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Alfredo Jaar : 50 Years Later
19 April - 4 June 2023 -
Cecilia Brunson Projects is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar (b.1956), in collaboration with Goodman Gallery. Alfredo Jaar: 50 Years Later marks the time passed since General Augusto Pinochet’s coup over Chilean President Salvador Allende’s democratic government on 11 September 1973. It is against the backdrop of this, one of the harshest military dictatorships in the southern cone, that Jaar produced some of his most poignant work, including his iconic project Public Interventions (Studies on Happiness 1979-1981).
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Public Interventions (Studies on Happiness: 1979-1981), 1981, Eight pigment prints mounted on dibond, Prints: 101.6 x 101.6 cm (40 x 40 in) each, Frames: 111.8 x 111.8 cm (44 x 44 in) each, Overall dimensions: 223.5 x 447 cm (88 x 176 in), Edition 2/3 -
Detail: Public Interventions (Studies on Happiness: 1979-1981), 1981
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Cien Años de Soledad [No Realmente], 1985, Neon, 35.6 x 152.4 cm, 14 x 60 in, Edition 3 of 10 + 3 AP
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The neon text, ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude [Not Really]’ refers to the title of the 1967 novel by the Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Márquez. The work plays with the illusion of independence that Latin America has from her North American neighbour using a poetic intervention on the title of the region’s biggest ever cultural export (García Marquez’s novel had recently won the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature and has since sold over 50 million copies). Jaar suggests that Latin America has never been forgotten or left at peace, always a strategic element at play in North American politics. Amongst an exhibition of works which incorporate historical documents and journalistic materials, this seemingly poetic work, detached from real events, stands in contrast. However, it encapsulates Jaar’s commitment to exposing the fundamental importance of culture and media, and of rewriting the narrative from the margins.
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Other works chart Jaar’s obsessive investigation into the role of Henry Kissinger in backing the Pinochet regime. ‘Nothing of Very Great Consequence’ (2008) displays the recently declassified telephone conversation between Nixon and Kissinger on September 16, 1973, five days after the coup, in which Kissinger notes that ‘nothing of very great consequence’ had occurred. In Searching for K (1984), Jaar lays out every illustrated page from Kissinger’s memoirs (The White House Years, published 1979 and Years of Upheaval, published 1982), showing his numerous interactions with world leaders, and completes the narrative with a photograph of Kissinger shaking hands with Pinochet, deliberately excluded from the volumes. Kissinger will celebrate his 100th birthday in May 2023, and it is in keeping with Jaar’s darkly comic tone to mark the anniversary with a presentation of these indictments.
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Searching for K, 1984, 18 collages and drawing on museum board and one framed pigment print 18 panels: 34 x 81.6 cm (13 3/8 x 32 1/8 in), each Pigment print: 35.6 x 40.6 cm (14 x 16 in), Overall Dimensions: Variable, Edition 2 of 2 + 1 AP
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On September 11, 2012, Alfredo Jaar published a series of commands across thirteen different pages of Berlin’s three main newspapers which read ‘ARREST KISSINGER!’. The artist published his command in all the languages of the countries where Kissinger committed his war crimes. The polemical cry is a call to arms to convict Henry Kissinger for war crimes. The project suggests how the media can be mobilised as a possible site for protest. The artist was having a major retrospective in three Berlin institutions at the time, and the intervention coincided with both Kissinger’s visit to the city and the anniversary of Pinochet’s coup.
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The Kissinger Project, 2012, 13 individual newspaper pages (full set) frame, 7 Frame: 52 x 37.14 x 3.81 cm (20 1/2 x 14 5/8 x 1 1/2 in) each, 3 Frame: 56.5 x 40.64 x 3.8 cm (22 1/4 x 16 x 1 1/2 in) each, 3 Frame: 63.2 x 45.7 x 3.8 cm (24 7/8 x 18 x 1 1/2 in) each, Overall dimensions: 82.84 x 312 cm (32 5/8 x 122 7/8 in), Edition 21 of 36 + AP
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Produced five years after the coup, the early self portraits of Jaar as a young artist are anguished and pained. Jaar used binary computer code to generate nine different poses and facial expressions which range from the neutral to hand gestures to emanate feelings of grief and pain. Approaching Jaar’s self-portrait as a young artist, his collaborator and friend, the Chilean writer Adriana Va ldés has asked three questions: ‘How does a young man, so young, live through such times? How does he manage to see himself? What can he do?’.
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We are proud to present these works here in London, a city that was pivotal in providing refuge for Chileans during the dictatorship. These works will later travel to the Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago as part of the national commemoration of this 50th anniversary on September 11th. This exhibition constitutes the most comprehensive review of Jaar’s work on Chile in recent years, with key historic pieces that established him as one of the most eloquent and uncompromising commentators on state-sponsored brutality and violence to date.Alfredo Jaar: 50 Years Later runs concurrently to another solo presentation in London by Alfredo Jaar, titled IF IT CONCERNS US, IT CONCERNS YOU (18 April – 17 May), at Goodman Gallery. This exhibition, which chronicles Jaar’s forty-year critique of the Western media, features important works which span the artist’s career, from the early 1980s through to new works created in 2022, which have not been exhibited before. It is the largest presentation of Jaar’s Press Works series to date.
