Nicolas Bonilla

Julian Burgos

Esteban Ocampo Giraldo

Juan Uribe

While presenting at the Untitled Art Fair in Miami Beach this past December, I hadn't expected to come across three enticing new artists from South America. We have represented Colombian Esteban Ocampo-Giraldo for some time, and in short order, these four very different compatriots came to make quirky sense as a cross section of the contemporary scene in Colombia.

Juan Uribe's declarative levity in the form of poetic broadsides in Ellsworth Kelly colored frames, straight, concrete conceptualism in urgent, hand-written ink. Nicolas Bonilla's faux archeological conceit, geological surveys of the Amazon basin fetishized into a deluxe Fluxus case--  a handmade ecology of rocks as spirit guide.  Julian Burgos's arch-Baroque crucifixion indulgence in punk pink pencil plays off Ocampo-Giraldo's landscape as stylized frieze: clouds and trees cut from the same melon baller where mother earth reigns supreme. Each artist harkens some kind of history: literary, natural, personal and art historical.

They come together to argue and enhance the suggestion (Uribe's) that matter how much we wish it to be so, art does not love us back. Poems will not clap you on the back for winking through their double intentions. Songs don’t crest because you’re dancing, they’re not listening to you, they’re working. And art… just sits there, without shame, preening, scratching, purring, licking, just like a pet that will never love you. —Scott Zieher

ZieherSmith Pop-Up in The Packing Plant, 507 Hagan Street, Nashville, TN.