Espacios a la Experimentación V
Features Orson Welles' film “F for Fake,” 6 p.m., Contemporary Art and Design Museum, CENAC, Av. 3/5, Ca. 11/15. Info: 257- 7202.

‘A Midsummer Night's Dream'
Performed by the British theater troupe TNT, 7 p.m., Teatro Dionisio, Café Britt, road to Barva, Heredia, 500 m. north, 400 west of Automercado. Info: 277-1600. (see separate story at http://www.ticotimes.net/culture.htm).

Jazz Jam Session
Jazz Café, San Pedro, 10 p.m., www.jazzcafecostarica.com.

Exhibit: ‘Urban Context'
Sebastián Mello and Luciano Goizueta (see separate story)
Through March 29, Galería Amón, Barrio Amón, calle 7, avenidas 9/11, 223-9725, www.amon937.com.

Several shopping centers in Costa Rica are joining the worldwide fight against cigarette smoke, TV's Teletica reported.

Mall owner Grupo Roble has banned smoking from its premises, in step with prohibitions in bars and restaurants, public places and workplaces that have gone into force in countries around the world including renowned smokers' havens such as Italy and France.

The Costa Rican government signed a World Health Organization agreement in 2003 aimed at reducing smoking in the country, which has more than 750,000 smokers, according to the Institute of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse (IAFA).

The aim of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is to reduce an estimated 5 million smoking-related deaths each year.

The Legislative Assembly, however, has yet to ratify the accord.

Bans have made some headway in Latin America in recent years. Argentina, for example, in October 2006 outlawed smoking in Buenos Aires' restaurants, bars, shopping malls and many other closed spaces. Other countries such as Brazil have passed similar laws.

By Alex Leff
Tico Times Staff | aleff@ticotimes.net

A new exhibition by two Tico urbanites in San José's Barrio Amón makes no attempt to play to the green gallery, for which Costa Rica is famous. Instead, artists Sebastián Mello and Luciano Goizueta have chosen the concrete jungle as their landscape of choice.

“I've always lived in the city and I've noticed that the city (here) is a place nobody pays attention to. If they want to do something they like, they get away from the city, going to the mountains or the beach,” noted Goizueta, 25.

“I wanted to salvage the attractiveness of the city. I'm speaking aesthetically, beyond nightlife.”

Both Goizueta and Mello, 29, splash lively color into the urban landscape in their new, almost 30-piece joint exhibit “Contextos Urbanos” (Urban Contexts) at Galería Amón.

“I've always liked to work with vivid colors,” said Mello, who makes silkscreen prints out of photographed images of such scenes as feet beating a crowded pavement in New York's Chinatown. “Cities can get really gray, but then suddenly you can find lots of colors in certain parts,” he said.

Mello prints the scenes over plastic buffing compound, “an industrial material – like working with materials from the city,” he said.

Goizueta also tends toward the louder reaches of the color wheel, though he uses acrylic paint on canvas. He also draws creatures representing Costa Rica's better-known natural side, such as shellfish and plantlife, and crams them into the urban scene, sometimes creating a rather poignant traffic jam.

Raised in San José – Mello by Uruguayan parents and Goizueta by Argentineans – the artists first met at the University of Costa Rica. Since art school their common love of cityscapes has flowered, although this is their first joint venture.

“We both use the concept of the stain,” said Goizueta, pointing to parallels in their work. Mello calls it the “mancha urbana,” an urban stain, which he said partly relates to overpopulation and other city problems that spread and spread.

“We may be a small city,” said Mello. “But now we have the same problems as big cities. We've got urban issues.”

For more information on this exhibition, visit the gallery's Web site: www.amon937.com.

Police yesterday arrested a U.S. citizen in the western San José suburb of San Rafael de Escazú, wanted in his home country for alleged involvement in a lottery con that grossed up to $40 million, the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) reported.

Identified by the Interpol as Severin Marcel Stone, the suspect was getting into a Toyota 4x4 when a combination of U.S. and Costa Rican law enforcement agents detained him at 2 p.m., the Interpol report said.

It was the latest arrest in a con operation, which police believe involved 36 others – many of whom have been arrested on Tico soil. The con consisted of calling victims on the phone to tell them they had won a prize of between $300,000 and $450,000, which required payment of a “security deposit” before the award could be retrieved.

Wanted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Stone resided in Costa Rica, running a business in the San Rafael Mall, the report said.

U.S. officials issued a warrant for his arrest Friday, hoping to extradite Stone swiftly to the United States for trial.