The 1960s and 1970s were a watershed time in art history. If contemporary art practices had isolated early manifestations in the 1950s, they expanded internationally in the following decades, and a new scene emerged where multiple artistic explorations got their presence. Artmedia Gallery has organized the current exhibition as a tribute to those germinative and vigorous years, gathering the photographic work of Peter Emanuel Goldman and Rolando Peña.

There are at least three geo-cultural reasons for including both artists in one exhibition: first, in some of those years, they worked in New York simultaneously; second, they also lived in Greenwich Village, being active members of the extended community of artists and writers established there; and third, they shared several friends and acquaintances. 

However, most importantly, there are at least three artistic reasons for doing so: one, they were innovative artists and participated in the art transformations of that time; two, they used photography as a tool for their creative explorations; three, their artworks resonate today and look intelligent, fresh, and sensitive as if they were made recently. In front of their images, you can immediately realize that you know these guys and their worlds.

Both artists are very different, and their artistic visions are distant from one another, regardless of their shared commitment to new understandings and constructions of images and artistic discourses. 

Goldman was a famous underground filmmaker in the 1960s. His fiction and documentary films are programmed in cinematheques and have been incorporated into significant movie collections. His photographs in the exhibition, taken around the mid-sixties, are connected with his cinematography inquiries marked by the influence of the French "nouvelle vague" and portray the experiences of him and his close friends in searching for a sense of life.

Peña, then a dancer, an actor in underground movies, a practitioner of happenings, a performer in visual art events, and an explorer of the meaning of photography, was everything of that when he entered the photomaton (photo booth) and created a mini-drama connected with his emotional, political, social, and cultural preoccupations. His interest in breaking the borders between art and life went ahead when, in several collages, he combined historical engraved studies of perspective (and art history problem) with his spontaneous and living photomaton portraits. With these strategies, his use of photography was affiliated with conceptual art practices.

About the artist

Peter Emanuel Goldman (New York,1939) made several films in the sixties, such as Echoes of Silence (1964), Pestilent City (1965), The Sensualists (1965), and Wheel of Ashes (1968). He worked as a journalist and a writer of international affairs. An LP record with his songs was launched in 1975. In 2015, he presented two new creative projects: his first novel, Last Métro to Bleecker Street, and his first personal photo exhibition at ArtMedia Gallery in Miami.

Rolando Peña (Caracas, 1942), also called El Príncipe Negro, contributed to the definition of contemporary Latin-American art in the 1960s and the 1970s when living in New York. He has exhibited internationally and received different awards. Peña exhibited at the Venice Biennial in 2008 and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009. in 2022, he published his trilingual book Welcome to My Art World. His work, produced until today, is part of current exhibitions and artistic events from New York to Madrid, Miami, and Caracas.

About the curator

José Antonio Navarrete (Cuban-Venezuelan, based in Miami) is a critic, researcher, and independent art and visual culture curator. He is in charge of the ArtMedia curatorial program and participates in several international projects as a curator or writer contributor.

About the gallery

Artmedia Gallery was founded in 2012. With a location in Little River, Miami, Florida, the gallery has the mission to exhibit and promote contemporary art based on photography and video practices. One of the gallery’s central objectives is to explore the vast possibilities of the expanded notion of art through media technology.