HERRERA BUITRAGO MARIA MERCEDES
Conceptual art in Colombia can be defined as an art of participation and information transmission first developed in the mid-1960 by professionals of diverse formations: architects, musicians, lawyers, and designers. Art historian Herrera Buitrago presents an historical research that closely follows the life of Gustavo Sorzano (b. Colombia 1945) between 1964 and 1985, and explores an important set of participation events and graphic series, that because of their nature of "open work" present today the possibility of reinterpretations and new implementations. Additionally the present text analyzes those actors until now unexplored by the historiography on the subject, including live music, Rómulo Polo, Hernando González Arrázola, Gastone Bettelli, whom, like Sorzano, were outside of what the author defines as the institutionalization of conceptual art in Colombia. "From the experience of Sorzano in the Colombian context, and especially of its reading in the great works of the 20th century, such as "The Large Glass" by Marcel Duchamp, we contemplate a redefinition of the roles of art in Latin America in the decade of the seventies, especially based on the communication of the processes of production and aesthetic reception. Communication is what differentiates the conceptual artists of this part of the hemisphere from their counterparts from different geographies or from a remote past." (Our translation) --P. 17.
