A celebration of Latin American sculpture Rarely seen works of modern and contemporary art depict multifaceted qualities of the medium

By Mark Jenkins 

November 25, 2022 

Centered on the floor of the front room of the University of Maryland’s Art Gallery are dozens of flip-flops in shades of green, arranged in a fan shape. But Tony Cappelán’s “Mar Caribe” isn’t just a cluster of objects found along a river in the Dominican Republic: On each sandal, in place of the strap that would ordinarily secure one’s big toe, is a loop of barbed wire, symbolizing hostile barriers and borders. The artist has turned cheap, castoff footwear into something harsh and menacing. In this installation, the piece also serves another function: pointing gallerygoers’ feet toward the bulk of “Re-Cast: Sculptural Works From the Art Museum of the Americas.”

The exhibition of rarely seen sculptural works from the downtown museum spans chronologically from 1942 to 2018 and stylistically from formalist to funky. The show was curated by Maryland graduate students Marco Polo Juárez Cruz, Cléa Massiani and Gabrielle Tillenburg, under the direction of professor Abigail McEwen.

Some of the pieces appeal primarily to the eye. Japanese Brazilian Yutaka Toyota interlocks arcs of shiny metal whose curved surfaces serve as sorts of funhouse mirrors. Ecuadoran Estuardo Maldonado aligns glistening, stainless-steel relief forms that shift from darker to lighter colors and from thicker to thinner widths. Slovakian Argentine Gyula Kosice dots a backlighted plastic half-orb with tiny nodes of glowing white, blue or red, suggesting a machine-tooled asteroid or moon. 

There are no realist works, but a few are representational. Nair Kremer, who was born in Brazil to Jewish Austrian parents, plants a grove of seven abstracted wooden trees, or perhaps large flowers, free-standing on steel rods. Chilean Raúl Valdivieso Rodriguez renders the feathered serpent of Mesoamerican myth in greenish cast bronze, streamlining the creature to claw, beak and maw. Haitian Georges Liautaud cut and hammered pieces of iron into the rough body and stark cross of his “Crucifixion.” The anguished sculpture stands at the center of the gallery’s backroom, directly in the rugged path indicated by “Mar Caribe.”