Connected Artwork
Alejandro Fogel has created series of artworks including paintings, installations, prints, videos, photographs and travel performances. Much of his work is stored in sealed boxes waiting to be deteriorated by time and obsolete technologies.
The stories he tells are consumed by the passage of time, often losing relevance and disappearing. His material analog work is fading and becoming only memories, as they are made with consumer products designed to rapidly self-destruct. Others fade slowly, darkened to obscurity.
The following pieces are directly connected with the book Coaching Che Guevara.
Apartment 17
Series of 74 prints, Office Depot Laser Print Paper non-acid-free. Edition: 5
Marianna was born in Bucharest in 1961. She lived with her mother on Strada Eminescu 252, apartment 17. When she was sixteen years old she was kidnapped by the Securitate, the Romanian secret police.
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Incas Road Fragments
Yerba mate and dust, stones, and ceramic fragments from the Incas Road in Northwest Argentina, on canvasJust like the story of coffee, the story of mate (pronounced MAH-teh) is a story tainted with exploitation.
Chief Fogel
Monoprint, Office Depot Laser Print Paper non-acid-free
I came here to show a series of my paintings very much influenced by the Indian cultures of Argentina. I ended up living for a few days on Fogel Street, named after an Indian tribal chief with my same last name.
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The Missing
Series of 22 prints, Office Depot Laser Print Paper non-acid-free. Edition: 5
A series of prints about the Disappeared. Missing signs, photographs. Only their emptiness remains. The prints itself are also disappearing, printed with consumer products designed to rapidly self-destruct.
Re/Place
Street actions, travel performances, videos, hidden objectsRe/Place is a series of travel performances and street actions in which street signs bearing the names of conquerors or ‘discoverers’ are replaced with the names of those they have conquered.
Incas Road, Iowa
Permanent Installation
This Incas Road, made of gravel, earth, yerba mate dust, tree twigs and bits and pieces of pottery, is a trip into the indigenous roots of the Americas. It still is one landscape, struggling yet against its past while attempting to build a peaceful future.
Viseul de Sus
Series of 14 Prints. Edition 1: Iris print on Somerset Velvet rag paper. Edition 2: Staples Laser Print Paper non-acid-free
On May 23 1944, my grandparents Zvi Meir and Blime along with 8 of their 13 children were locked in a packed cattle train car and sent to Auschwitz.
Cueva de las Manos
Walmart Faux Photo Canvas, 40 by 30 in. Edition: 10
I’m in a cave, sitting on the ground, staring at the stone wall painted with llamas, guanacos, snakes, abstractions, and hands.
Incas Road Paintings
Series of paintings over a period of 8 years. Oil on canvas, wood, paper.
That sleepy afternoon I got off the bus in Catamarca in the Northwest of Argentina was a turning point in my life. I understood that there was something else in Argentina beyond European Buenos Aires. I felt the vibration of the landscape, the buried culture bursting from the earth.
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Walking Rumbach Street
Prints, Street Action, Videos
It took me 14 hours by car to get from Sacel to Budapest. It took Moishe more than 2 weeks when he covered the same distance in 1941.
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Walking The Incas Road
Street Actions, Travel Performances, Videos, Drawings, Prints
I had the idea of exploring the Incas Road when I first encountered traces of the actual old system in the Andes. I was in northwestern Argentina with a baqueano, an expert guide. We were drinking mate together and watching his son tending the llamas in the fields. His home happened to be right part of the old Incas Road which is still in use today.
Moishe in Buenos Aires
Monoprint. Iris print on Somerset Velvet rag paper.
Moishe’s world was one of rabbis and yeshivas with no electricity or running water. He witnessed a man landing on the Moon and owned a cell phone, but even in old age he was still the 17-year old Hassidic boy leaving medieval Transylvania.
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Elevator to Barcino
Video
I’m going down in an elevator. The digital display is counting years instead of floors. It stops on 12 BCE. The doors open to a large, dimly lit area, where I get off at the ancient city of Barcino.
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One More Che Guevara
Monoprint of an online image of a photograph
Che Guevara spoke to the world at the United Nations in 1964. That session has been duplicated, just today, several times.
Ladinos of Istanbul
Series of 10 prints. Walmart Faux Photo Canvas, 40 by 30 in. Edition: 10
My Sephardic students in Istanbul spoke Ladino. We used to sit down in a café in the Jewish neighborhood on the European side of the Bosphorus sea by the Galata Tower.
The Temples
Series of 22 silver gelatin prints Walmart Faux Photo Canvas. Edition: 5
It’s 4:30 AM in Cambodia. We are walking in total darkness through a grassy field. We can feel and hear other people gathering in the area. There is a horse next to us. A tiny bit of light is coming from the horizon.