The exhibition Cincoincidentes was presented at the Museo de Barquisimeto (estado Lara) in 1984. The journalist, critic, and curator Lourdes Blanco (b. 1941) wrote an essay for each of the five participating artists from Venezuela: Miguel von Dangel [doc. no. 1097326], Eugenio Espinoza [doc. no. 1097342], Felipe Márquez [doc. no. 1097374], Alfred Wenemoser (b. 1956), and Roberto Obregón [doc. no. 1097358]. The exhibition was organized by the designers Álvaro Sotillo and Ibrahim Nebreda.
It was an important day in Venezuela when the artist Alfred Wenemoser arrived in 1980 and joined the group of artists known as the 1970s generation: Eugenio Espinoza, Roberto Obregón, Sigfredo Chacón, Claudio Perna, Héctor Fuenmayor, Antonieta Sosa, and others. Though Blanco makes no comparisons, her essay provides a clear description of intellectual perception and originality in Wenemoser, whose aesthetic ideas (in the conceptual camp) were being introduced into a solid tradition. In her essay, Blanco mentions his fascination with “the mechanisms of perception,” and does not hesitate to describe his art training as “typically Viennese;” that is, useful for placing his work in a specific time, and vital to Wenemoser who was curious to know the viewers’ “social” response to his work. Blanco points out the link between the La escalera installation and the collage tradition, then reflects on the possible reasons for and origins of that tradition. She also says that the important role played by the viewer prompted Wenemoser to create works that were closer to theater than to the visual arts; that is, the experimental projects he produced between 1979 and 1981. La escalera, on the other hand, allows him to see and ponder the pictorial space, two- or three-dimensional space, and the “experience of spatial penetration.” Blanco is surprised by the fact that the Austrian artist’s works are practically unknown in “our circle” despite the journalistic attention they have attracted.
This essay was reprinted in the Guía Catálogo/Guía de Estudio Nº 136. Exposición CCS-10. Arte venezolano actual (Caracas: Fundación Galería de Arte Nacional, 1993).
