FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Micro-State CAPACETE
An exhibition by CAPACETE Entertainment with
GABRIEL LESTER
JEAN-PASCAL FLAVIEN
DUCHA
Accompanying publication with text by Teresa Riccardi
February 9 – March 8, 2008
Opening reception: Saturday, February 9th from 6-8 pm

Friedrich Petzel Gallery is pleased to announce "Micro-State CAPACETE," an exhibition organized by Helmut Batista with the artists Gabriel Lester, Jean-Pascal Flavien and Ducha. A catalogue with interviews of the artists and a text by the Argentinian critic Teresa Riccardi will accompany the exhibition.

This exhibition celebrates 10 years of CAPACETE Entertainment's activity in Brazil and South America. Each artist will present three projects all originally produced by CAPACETE which will give an overview of CAPACETE's insertion into South American contemporary culture.

CAPACETE Entertainment (CAPACETE Entretenimentos) initiated its activities in 1998 (its original names were Espaço P and Espaço Purplex) in an apartment in Rio de Janeiro. For close to ten years, its activities, which aim to initiate, research and document aesthetic, social and political processes in Brazil, have been a part of a long-term interdisciplinary presence in the city of Rio de Janeiro, which remains its home base. Through residencies and international exhibitions and projects, CAPACETE provides a platform for artists, critics, and curators to participate in the historic, urban, topographic, environmental and social context of Rio de Janeiro. It is a laboratory that (re)actualizes Brazilian complexities in relation to both a South American and international context. Rio de Janeiro is a strategic tool to identify, articulate and give visibility to these processes and to further reach a wider, heterogeneous audience. CAPACETE entertainments aims to affect the city by entering into it, transforming it, remapping it, or finding new meanings by revealing it in a different light. All of these projects explore interfaces that occur between city and image (moving or static) or word (written or spoken). They attempt to excavate spaces which may reveal the constant mutation that an urban center undergoes as it oscillates between narrative and place, language and location, fiction and architecture, social universe and public space, politics and collective sensitivity, nature and advancing technology.

CAPACETE Entertainment has produced several projects with different partners, such as the International Rio Film Festival, national and international galleries, institutions and organizations. CAPACETE collaborates on various aspects of the organization, production and exhibiting of art projects with special concerns for and emphasis on South America, including El Basilsico (Argentina), Lugar a Dudas (Bolivia), EiEi (Chile), Hoffmanns' House (Chile), Galeria Metroplitana (Chile), TRAMA (Argentina), DUPLUS (Argentina), among others. The group has developed projects with artists such as Marcos Chaves, Bruno Serralongue, Rubens Mano, Pierre Huyghe, Shimabukuro, Pierre Bismuth, Marssares, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Joachim Koester, Camila Rocha, Eija-Liisa Athila, Ducha, Marepe and others.

The exhibition will be open to the public beginning Saturday, February 9th (with an opening reception that evening from 6 – 8 PM) and will remain on view through March 8th. Friedrich Petzel Gallery is located at 535 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011. For further information, please contact the gallery at info@petzel.com, or call (212) 680-9467.