Artist
Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck
Via Berlin, Germany
Since the mid-1990s, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck has developed a hybrid practice that incorporates the activities of a researcher, archivist, historian and curator. Working across various mediums, his productions formally resemble or incorporate the works of others, stressing notions of authorship and cultural authority. His entangled narratives follow strict methodological rules that are inspired by the unusual relationships he establishes between different realms and disciplines. In his works he aims to reveal the political strategies and motives at work in the world by analyzing the dynamics of power and propaganda in modern history and aesthetics.
Born in 1972, Balteo Yazbeck received his MFA in his native city, Caracas, Venezuela, where he extensively exhibited his work before living in New York from 2000 to 2010. He is now based in Berlin.
Recent solo exhibitions include “Chronoscope” at Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna, Austria; “Corrupted Files” at Galeria Luisa Strina, Sao Paulo, Brazil; “Cultural Diplomacy: An Art We Neglect” at Henrique Faria Fine Art, New York; and “A Little Bit of Heaven” at Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge. He has been included in numerous group exhibitions, such as “When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes,” CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco; “Liberalis,” Lütze-Museum and Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen; the 12th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul; “Then & Now: Abstraction in Latin American Art, 1950 to Present,” Deutsche Bank, New York; and “Panorama,” Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo.
Balteo Yazbeck’s work has been the subject of analysis in academic periodicals including The Harvard Crimson, Oxford Art Journal, American Art and ARTMargins, and has been reviewed in Frieze, Art in America, Flash Art, Modern Painters, Bidoun and Art Nexus. His work is in the collections of the Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge; Phoenix Art Museum; El Museo del Barrio, New York; the Bronx Museum, New York; Museu de Arte Moderno de São Paulo; Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York; Coleção Teixeira de Freitas, Lisbon; Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami; and Colección Banco Mercantil, Caracas.
—
Cristian Balteo Yazbeck holds a Master’s Degree in International Studies from Universitat de Barcelona and Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and recently finished his MBA at Esade Business School (Cataluña, Spain). His academic research focused on Venezuelan petroleum financial policies and he has written on the subject, as well as Chavista electoral strategies, for the German magazine Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte. He also holds a magna cum laude Bachelor’s Degree in International Studies from Universidad Central de Venezuela.
—
Boris Muñoz is a Venezuelan journalist and author of several books, including La ley de la calle, testimonios de jóvenes protagonistas de la violencia en Caracas (Fundarte 1995), Más allá de la ciudad letrada, Crónicas y espacios urbanos (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003) and Despachos del imperio (Random House 2007). Muñoz was editor-in-chief of Exceso magazine and Nueva Sociedad. He contributes regularly to Latin American magazines such as Gatopardo and El Puercoespin, and he recently wrote about the 2012 Venezuelan election for Newsweek, and the country's post-election situation for The New Yorker.
Muñoz is a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. He holds a PhD in Hispanic American Literature from Rutgers University. In 2000, he received the Fellowship of the Humanities Institute at Dartmouth College and the First Accésit of the Premio Internacional de Periodismo Fernando Lázaro Carreter in Madrid.
