Artomatic07's kick-off was quite the party. As it is common in openings, art is offered more as a backdrop to the entertainment than as the main course of the meeting. However, this is not necessarily something bad at all. And yet, it is true that Back to Work. both with friends as well as with strangers, did rather well, and provoked quite a broad reaction. But this is neither the occasion to talk about that proposal nor the time to elaborate that the key virtue of Artomatic is to generate conversations, participations, and proposals, or the time to offer a more critical perspective around its inner mechanisms and outside projection. In time I hope to get to these topics. Now probably is the time to speak about some of the exhibited art.

At least an opportunity to speak about what interested me the most. Among the lengthy and eclectic range of Artomatic, plenty of critics, artists and other visitors are offering lists, hierarchies, and selections. On occasion I share the pick but my first reaction after taking a look at the exhibition is a bit different. The order is determined by a random walk through the galleries...

The Android Presents
Andrew Wodzianski Orange 8E11
The work uses pieces of what I knew as old Geyper toys that framed gender: fashion for the girls, and warriors and monsters for the boys. Different alternating pieces were used to create the combinations. Here the order has been subverted by combining both games and delivering hybrids that comment and break that imposed structure. Unfortunately. the artist does not tell you any of this on the exhibit, and if you don't catch the reference the work loses most of the interest. In fact, it would seem that some might be admiring the technical capacity of the artist ignoring or taking for granted this copy-paste in order to praise the series. However, its essence goes through understanding that cultural recycling.

Allegra Marquat Orange 8C16
Her work is a fascinating combination of graphic and technical skills. But most importantly, it was particularly interesting to me due to its solvency around popular and graphic narratives to shape the proposal.

Trinka Margua Simon Orange 8C12
Although Trinka's mural has pictorial merit I am not interested particularly on that aspect. I am far more stimulated by the critique that she makes of mechanical realism and its lack of aesthetic qualities. To make that point, she is engaged in an ephemeral mural where her students also paint, and next to her they learn before, during and after Artomatic, to reach finally the collective destruction of the work. This process, this craft, and finding her tirelessly painting at almost any moment brings up the work for me.

Stephanie Booth Blue 6A45
Collections and personal narratives, clothes, shoes, through the years, which mix with the text exposing its relationship with the author. Work with may similarities that I find interesting in particular for its analysis of monotony, personal culture, and offering ways to relocate the individual, through a self-portrait, dissecting the common routine.

Art Enables Red 6D15
Art Enables is a non-profit organization that using the visual arts facilitates the learning, creativity, and employment of people with developmental and mental disabilities. Typically they secure a room where they offer a selection of works from that inappropriately called "outsider art" that is now vindicated from Artomatic's inside. The image is the work of Charles Meissner, which was my personal weakness in this show.

Patrick Resing Red 6C02
A work dedicated to the interaction with the viewer in order to make the vegetation grow in the space that was occupied by the desk of a bureaucrat at the old Paten Office. Soil, seeds, and pulp promise success if the visitors are capable of being the catalyst for the watering routine. Besides being a great study on monotony, and daily participation, it is probably the only work that makes reference to the history of the building, the history of those office cubicles where we are exhibiting. Probably the memory of that desk, that footprint, is what makes this my favorite work of the show.

Undoubtedly there are more works worth profiling, works that are a result of second visits, conversations, and dialogues, works that remind me for future posts that maybe the important thing is going to be not to talk of works again but of art itself...