Miami Biennale
Miami Biennale Events
Miami Biennale Inaugural Exhibition:
Beyond the Erotic. From the Collection of Milagros Maldonado
December 1st, 2010 to June 30th, 2011


Essay on Permanence


Flows


Invention of Place


Erotic Instinct

Beyond the Erotic: Essay on Permanence

Everything in these portraits seems to be made to last. Firstly, they are printed on an extended physical framework, which separates them from many others which are currently executed only for an ephemeral existence in a digital format. Secondly, the pose, the principal mode of representation used in the portrayals, capably enhances the possibility that the portraits will exceed the temporal limits of their subjects’ own lives, that is, that they will live on and beyond their time.

Everything in these portraits seems to be made for individualization. No more evidence is needed than the productive and occasionally tacit agreement made at some moment between the subject portrayed and the photographer in his authorial role. In this regard, it would not be amiss to observe that the resources used to singularize the subject being portrayed always seek to satisfy, at the level of representation, a condition that would be impossible outside its purview: the eternity of the individual subject faced with the ambiguous destiny of negation and the survival of the species.

Claudio Abate Claudio Abate Claudio Abate Leo Matiz Manuel Álvarez Bravo Lola Álvarez Bravo
Victoriano de los Ríos Hernán Díaz Seydou Keita Seydou Keita Seydou Keita Seydou Keita