Art in La Candelaria

Frenchman Thierry Harribey in his home/gallery. 

When it comes to art galleries, La Macarena and Chapinero are Bogotá's best known neighborhoods. La Candelaria has long had its art museums, including the Botero Museum, the Museum of Bogotá and La Casa de la Moneda, but few art galleries. But that seems to be changing.

Just a few months ago, Frenchman Thierry Harribey turned much of his remodeled home (just a few doors up from Bogota Bike Tours) into the Neebex art gallery. He's got his second exhibit on right now, featuring the work of Santiago Oliveros, a 19-year-old Bogotano. You've probably unknowingly already seen Oliveros's work on Bogotá walls, as he's also a graffiti artist.

Oliveros gave his show a nonsensical name. 

Money men and industry. 

Scary children. 

The hanging puppets. 

The entrance is on Jimenez Ave's
 south side, beside the small police post
and across the street from
the Olimpica Supermarket. 

Over recent months this nondescript and previously vacant building on La Jimenez, a block and a half up from Plaza Rosario, has been used for informal, somewhat alternative art exhibits, often by students from the nearby Los Andes University. The gallery, in the old Fundacion Teatro Odeon, is called En Obra, or Under Construction, I guess because the building is half-finished - or partly collapsed. This Saturday they'll inaugurate an exhibition by artist Oscar Santillán.

(See also Contemporary Art in Bogotá, held in the same building.)

The museum's 'patio' - maybe this is why they named it En Obra - 'Under Construction'

'I Exist,' a play on 'Exito' or 'Success,' the name of a local supermarket chain. 

Sofía Mira TV (Sophia Watches TV), by Alexandra Viteri.

Los Andes University itself has this sunnier and more conventional gallery space on the ground floor of its new Santo Domingo building, off of the upper end of Jimenez Ave. (Don't leave your bicycle parked on the sidewalk, tho. I did, and emerged to find it moved across the street, with a neighborhood woman standing by it, holding my dog. The guards had taken alarm because it might have contained a bomb. Fortunately, this woman recognized my dog and intervened. Many more bombs are placed in cars than on bikes. Are they equally paranoid about cars? I doubt it.)

The current exhibit is 'Six Decades of Art by Margarita Lozano, an artist of fine poetic content.'

The view from the gallery's window of Bogotá's Eastern Hills, and the slums in front of them. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours