The Space Around

(April 21st 2016, New York, NY) Hotel Americano will present its fourth art installation project in conjunction with Frieze Week in New York this spring with The Space Around, a multi-media installation by Emilio Chapela.

The Space Around is a project that reflects on technology, architecture and nature, which Emilio Chapela recorded during a series of visits to Holmdel, New Jersey. The film depicts the passing of time over the course of an entire year as reflected on Eero Saarinen’s former Bell Labs building–now Bell Works–and the Holmdel Horn Antenna in Crawford Hill. Chapela was able to document the particularities of all seasons, including footage recorded during Snowstorm Jonas in January 2016.

Emilio began filming the site in the spring of 2015 and will present the completed work at Hotel Americano during Frieze Art Week, one year later. Chapela, who lives and works in Mexico City, used Hotel Americano as his Manhattan base for his expeditions to New Jersey.

The film installation will take place in the Hotel’s Bar Americano, which, according to Chapela, evokes a 2001: A Space Odyssey feeling that resonates with the visual material of the project. Chapela will transform the space into an intimate film theater aligned with Stanley Kubrick’s aesthetics that will serve as a respite from the stimulating Frieze Art Week. For the lobby of Hotel Americano, the artist will create an installation using artifacts and objects appropriated from the Holmdel building, including a parabolic antenna.

Grupo Habita Founding Partners, Carlos Couturier and Moises Micha note that Chapela’s “visual installation sums up all the elements in which Hotel Americano most strongly believes: our love for architecture, a passion for the movie industry, and the technology which is also key for our industry. It also highlights our commitment to supporting Latin American artists, and celebrating Latin- American culture in New York.”

The project with Chapela marks the development of Hotel Americano’s work year by year withmajor galleries from the Americas and Europe. Additional activations at the Hotel have included an installation of Tobias Rehberger’s Bar Oppenheimer in Bar Americano during Frieze 2013, as well as the rooftop pool being filled with Coca Cola for a live performance piece by Mike Bouchet, in collaboration with Marlborough Gallery also in 2013. In 2014 Hotel Americano presented A Place Occupied by Zero, an installation by Jose Leon Carrillo in collaboration with Proyectos Monclova, and then in 2015 collaborated with Los Super Elegantes to produce a performance at the hotel by Milena Muzquiz in collaboration with Travesía Cuatro.

Chapela is also featured in a solo show, No Pain, No Brain, running concurrently at Henrique Faria Fine Art from April 28 – June 16.

Emilio Chapela worked with the support of Grupo Habita and Henrique Faria Fine Art. And with the generous help of Bell Works, Somerset Development and Nokia Bell Labs.