Galería Alcuadrado (Bogotá, Colombia): a partial history in three exhibitions

Abstract

During its brief life span, the Alcuadrado art gallery (Bogotá, 2003–2009) represented an entire cohort of important contemporary artists from Colombia including Miguel Ángel Rojas, Oscar Muñoz, María Teresa Hincapié, María Elvira Escallón, Juan Fernando Herrán, François Bucher, and Jaime Ávila. Unlike most of the galleries operating in the country at the time, Alcuadrado did not have a permanent space for the display of artworks. Instead, it opted for experimental, temporary interventions in public spaces throughout the city. All of their shows created dialogues between works produced by the artists represented by the gallery, while at the same time engaging with the contexts where they were displayed. This paper provides the first chronicle of the history of this pivotal Colombian gallery by focusing on three of their exhibitions: Tres Artistas Alcuadrado, held in Bogotá in 2004 at an industrial warehouse in disuse, Campos Latinoamericanos, installed 2005 within the ruins of an unfinished Hilton Hotel building in downtown Bogotá, and Sin Remedio mounted in 2008 in a former hospital building in disuse. It studies the nomadic display model pioneered by the gallery’s directors and how it incorporated artworks into the physical and historical characteristics of several sites.