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The history of Pinto mi Raya
Founded by Victor Lerma and Monica Mayer, Pinto mi Raya began as a space to present art projects which did not fit either in museums or commercial galleries.  However, it has turned into many other things.

The gallery as such functioned for three years. During this time we curated different exhibitions in collaboration with other independent spaces from the Colonia Condesa such as Foco, El Unicornio Blanco and Los Caprichos, as well as with the Decroly School. Two of these exhibitions were Neo-Corny: Artists who truly know how to love and Madrecitas: obra de pequeño formato.

Soon after it opened, Pinto mi Raya began turning into a platform from which we launched digital art and conceptual projects. Since then, our goal has been to lubricate the art system.

Thus, in 1991, with Los Caprichos we organized Mimesis Project, one of the first digital art portfolios in Latin America. Twenty five artists participated in this project, among them Gunther Gerzso, Manuel Felguérez and Vicente Rojo. Through the decades projects have continued non stop. Some have been production projects and others have focused on research, among them Aquerotipo, Electrografía Monumental Digital Art on Cotton Paper (EMPA), Peripheral Graphics, La Pala (The Shovel) y Virtual Memory

In 1991 we also began what would turn into the central project of Pinto mi Raya, which is a specialized newspaper clipping service.  Seeing that few books on contemporary art are published in our country, but in Mexico City alone there are 35 newspapers which include art reviews and essays, we decided to bring all this material together. At present the archive includes over 30,000 texts, most of which are essays or reviews.  This chunk of the memory of visual arts in Mexico, has been the starting point for many conceptual art pieces.

Our activities can be divided into projects and services,  although sometimes the distinction isn't clear.

Based on the archive we have developed several services. Raya. Criticism and debate in the visual arts is a compilation we make every fortnight of the essays and reviews on art published during this period, and it includes a listing of all the of all the news and interviews during this period. Important specialized libraries are subscribed to our service, including those of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas de la UNAM, the Biblioteca de las Artes at the Centro Nacional de las Artes, the Casa Lamm, Fundación Jumex, FEMSA and the University of Monterrey. We also provide a service called Egoteca, where we select exactly what our client needs from the newspapers.

With the change of millennium and a decade of newspaper clippings under our arms, we decided to launch a research project which is called Hurgando en el Archivo (Poking through the Archive).  We have compilations on different subjects such as women artists, digital art, photography, installation, public art, art education and performance. One of them is Arte público en el archivo de Pinto mi Raya y Siqueiros en el archivo de Pinto mi Raya which we put together as conceptual art pieces for our project Siqueiros a tres voces, which we presented at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in 2002. Digital y virtual. Textos sobre gráfica digital y artes electrónicas en el archivo de Pinto mi Raya, another of our books, was the basis of Virtual Memory, a piece which brings together our interest in research and in digital art.

On the other hand, as part of Pinto mi Raya we have also made several performances and conceptual art pieces in which our goal has been to develop solutions to different problems of our art system such as: CENIDIAP'S Balcony (1996), A museum's best friend (1998), the virtual magazine La Pala (The Shovel) (1998), Press Conference (1999), the radio program Pinto mi raya: a space where visual arts can be heard (2001-2002) and the distance education workshop For Art's sake which was transmitted by channel 23 during 2002. Although some of these pieces are hard to define, we have simply decided to refer to them as "projects".