Mr. Renteria is a very interesting artists that is doing important art that touches on important issues affecting everyone trying to live peacefully on the border. He would provide a wonderful interview on his art and the exhibition at Blue Star which everyone can come out to see. The exhibition will be on view until September 8, so I am hoping there will be time to include this exhibition on La Prensa from now until then.
San Antonio’s first and longest running contemporary art non-profit, Blue Star Contemporary (located in the heart of the Blue Star Arts Complex), presents Fünf, on view June 7–September 8, 2019. This exhibition highlights the fifth year of Blue Star Contemporary’s Berlin Residency program and will feature artworks from 2017-2018 artists Amada Miller, Andrei Renteria, Ethel Shipton, and Jared Theis.
Andrei Renteria is an artist working in drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and assemblage. His work reflects his strong and longstanding interest in socio-political issues along the U.S./ Mexico border.
His latest exhibition can be viewed at Blue Star Contemporary titled “A Quien Corresponda/ To Whom it May Concern” which presents art that deals with the migrant crisis and the war on drugs, it draws attention to the transformative and often destructive effect that violent situations can have on language and belief.
The exhibition includes drawings of funeral reefs that take double meaning depending on whether they are sent as a threat or to a family in grief. The work featured on the cover this week shows a car door that has clearly been part of some violence with a drawing of a funeral reef in it.It depicts the dark calculation behind assassanation processes.
His exhibition is apart of Fünf which will be on view til the end of this week, September 8 . This exhibition highlights the fifth year of Blue Star Contemporary’s Berlin Residency program and features artworks from 2017-2018 artists Amada Miller, Ethel Shipton, Jared Theis and Renteria
Blue Star Contemporary annually selects four artists residing in Bexar County to take part in three-month residencies at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany. While in residence, the artists are given a studio and living space, as well as access to workshops, exhibition opportunities, and studio visits with international curators. The exhibition title—Fünf means five in German—celebrates the fifth year of the Blue Star Contemporary Berlin Residency, which concluded in July of 2018.
Photos by Andrea Rampone
The artists featured in Fünf present works they developed while in residence at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien and upon their return to San Antonio. Fünf brings together four artists in an important exhibition, highlighting the diversity of practices in the San Antonio art community and the impact of this life changing residency.
Andrei Renteria’s large scale drawings discuss human rights injustices, often illuminating accounts along the U.S./Mexico border. The region is personal and political and following his time in Berlin, Renteria aims to approach the subject symbolically. A series of drawings of funerary wreaths and sculptures depict subversive methods of violence and intimidation sent to victims messaging their fate.
Renteria realizes that there are parallels between division created by borders and those of discrimination, persecution, unlawful imprisonment and human rights abuses that continue unabated. As we face the challenge today of worldwide recognition of human rights and freedom, his experimental approaches provide a powerful forum from which he investigates how to address and embody weighty subject matter (including torture and violence) beyond international borders.
