Luis Barragán's Plaza de la Revolución with bench and concrete umbrella. Barragán concrete bench with room for storage. Jose Bedia, Invictus, 1996, at A/B/S Projects. Annina Nosei's booth, with works by Galan, Teresa Serrano and Arturo Elizondo. Megan Williams, Three Seats, 1994, at Christopher Grimes. Mary-Anne Martin, center, on top of things. Jose Clemente Orozco, Still Life, 1944, at Enrique Guerrero. At the fair (from right), Lorna Simpson and Andrea Rosen. A Mexican icon: Posada's Death as a Noveaux Riche Old Lady. Lorna Simpson, Bill Arning and Paolo Colombo. Lola Alvarez Bravo at Throckmorton. A farewell smile: Senegalese curator Eri Camara.

guadalajara buzz by Eduardo Costa As the art world was gearing up for its new fall season, the Mexican city of Guadalajara was playing host to the international cutting-edge art fair Expoarte, Sept. 26-30, 1996. Now in its fifth year, Expoarte is better than ever, with 57 galleries from 13 countries exhibiting work by approximately 400 artists. Most of the work on view was very good. By my estimates, 80 percent of the stuff rated from acceptable to great, while 20 percent ranged from mediocre to depressing--just the opposite of Miami's art fair. And how was this achieved? Well, the organizers were selective, making Guadalajara a curated fair. Plus the site helped, with its airy spaces, cool cement floors and simple white partitions. It also helped that the fair was accompanied by symposia that included several art "big heads." The thinking crowd can be counted to add seriousness and sometimes drama to the event--last year the veteran Italian critic and Venice Biennale curator Achille Bonito Oliva, under heavy attack from the French organizer of Documenta, Catherine David, smashed the microphone against the floor. This year, curator Claudia Madrazo took the microphone to announce that she only cared to speak to three people in the audience, hence the others could leave--and most of them did. And then there was the crowd--a quotient of invited artists, curators with their parallel shows and, of course, the collectors. The host city is right for the event as well. Guadalajara has always guarded its traditions while at the same time investing in what proved to be superb premonitions of the art to come. Remember the great Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco? A native of Guadalajara, he was trusted with huge commissions that he produced in wildly site-specific versions. For instance, Orozco murals rule the walls of the Main Chapel of the Cabañas, an old, fabulous mental hospital turned government building, which served as the reception center for the art fair. As Paolo Colombo, the director of Geneva's Center for Contemporary Art, put it, "They brought me straight from the airport to this incredible art, and they gave me drinks." Instead of benches, the Chapel has large banquettes for people to lie on their backs and look up at the murals. Another Guadalajara native was architect Luis Barragán. Some of his houses from the 1930s are open to visitors, and one of his parks, the Plaza de la Revolución, is an urban oasis that blends tropical vegetation with original benches, fountains and calmly twisting paths. A local poet, Víctor Ortiz, took me to the park. There is a saying in Guadalajara that goes, "The tree that grows up twisted will be bought by Barragán." With this kind of esthetic thinking a commonplace, it's no wonder that Expoarte's new imagination felt right at home. Lodging was in central Guadalajara, near the great plazas and colonial buildings. Coming in by taxi from the airport I saw the famous roses--Guadalajara is also known as the City of the Roses. These large roses are different than any other, seeming to float in mid air, since the bushes have very few leaves. A shuttle bus would take everybody out to the fair in the morning, and bring us all back that evening. On my first commute, I happened to sit next to Lorna Simpson, and 30 minutes of intense conversation followed. She was very happy with her new work (photographs printed on felt, mostly about making love in public places), and we also discussed African religions, family life, gender tensions as they occur among us and in other cultures. The chat was a great example of the camaraderie that permeated the fair experience. As is usual with such events, opening ceremonies for the fair on Sept. 26 were marked by speeches, delivered by Mr. Schmidhuber, who is the Secretary of Culture of Jalisco State, as well as by Pablo del Val, organizer of the fair. At one point I saw the French art star Orlan proudly displaying her scarifications. These embellishments are rather Star Trek, a pair of skin elevations in the form of croissants about three centimeters long each that decorate the area on top and to the sides of her eyebrows. Orlan's work has consisted mostly of radical plastic surgery, in which she has had her face remade to look like the faces of certain classic art works, among them the Mona Lisa. She has the operations photographed and then sells the lacerating evidence. In Japan in the year 2000, Orlan is scheduled to build on her face a flesh and bone nose stemming from mid-forehead and sticking out some 8 centimeters. I met Orlan last year, at my Thanksgiving party, and already she had in mind to celebrate the new millennium with this piece. She honestly believes her work is blasphemous. I don't think the gods are very worried about it, but she should probably be, since she may not survive the many defigurations needed to keep people talking. In any case, Orlan was intelligent and provocative at the symposia, vibrating always with a mixture of talent and despair. As the fair went on, the parallel shows opened. There were several, all of them interesting, and it was great to circulate from one to another. Among these, "Video Faz" curated by Ruben Gallo and Terence Gower, was a remarkable collection of 10 international video self-portraits and, together with Opera's Videofiesta Quebec, Canada, the only specific presentation of the medium at Expoarte. For Paris' Galerie Froment and Putman, flying to Mexico paid big. They sold a couple of small works and an important piece by James Turrell. The piece is a walk-in cabin where you put