Volarte Displays Work from All over Latin America.

San José’s art scene is constantly growing, and this week, it became even more diverse: The Children’s Museum National Gallery, housed in a former jail, has been completely filled up by 180 Ibero-American works of art by 140 artists. The exposition, which is as diverse as it is bold, aims to evaluate the current status of visual arts in Costa Rica, Latin America, and beyond.

Of the exhibition’s 140 artists, 86 were invited to participate and 54 were chosen by contest. All works are currently for sale, and proceeds from the exhibition will be donated to Hogar Siembra (http://www.hogarsiembra.org/), a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping high-risk children and adolescents.

Tonight, on September 2, the National Gallery will celebrate the collection’s inauguration, and several prizes will be awarded in different categories. According to Karen Clachar, general director for the Valoarte exposition, among those honors will be three prizes, plus five honorable mentions. Noticeably absent from the prize categories is the theme of gender, which did not have enough entries this year to merit its own category.

The museum’s curators, in addition to art critics Ileana Alvarado (Costa Rica), María Dolores Torres (Spain/Nicaragua) and Rebeca Noriega (Puerto Rico), formed the judging panel responsible for both the artwork selection and prize winners. Their art expertise and social consciousness made them the ideal judges for the contest, which strives to encourage both established and emerging artists to be part of responsible art. “We are interested in helping possible buyers to learn to invest their money in high-quality artistic works,” affirmed Clachar. To inform buyers, each work, which range in price from $200 to $34,000, is accompanied by an explanatory plaque.

Continuing to the aesthetics of the exhibition itself, the works have been arranged to create a “dialogue” between each other, hopefully sparking dialogue and provoking thought among their spectators. “The idea is to achieve a harmony between the language of each work and the visual aesthetic. Each room has a particular emphasis and they all complement each other,” Clachar explained.

The most popular artistic medium in this year’s exhibition is, by far, oil and watercolor paints, though they are joined by photography, sculpture, installation, and object art. Together, these methods blend to form themed rooms, such as visual landscapes, the human form, and gender topics, each work playing off of its neighbors to question and challenge viewers.

Voloarte’s organizers approximate that 40 percent of the exposition’s artwork is from international artists, hailing from Nicaragua, Cuba, the United States, Argentina, Mexico, and Guatemala. The remaining 60 percent, provided by Costa Rican artistic genius, is a beautiful example of local talent. “For us it is an honor to have with us [new] works from Costa Rican artists as renowned as José Sancho, Rudy Espinoza or Priscilla Monge,” Clacher commented.

While you Visit Costa Rica, don’t miss out on the chance to experience this diverse, international artwork and help out a great cause at the Voloarte exhibition. The Children’s Museum and National Gallery are located just north of downtown San José, on Calle 4, and are open Tuesday-Friday 8 a.m.-4 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Photo courtesy of La Nacion.

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Filed under: Living on September 2nd, 2008