por Antonio Mejías-Rentas
Gabriel Orozco
ART TO GO: One of Latin America’s most important contemporary artists is having a retrospective of his work in New York, the first and only U.S. stop on an international tour.
Gabriel Orozco’s self-titled show will be on view through March 1 at the city’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). It includes some 80 pieces — among them drawings, sculptures, paintings and installations.
Among them is the gigantic Matrix Movil, the reconstructed skeleton of a whale found in Baja California that has never been seen outside of Mexico.
Orozco, 47, is the third Mexican artist to have a solo show at MoMA.
Preceding him were two well-known 20th century masters: painter Diego Rivera and photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Following New York, Orozco will travel to Basel, Switzerland, Paris and London.
‘SAY IT’ IN PUERTO RICO: The Puerto Rican Academy of Spanish has launched a quarterly magazine devoted to the way the language is spoken in the island.
The first issue of DILO came out in November and is available online at www.academiapr.org or at select San Juan bookstores. Topics covered include the use of English-language words, internet terminology and the common pronunciaton of the “z” in Puerto Rican Spanish.
In a related item, the works of the late Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez housed at the University of Puerto Rico will be digitalized and made available on the web thanks to an international project launching this month.
The Puerto Rican archives of the Nobel laureate includes as many as 200,000 documents, including many unpublished works. A prominent figure of Spain’s Generación del ’27 literary movement, Jiménez left Spain during the Civil War and lived most of his exile in Puerto Rico. He died in 1958.
A CAPPELLA STARS: The Puerto Rican sextet NOTA that won the NBC competition The Sing Off has signed with Sony/Epic to record a minimum of five CDs.
NOTA won $100,000 after beating 12 other a cappella groups in the televised contest held this month in Los Angeles. The group is made up of singers Johnny Figueroa, Juan Elí Díaz, David Pinto, Edgar Ríos, Ludwig Henderson and José Ángel Rodríguez.
Figueroa, who lives in Los Angeles, found out about auditions for the NBC show and contacted his fellow members in Puerto Rico. Pinto is a sound engineer who works with reggaetón superstar Daddy Yankee, who covered the group’s travel and wardrobe expenses.
ONE LINERS: ’80s funk band Kool & The Gang performed Dec. 20 at a free concert in Havana, Cuba… Actress Penélope Cruz and films Los abrazos rotos, from Spain, and La nana, from Chile, were nominated for Golden Globe awards this month… Nominees for SAG awards include Cruz and the cast of ABC’s Modern Family, among them Sofía Vergara…Veteran Venezuela soap opera star José Bardina died Dec. 25 in Miami at age 70… and British conceptual artist Phil Collins was inspired by telenovelas for the 28-minute video he titled Soy mi madre, a commission by the Aspen Art Museum that contrasts the lives of local residents and Mexican immigrants and is now on view at a London gallery.
