A New Year for Barrio Joven Chandon at arteBA’10

At arteBA’10 Contemporary Art Fair, Barrio Joven Chandon, or Chandon’s Young Quarter will once again be the area presenting emerging artists who, however brief their careers on the art circuit, have aroused great expectations. This year the Barrio Joven will comprise nineteen stands and, for the fourth consecutive year, have as its sponsor Chandon, a corporation keenly attuned to contemporary artistic production and with impressive practice in circulating new artistic currents.

The Barrio Joven Chandon selection committee, made up of Ana María Battistozzi (art critic and freelance curator Buenos Aires, Argentina); Oscar Cruz (gallery director, Galería Oscar Cruz, São Paulo, Brazil) and Ana Martínez Quijano (art critic and freelance curator, Buenos Aires, Argentina), has set its stakes on excellence and chosen work that well the latest trends in the region’s artistic milieu. This year will feature work from areas of Argentina (Córdoba, Mendoza, San Carlos de Bariloche and Buenos Aires) and from other Latin American countries including Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Venezuela.

This year the number of offerings presented has risen considerably, a phenomenon that attests to the growing interest of young art dealers in participating in the Fair. As the quality of the works for Barrio Joven Chandon in turn steadily rises, the final selection of participants becomes an ever harder task. This year the members of the selection committee have, in keeping with the criteria of excellence of an international contemporary art fair, decided to give priority to the quality of the offerings, both of the offerings presented and of the exhibition design.

The Barrio Joven Chandon has been an enticing space since its creation, the ideal territory for taking the pulse of art production by the new generations of artists from Argentina and the region. It’s where the most seasoned connoisseurs, collectors, and professionals in the art trade search for the new figures about to appear on the art scene.

Chandon will celebrate its 50th anniversary --since it was launched in Argentina—with a unique offering in the Barrio Joven Chandon bar: “La Celebración”. Through the creative vision of Juan Mathe and Peta Rivero y Hornos, the space will present a little-circulated medium: Pop-Up books, works in which paper engineering and three-dimensional photographic art are united so that viewers can “experience the work” as a direct part of it. The space and its decoration will be the joint product of the well-known Gabriel del Campo and Peta Rivero y Hornos. A group of object designers, together with a team of graphic designers, coordinated by Gabriel del Campo, will break down the boundaries between the two fields and work together to come up with new solutions in form and function. Visitors who sit eating and drinking in the Chandon space, or just strolling through it, can have the pleasure of discovering the makers of these works, the secrets of Pop-Up books, and this new trend in furnishings.