Ticio Escobar, with a preface by Marek Bartelik and an introduction by Adriana Almada
Translated by Christina Mac Sweeney

Paperback: 298 pages

Publishers: AICA Press, AICA Paraguay, and Fausto Ediciones, 2013
in association with Ridinghouse, 2014

Ridinghouse
46 Lexington Street
London W1F 0LP, UK
info@ridinghouse.co.uk
tel: +44 (0)20 7734 9008 (new)
mob: +44 (0)77 4864 2716
ridinghouse.co.uk

This bilingual edition inaugurates a series of books by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA International) devoted to recipients of AICA International’s Prize for Distinguished Contribution to Art Criticism.

Paraguayan Ticio Escobar has been an incisive commentator on the transformations of contemporary art for more than 30 years.  His investigations into the connections between the art of indigenous peoples and contemporary art have won him numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Prince Claus Prize, and the Bartolomé de Las Casas Award.  Writing in the preface, AICA International President Marek Bartelik describes Escobar’s writings as a form of “textual collage” that maps the possibility of communicatingas “individuals looking out towards the infinite while carefully looking at art right in front of us.”

Escobar’s essays appear in this volume in the original Spanish and in Christina Mac Sweeney’s elegant English translation.  They are arranged into four thematic sections:

 Art Beside Itself
 The Incomplete Frame
 The Unrepeatable Appearance of Distance
 The Incomplete Frame

Each charts what Adriana Almada describes in her introduction as Escobar’s understanding of contemporary art’s “symbolic capacity to disrupt the flow of events and install a space outside of time that restores humanity to a sense of wholeness.”

The Invention of Distance /  La invención de la distancia is distributed by AICA International. To purchase, inquire to aica.office(@)gmail.com.  Purchase price is € 20.00 (or the dollar equivalent on the day of purchase), plus shipping.