Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this text, Julio Plaza draws a parallel between photography’s impact on nineteenth-century iconography and the current transformation with images that no longer depend on artisanal or mechanical systems, but rather on digital ones. Plaza senses [...]

In this text, Julio Plaza questions the notion of the “Geração ‘80” that circulated widely in Brazil. Brazilian art criticism used that term to define new artistic production that differed from the experimentalism prevalent in the seventies; [...]

This text ispart two of Julio Plaza’s essay on the “artist’s book.” The author addresses the “anti-artistic book” as well—an innovative conception based on an analytic line of art and on the systematic practice of technological media. [...]

This text is part one of the essay by Julio Plaza on artists’ books. In it, he discusses the concept of the “book” as physical, informational, and linguistic object. In his view, form and content converge in the “artist’s book,” where [...]

This critical essay poem by Julio Plaza reviews a sequence of computer-processed images produced by José Wagner Garcia, based on a (Landsat 5) satellite image of Guarujá Beach on the coast of São Paulo. In Plaza’s opinion, the work is a metaphor [...]

This essay analyzes the main concepts and theoretical interfaces in the history of modern and contemporary art; it explains the connections between author, work, and recipient, and helps the reader to understand interactive art. According to the [...]

This text was written by Arlindo Machado and Julio Plaza to be published in the catalogue for Artecnologia, the exhibition that the two authors co-curated and presented on September 2-9, 1985 at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de São Paulo – [...]

The graphic artist Julio Plaza claims that all forms of cultural expression are supported by a technique; based on that premise, he briefly outlines the development of the concepts involved in the production of images. He refers in particular to the [...]

In this groundbreaking essay, Julio Plaza provides the reader with an overview of what was at the time, the very recent “video text” technology featured in a special section of the seventeenth São Paulo Biennial, a section that Plaza curated. He [...]

These are transcribed excerpts provided by the author, Julio Plaza, to the columnist Maria Silvia. In the document, Plaza declared that his work derived from reflecting on art as a language with an inherent system he defined as a metalanguage. He [...]

This is a manifesto by graphic artist Julio Plaza in which he proposes that art, as relating to time and space, be integrated in an objective way, into an open environment that reverberates with life. He declared that the invention of the “ [...]

This is an interview with Julio Plaza where he revealed his personal views about art, stating that he considered it a cultural product, as he did not believe it had the capability to universally please all audiences and social groups. He commented on [...]

In this essay, the Spanish artist Julio Plaza, who lives in Brazil, discusses the differences between “the work” and the “discourse about the work.” He concentrates on the links between the verbal and the nonverbal, which [...]

Julio Plaza introduces his exhibition Câmara Obscura, fully aware of the risks involved in translating a visual language into words. The result is a prim illustration that spills over into the spectators’ terrain. This work is a [...]

Julio Plaza introduced the Mail Art exhibition at the sixteenth Bienal de São Paulo. He drew special attention to what he considers to be a synchrony in contemporary art production, going so far as to call it a “bricolage.” He [...]

In this essay, Julio Plaza discusses the emergence of an unusual phenomenon that processes information instead of accumulating it. The information is produced by spontaneous groupings whose sole objective is to exchange ideas, and whose production [...]