What is Crisis, Dreams, and the Aesthetic Imagination?

"...in this decade there has been a willingness (largely in popular movements and progressive intellectuals) in many Latin American countries to reflect on what it means for a culture to move away from its original territory and to communicate and interact with others."

-Nestor Garcia Canclini

Whenever artists in the Americas meet, there exists an opportunity to extend aesthetics across an abyss of separate identities. The intent if this tri-exhibition, intitled"Crisis, Dreams, and the Aesthetic Imagination", is to bring artists from the United States, Mexico and Chile together to begin to build a bridge between international borders in the Western hemisphere. The title represents themes which have haunted our common past and which reflects hopes for a common future.

The first part of this tri-exhibition focuses on "Crisis" and reflects work by Chicano artists in the United States and artists from the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico. An essay is included to help the viewer to better understand how artists with a common culture, language, and border (but different nationalities) view the concept of "crisis".

Glusberg wrote that "...if the artist abdicates illusion, dream, myth, and utopia, he is abdicating part of his humanity - and his part of humanity." Thus, the second and third parts of the exhibition focus on "Dreams, and the Aesthetic Imagination" as interpreted by the artists from the United States and Chile.

Artists from Colorado present their visions so that we might understand the dreams and hopes present in the synapses of a consciousness embedded in the United States. From a curatorial perspective, an integral part of this exhibition wa sthe presentation of Chilean artists. All of the Chilean artists included in this exhibition were selected because they were willing to work with artists from other countries to achieve a vision embedded in self but committed to a transnational project.

The global community is upon us, and the world is becoming smaller. The aesthetic imagination consists of our ability to link individual isolation as artists with the territorial isolation we experience living in different countriesin the Americas. Hopefully, this exhibition begins a dialogue which will generate other exhibitions that reflect our different national sensibilities but affirm our common humanity.

-George Rivera & Eduardo Chavez