Fortune Cookie Projects, in association with Sperone Westwater presents

GUILLERMO KUITCA

At Sculpture Square, Singapore

10 September – 11 October 2008

Argentina-born painter Guillermo Kuitca (b. 1961) will be featured in his first –ever exhibition in Asia at Singapore’s Sculpture Square. This solo exhibition is one of the satellite projects surrounding the Singapore Biennale and Asia’s newest art fair, Showcase Singapore.

Kuitca, who represented Argentina at last year’s Venice Biennale, is known for his exploration of the ways in which maps, plans and blueprints situate individuals in relation to an ordered whole. He has long emphasized his interest in the capacity of cartographic and architectural diagrams to change our orientation to the social spaces we inhabit. His organic geometry of how we move and function raises questions about how environment shapes our behavior. The paintings and drawings to be exhibited at Sculpture Square will present a conceptually-oriented sense of order to the patterns of human movement.

GUILLERMO KUITCA

Born in 1961 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he continues to live, Guillermo Kuitca is one of Latin America’s leading contemporary artists. Inspired by the worlds of architecture, theater and cartography, his work has transcended geographical boundaries and has been exhibited extensively around the world.

His first solo museum exhibition in the United States was a one-man show, “Projects 30” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1991). In 1993 Kuitca had his first solo exhibition at Sperone Westwater Gallery, where he continues to exhibit regularly (1994, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2005). Other solo museum exhibitions took place at the Centro de Arte Helio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro (1999), and The Foundation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris (2000), the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio, which traveled to the Whitechapel Gallery, London (1994-95), and a show at IVAM Centre del Carme in Valencia, Spain, which traveled to the Museo de Monterrey and the Museo Rufino Tamayo, in Mexico (1993-1994). The Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid organized a retrospective, “Guillermo Kuitca: Obras 1982/2002”, which traveled to MALBA, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano – Coleccion Costantini, Buenos Aires (2003).

Last year the Daros Latinamerica Foundation, Zurich, presented “Das Lied von der Erde”, a survey of their Kuitca collection of paintings and drawings. Most recently, Kuitca was selected to represent Argentina in the 52nd La Biennale di Venezia, while also exhibiting his series of 38 “Diarios” in the overall Biennale exhibition at the Arsenale. The artist has participated in other major group shows, including Documenta IX (1992), the Carnegie International (1995), the Istanbul Biennial (2001), and the Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil (1985 and 1989). Kuitca has also shown his work at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in London (2005) and Zurich (2001).

The first comprehensive retrospective of Guillermo Kuitca’s art to travel in the United States in fifteen years is being coorganized by Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Miami Art Museum. “Guillermo Kuitca” will open in Miami in 2009 before it travels to Buffalo and Washington and completes its tour in 2010.

Kuitca’s work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; the Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zurich; the Tate, London; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC.; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, among others.

Guillermo Kuitca has also created numerous theater pieces, most notably his set design for Wagner’s “Der fliegende Hollander” at Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires (2003).

In 1991, Kuitca founded the Studio Program for the Visual Arts – a fellowship program for young artists in Buenos Aires.

SPERONE WESTWATER

Sperone Westwater Fischer was founded in 1975, when Italian art dealer Gian Enzo Sperone, Angela Westwater, and German art dealer Konrad Fischer opened an exhibition space in Soho, New York. (The gallery’s name was changed to Sperone Westwater in 1982.) The original goal of the gallery was to showcase European artists who had little or no recognition in the United States, along with a collection of American painters and sculptors to whom the three founders were committed. Notable early exhibitions include “Aspects of Recent Art from Europe,” a 1977 group show featuring important work by Joseph Beuys and Jannis Kounellis; German artist Gerhard Richter’s first solo exhibition in New York in 1978; and the installation of one of Mario Merz’s celebrated glass and neon igloos in 1979.

In 2002, Sperone Westwater moved from Soho to an exhibition space in the Meat Packing District in the West Village. Today, over thirty years after its conception, the gallery continues to exhibit the work of artists both established and cutting edge, of diverse nationality, age, and style. Renowned American artists Bruce Nauman and Susan Rothenberg have been with Sperone Westwater since 1975 and 1987, respectively. They are joined by established and internationally-recognized artists, Malcolm Morley, Richard Long and Guillermo Kuitca, as well as mid-career artists like Tom Sachs, Charles LeDray, Wim Delvoye and Liu Ye. The gallery’s 2007-2008 exhibition schedule includes presentations of work by Not Vital, Mario Merz, Julian Schnabel, Bruce Nauman, Richard Long, and Tom Sachs.

SCULPTURE SQUARE

The Chapel Gallery of Sculpture Square was built in 1870. For nearly thirty years, it was a Christian institute for young men to meet for daily worship and for recreational purposes. In 1891, the Methodist Women’s Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS) bought the building for its growing Tamil (Methodist) Girls’ School. It also held ‘Malay’ worship services for a congregation composed mainly of Chinese who spoke Baba Malay. On January 25, 1894, it was formerly inaugurated as the first Straits Chinese Methodist Church. Four years later, WFMS sold the building to the Baba congregation as the Methodist Girls’ School was relocated to Short Street.

The Straits Chinese Methodist Church grew rapidly in the early part of the 1900’s. Before long, Hokkien and Hakka services were added to the Malay services. Due to the expanding church, it moved to new premises at Cuff Road, and it was renamed as the Kampong Kapor church after its geographical vicinity. During the period of the First World War, the vacant church was converted into a Chinese restaurant called May Blossom Restaurant. At the end of the war, it was converted into a motor workshop and parking area.

Forgotten and failing into disrepair, the church was rediscovered in 1995 by Sun Yu-Li. An architect turned sculptor, he was concerned with Singapore’s lack of appropriate spaces to exhibit three-dimensional work and installation and saw in the potential of the former church as well as its adjacent building (formerly a hotel). Together with Edmund Chen (deputy chairman of Wing Tai Holdings Limited), they garnered financial support from both public and private sectors to turn the former Straits Chinese Methodist Church into Singapore’s first-ever arts venue dedicated entirely to exhibiting and promoting three-dimensional art.

Sculpture Square’s admirable efforts at conservation have been recognised by the government. In 1998, the former church and its adjoining building were converted into an art-housing site. On May 1999, after extensive renovations, Sculpture Square was unveiled to the public in an ambitious and daring inaugural exhibition titled appropriately, “Provocative Things, a Three-Dimensional Experience in Singapore.” It is now an important link along a string of non-profit arts organisations and facilities in the Waterloo arts district.