on a high-tech helmet. Then you manipulate three dials to send flashes of intense blue, yellow and red light into your corneas. Who would buy the optic nerve-stabbing, post-Mondrian device? It seems a Mexican collector did, for an undisclosed, and substantial, amount. Many gallerists reported sales. The Brazilian dealer Marcantonio Vilaca said he would come back next year whether he had any sales or not--and by the end he had closed some sales and said this was the best fair he'd been to. Enrique Guerrero, on the third day, hadn't sold anything but he was sure at least three of his important works would change hands in the next three months, going to people who saw them at the fair. Sandra Gering sold six works at prices between $2,000 and $6,000, and was very happy with the whole thing. And Annina Nosei, with a disarming smile, said she had sold a couple of important pieces and had reserves on a couple more. On the third day of the fair, Nina Menocal, an important Mexican Gallery, had not sold anything. She had very interesting work, and is remarkably charming, but surmised that the many invited collectors were entertained so incessantly that they didn't have any energy left for the art. Other dealers also thought collectors should spend more time looking at the work. OMR, another important Mexican gallery, had sold a few works in the $3,000-$5,000 range by the fourth day. Christopher Grimes from Santa Monica also was happy; he made good contacts with other dealers, and sold five works at prices ranging from $1,500 to $4,000. Andrea Rosen was doing well with "Mexican, European and American collectors," she said, but did not volunteer details. George Adams of New York, Fredric Snitzer of Coral Gables, Fla., and Ramis Barquet from Mexico formed an ad hoc group called A/B/S projects to present work by José Bedia. They said they sold three of the six paintings, measuring 9 x 6 ft., at around $18,000-$25,000 each. In all, dealer's faces were quite relaxed and you could even spot some smiles. Although the fair was about the cutting edge, some galleries showed Latin American masters, to address what is seen as a potential group of powerful local collectors. Enrique Guerrero had a wonderful selection of classics: Diego Rivera's `54 Portrait of Lupita Cruz ($750,000), a really great volcanic landscape by Siqueiros ($60,000), a superb J.C. Orozco ($800,000), a Remedios Varo (not for sale) and a `24 Rodríguez Lozano ($35,000). New York City's own Mary-Anne Martin showed a great, medium-sized Leonora Carrington, solid works by Orozco and Rivera, and three intense and characteristic Gunther Gerzso paintings (prices ranging from $35,000 to $70,000. Throckmorton Fine Arts presented the classics of photography, including works by Lola and Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Tina Modotti and some wonderful period prints about a century old (starting at $250). The symposia took place in a three-day stretch, with morning and afternoon meetings. They were organized by Cuban curator Osvaldo Sánchez. Although I missed some of the meetings, what I caught was quite substantial. Paolo Colombo elaborated on the current crisis for many cash-starved Kunshalles, which do not collect but rather complement the museum role by providing a kind of enlarged atelier for artists. Eri Camara, a curator from Senegal and Mexico, discussed the Disneyfication of culture-- like the Metropolitan with its many boutiques around the world--and multiculturalism as a prescription for the market, since it's not enough to include "the other" in Occidental narration. René Cohelo, director of Amsterdam's Montevideo, made a substantial presentation on media art. Other participants were Lois Keidan (London's ICA), Norman Batkin (Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard), María del Corral (Barcelona's Fundació La Caixa), Bill Arning (writer and curator from NYC), Carlos Aranda (Mexican curator), Ivo Mezquita (Brazilian writer and curator), Olivier Debroise (Mexican curator) and Sabrine Beitwieser (Vienna's EA-Generali Foundation). And what would I buy? A number of things. Among them Mona Hatoum's black-and-white photograph of two feet walking as they drag one boot tied to each ankle (at Chantal Crousel); Lorna Simpsons "Nine Props," an ensemble of lithographs on felt showing nine vases which played minor roles in old photos--subtly feminist and beautiful (at Dorsky); Saint Clair Cemin's small sculpture of a motherly looking mass of hardly shaped marble and another, separated, childlike mass, both connected by a piece of wire undulating from the mother's "breast" to the child's "mouth" (at Ramis Barquet); Willie Doherty's impressive shots of a site that was bombed in Ireland, before the immediate clean-up that always follows (at Flay and Bourgeois); Liliana Porter's photograph of two mini-dolls communicating on a field of nothingness (at Ruth Benzacar); Helio Oiticica's "Metaesquemas" paintings from 1957-58 (at Edelstein); John McCracken's outrageously colored Minimal prism (Froment & Putman); J.F. Herrán's five-foot-in- diameter, thick carpet representing the CIA logo (at Valenzuela y Klenner); Miguel Ángel Ríos' living, red painting of a maguey plant on green color field (at OMR); Valeska Soares' pair of metal feet joined by a long, thick, and red velvet rope (at Camargo-Vilaca); and Ladrón de Guevara's photographs of vanishing ayes (at Nina Menocal.) Other artists with interesting work on view: Uli Aigner, William Anastasi, Luis Benedit, Ashley Bickerton, Sophie Calle, Nicola Constantino, Tony Cragg, Arturo Duclós, Jeanne Dunning, Arturo Elizondo, Julio Galán, Terence Gower, Silvia Gruner, Jane Hammond, Katcho, Robert Kelly, Mike Kelley, Patricia Landen, Laura London, Chelo Matesanz, Iñigo Manglano Ovalle, Cildo Meirelles, Ana Mendieta, Annette Messanger, Yoko Ono, Tom Otterness, Raymond Pettibon, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Cosimo Di Leo Ricatto, Elena del Rivero, Daniela Rosell, Chéri Samba, Julian Schnabel, Kiki Smith, Seton Smith, Valeska Soares, Peter Sandbichler, Teresa Serrano, Raymundo Sesma, Wolfgang Tillmans, Riskrit Tiravanija, Boris Viskin, Jeff Wall, Nahum Zenil and Andrea Zittel. EDUARDO COSTA is a writer who lives and works on the Internet.