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Yucef Merhi, a Venezuelan artist and writer who currently lives and works in New York, once again deals with the idea of subversion with Security (2003) (6), a data-base printed on paper, which is unfolded on one of the walls of the exhibition room. In what Suazo classified as a "ferocious effect", arising precisely from the simplicity of his media, the work shows, in a scattered display, the personal data (names, telephones, addresses, and credit card numbers) of the subscribers of a telephone company, whose systems were meddled with by the artist. Merhi, who in his training as a philosopher and poet has investigated the relationships of language, presents a work displaying his interest in internet-based art, which underlines the importance of new technologies as an aesthetic instrument. At the recent Big Sur exhibition at The Project Gallery in Los Angeles, the artist presented Maximum Security, a work consisting of the hacked e-mails from the personal account of the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez from the time of his candidacy, which were used to line the gallery in the manner of a metaphor or spatial poem. Among the artists preparing reflections on identity were Pietro Daprano, whose photographic series At Discretion (7) questions the significance of heroism and masculinity in the military — the figure of authority and power, traditional in Venezuelan political life — which is parodied on being represented by little plastic soldiers prostrated before a giant phallic figure. Yuri Liscano, with his work Con-ciencia (2002) (8) consists of the Venezuelan flag represented through three bands of radiographs showing body parts. This work, together with that of Daprano, seems to refer to the loss of legal standing of national institutions and to the political violence which has scourged the Venezuelan people in recent months. Following the process on the reflection on identity, the artist Alexander Apóstol (who lives and works in Barcelona, Spain) presented What Am I Looking For? (2002) (9), which was awarded first place in the VI Cantv Salon, and represents the interchange between five young Latin Americans who as residents in the "non space" of a chat room, prepare a portrait of their aspirations and desires. The work presented by Apóstol, who has criticized the pre-conceived images of Latin American masculinity in his photographic series Household Washing, Love is, Polished Resident (10) and W.M Jackson, deals with the concept of landscape and its different levels of reading, the first of which, according to the artist himself, refers to "The fantasy of the Latin American and how this is expressed through the predetermined clichés already known in Europe", together with that other space "in which both stereotypes and communications converge". The empty pedestal or the book are some metaphors grouped around memory as a subject. The Disappearance of Balzac or our Human Comedy (2003) (11) by the artist Diana López is set in the Balzac del Ateneo square in Caracas, where Auguste Rodinís sculpture of the French writer stood until it was removed from the site a short while ago. Based on the disappearance of the monument, López developed the idea of memory in the urban landscape, basing herself on the pedestal as the boundary separating the work from the space — seen now as the confirmation of what is absent — the artist recorded in photographs how the persons and bystanders remembered the sculpture.
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