Juan Araujo

Juan Araujo: Examining elements of modern and postmodern culture through art

Juan Araujo was born in 1971 in Caracas, Venezuela and since 1998 has been including appropriations of familiar elements of modern and postmodern culture and environment into his works. The Venezuelan artist started by creating paintings that studied the history of art by reproducing artists’ work found in books, catalogues and online. Over the last few decades, Araujo has intensely investigated the history of Western culture, art history and modernism in his practice.
Due to this study and replication of the symbols of culture and modernism that surround us, his works provide a complex network of connections and references. They often point our attention towards well-known architects like Luis Barragán, Pancho Guedes, Burle Marx and Lina Bo Bardi or artists like Josef Albers, Mark Rothko and Jorge Molder.
After Araujo moved to Portugal from Venezuela his interest in the development of European modern and postmodern architecture deepened. He became fascinated with how these ideas arrived in Latin America to influence the development of 20th Century Latin American architecture.
His work is found in public collections including Tate, London, UK; Museum of Modern Art of New York, New York, USA; Jumex Collection, Mexico City, Mexico; Inhotim Center for Contemporary Art, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Art Now International Collection, San Francisco; Fundación Mercantil, Caracas; Cisneros Collection, Caracas and the Berezdivin Collection, San Juan.

Artists

Adel Abdessemed Etel Adnan Ai Weiwei Leila Alaoui Juan Araujo Kader Attia Barbana Bojadzi Daniel Buren Cai Guo-Qiang Alejandro Campins Iván Capote Yoan Capote Loris Cecchini Elizabet Cerviño Chen Zhen Nikhil Chopra Marcelo Cidade Carlos Cruz-Diez Jonathas de Andrade Berlinde De Bruyckere Leandro Erlich Carlos Garaicoa Osvaldo González Antony Gormley Gu Dexin Shilpa Gupta Subodh Gupta Carsten Höller Eva Jospin JR Ilya & Emilia Kabakov Zhanna Kadyrova Kan Xuan Anish Kapoor André Komatsu Jannis Kounellis Julio Le Parc Luis López-Chávez Jorge Macchi Ahmed Mater Cildo Meireles José Mesías Sabrina Mezzaqui Moataz Nasr Rudi Ninov Hans Op de Beeck Ornaghi & Prestinari Giovanni Ozzola Susana Pilar Michelangelo Pistoletto Qiu Zhijie Tobias Rehberger Arcangelo Sassolino Manuela Sedmach Serse Kiki Smith Nedko Solakov Marta Spagnoli José Antonio Suárez Londoño Hiroshi Sugimoto Sun Yuan & Peng Yu Ana Maria Tavares Pascale Marthine Tayou Armando Testa Nari Ward Sislej Xhafa José Yaque Zhuang Hui

Juan Araujo: Examining elements of modern and postmodern culture through art

Artists