics and discussions about the censures, the artistic free expression and the use of the different types of humor to camouflage social criticisms through art.

Finally in the area of Material/Immaterial, people will be able to enjoy more depurated concepts, less abstracts and more modern perspectives of contemplation and expression, including radical ideas of contemporary modernism and relevant paradigms of appropriation that changed the way of seeing, making, perceiving and living the art in our days.

Also, during August, the museum planed to rotate almost 20 pieces of the actual exhibition, substituting them for 20 additional pieces no yet showed in the current show.

"The title reflects the objectives that the museum is trying to reach as an art institution, their mission and labor for the national art. Careos looks forward to represent the idea of the contemporary rupture; meanwhile Relevos try to reach the continuities always happening in the color shades. The broken continuity and the continued rupture was essential axes to work this exhibition, because that exactly what characterizes the contemporarity", said Marianne Ramírez Aponte, MAC's Executive Director in an exclusive interview.

To amplify and go deeper in the contemporary theme, the museum created the "Taller Vivo" (Live Workshop), as an alternative and unusual concept for the Caribbean, where different adventures local plastic artists (Vanessa Hernández, Marina Reyes Franco, Ralph Vázquez and Carmen Oquendo) will work producing a piece of art, live in the museum for a one month period, using a museum room as studio.

The nakedness and exposure added to the creative process brought by this concept, -considered by some people as a kind of experimentation performance-, left the artists totally vulnerable in front of the inquisitive eye of the spectator, allowing them not only to be part of the art creation experience, but also, to even interrupt the epiphanic dream previous to the conceptualization, or to the vital materialization of the idea.

In addition to this workshop and the big exhibition that occupied all the exhibit areas of the museum, during all the year until October 8th (date when the MAC was founded) the institution will have numerous activities related with its anniversary, including fashion shows, panels with experts and exclusive guide visits with some of the artists showing.

Careos/Relevos will remains until September 26, from Tuesdays to Saturdays from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM and Sundays from 12:00 PM. For more information call 787 977 4030.

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More about the exhibition:

* Machinic Diagrams (Taller Vivo 1)

* Reliving the creation process (Taller Vivo 2)