Art critic and curator María Luz Cárdenas (b. 1952) discusses the major cultural changes brought on by the advent of new technology. Insofar as they make use of new technological resources, all of the young Venezuelan artists participating in the fifth Salón Pirelli address distinctly contemporary issues. Like a digital document, a work of art can be read in a non-sequential or multi-sequential fashion to create new relationships and to structure networks or fabrics of meaning. In her curatorial project, Cárdenas defines the following categories: (1) The use of hypertext in the writing and structuring of the work of art. For this category, Cárdenas looks to the theory of the electronic text formulated by North American sociologist Ted Nelson (b. 1937) in the sixties, to address open readings with multiple forms of perception that oppose linear narratives, through playfulness among other things. Nelson discusses the different means of access and ways of exploring that open reading entails, as well as the networks, fabrics, and pathways it formulates; (2) By modifying the space where the image is formulated and structured, alternative technological resources and discourses create a new regime of visibility and therefore construct new relationships with the visible that make the viewer build unusual forms of perception; (3) The new parameters of time and movement articulated when technology is the basis for a creative artistic process; this entails changing the model for the duration and contemplation of the work, which is displaced and thrust into another temporality; the viewer’s form of attention must change as well, going from traditional “contemplation” to more playful access to space/time by digital means. This was the premise for the last Salón Pirelli, an event that Cárdenas had curated since its inception in 1993. Because it provided an opportunity to discover and to make known major figures in contemporary art, the Salón Pirelli was an extremely important institution both in Venezuela and beyond.
For other texts by Cárdenas on the Salón Pirelli, see “Nuevas realidades, nuevos conceptos para un salón de jóvenes” (doc. no. 1161393), “De la ilusión óptica a la desilusión cultural: Arte desde el exilio: Enfoque metodológico y pautas generales de aproximación al II Salón Pirelli de jóvenes artistas y lenguajes” (doc. no. 1161345), and “Aproximación al III Salón Pirelli” (doc. no. 1162019). Other writings on the event include “Salón Pirelli: Primera aproximación al arte joven en la década de los noventa en Venezuela” (doc. no. 1161411) by Ruth Auerbach, a critic and curator of Venezuelan art.
