Buenos Aires: Crisis and Rebirth
Xil Buffone and Eduardo Costa
Sometimes art blooms
in poverty, like some plants that refuse fertilizers, opting for their natural
diet and a genuine growing rate. A somber political and financial picture in
Argentina has doubled the creative response with the visual arts, the movies,
music and the performing arts going into a good two years of renewed vitality.
Through the nineties
there were lots of shows with corporate sponsorship and foreign semi-blockbusters
were offered to the public, at least in Buenos Aires, the capital. After December
2001, the banks refused to allow their clients to withdraw their money, the president
resigned, the country defaulted on foreign debt (of outrageously high interest,)
and an interim government was installed by Congress, most were indignant, flabbergasted,
paralyzed, and a wave of new migrants flocked to European countries. The arts
were stunned as well, a brief vacuum followed, and then the reaction came.
Two years after
the peak of the crisis we can see how the imagination has been rerouted into
healthier directions. This is not to recommend financial disaster as a tonic
for the arts, rather to point out that art history does not run parallel to financial
or political developments. In Buenos Aires, there is now very little money, taste
does not take hints from foreign hip, introspection, reevaluation and fresh forms
of not funded expression are the way. A network of artists-curators-critics is
reestablished, and sensual and intellectual extremism is allowed.
Not only the artists—who
have historically been able to show superb indifference to wealth, but also curators,
museum people, and collectors have embraced the cause of art and decided to breathe
life into it. The art and the sales were strong at the two most recent editions
of the Buenos Aires Art Fair, museum shows are sometimes fascinating and there
is a strong alternative activity which has given birth to new exhibition philosophies
and venue formats.
Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art (MAMBA) opened the season with several simultaneous
shows. Alfredo Prior, a talented Argentine painter in his forties presented a
retrospective of works between 1982 and 2002. Well known are his large oils on
canvas of Teddy Bears from the eighties, renditions of subtle feeling and drama
as expressed through slight changes in the toy’s face and surrounding atmosphere.
To read the history of painting is to read the history of humanity declares Prior
in the catalog. Other works in the exhibition were graphite drawings where the
artist showed the tribulations of a Chinese guy in Rome, infinitely lively and
delicate a2dventures assigned to his imaginary character. In Prior’s work,
has written Monica Poggio, everything seems to be lacking meaning, thus allowing
for the real word, the subconscious mind, to step in
Also at MAMBA Colombian
artists Oscar Muoz, Miguel Angel Rojas and Jos Alejandro Restrepo showed new
work, as did Swiss photographer Gian Paolo Minelli. Muoz furthered his investigation
of video portraiture on innovative supports, Restrepo presented videos on three
big screen with narratives framed by the Colombian forest and Rojas, using his
own technique of skillfully applying minute dots of coca leaves to the walls,
draw a small replica of Liechtenstein’s iconic RATTATTAT painting of firing
guns, and spelled out the title of Hamiltons Why Are American Homes So… on
about 25 feet of white wall. As to Minelli, by means of his photographs he described
an abandoned jail in Buenos Aires, empty of the inmates though still rich in
vestiges of their presence. Minellis camera writes Mnica Poggio, highlights features
unseen by the usual aye, revealing a narrative that shows the place of the absence.
MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires,) presented Selections of
the Cisneros Collection, a show which originated in Brazil at Sao Paulos Museu
de Arte Moderna and traveled first to the MAM in Rio de Janeiro. The Cisneros
Collection is the most extensive and the smartest private selection of key works
in the Latin American universe. Curated by Ariel Jimnez, works by Albers, Max
Bill, Mondrian provided context for an astonishing presentation of the finest
and most original geometric developments to have stemmed from the abstract current
which heralded contemporary painting by the first decade of the XXth Century.
A continuation of the Cubist/ Constructivist tradition, excellent works included
those by Jess Rafael Soto, Joaqun Torres Garca, Toms Maldonado, Cruz Diez, Gego,
Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Hlio Oiticica, Willis de Castro, Waltercio Caldas, Victor
Grippo, and Eugenio Espinoza among others. This show should travel to Europe
and the US.
Other simultaneous
MALBA shows were a selection of the dazzling permanent collection with marvelous
examples by Tarsila de Amaral, Maria Martins, Berni, Frida Kahlo and many other
Latin-American masters. There was also a show which paid attention and homage
to the Latin American avant gardes in Europe. Astonishing and rarely seen examples
of works by Norah Borges, Torres Garca, Pablof Curatella Manes, Emilio Pettoruti,
Rafael Barradas and several others in a display of early pictorial irreverence
and skill, curated by Marcelo Pacheco and Victoria Noorthoorn.
In the meanwhile, the well established Galera Ruth Benzacar, the leading Argentine
venue run by founders daughter, Orly Benzacar, presented op artist Rogelio Polesello
who in a recent, gigantic mural for Buenos Aires Pistarini Airport added teeth
to geometric abstraction. Polesello showed preparatory drawings and other works
related to his mural, as well as some charcoal drawings under heavy acrylic from
which chunks had been scooped out to generate a space of morbid and playful reflections.
Eduardo Costas
own performance plus show opened the same day at Benzacar. Several 3-D paintings
of big fruits (a watermelon, a 24 x 10 x 12 inch squash-like fruit) some smaller
fruit, two monochchromes, a portrait, and a fresh ostrich egg. The volumetric
acrylics were first presented whole, then cut open to reveal the inside. As the
artist carefully works the interiors (the green watermelon becomes red inside,
and so on) the cutting of the paintings was a revelation. The climax was the
opening of the fresh egg whose contents, made of liquid acrylic medium plus a
ball of fresh yellow pigment, poured as yolk and egg white into a dish.
Then there was
the long-term installation of Marta Minujin at MAMBA. The remarkable Minujin
has made a gigantic steel statue (about 40 Ft. tall) of a woman in usual clothes,
the representation of a female prototype which seems to describe all women and
is installed in one of the patios of the museum. I still do not know why an idea
this basic and beautiful has not yet occurred to any of the artists so superbly
promoted and funded in rich countries.
Jorge Gumier Maier,
artist and curator, showed the work of Alfredo Battistelli, a naif, recently
deceased and fairly unknown artist, at the Rojas gallery of the University of
Buenos Aires. The works are simply alive, the result of natural genius by a self-taught
artist who didnt try art until retirement and then excelled at it . At the Museo
de Arte latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) Gumer Maier curated also Nahuel
Vecino and the young Sandro Pereyra. Of the two large scale sculptures by Pereyra,
The
Bridegroom is a
polyester self portrait where the artist is shown naked with the grooms suit
painted on the skin and lots of rice all over like sesame seeds on bread. Vecino
instead is a contemporary painter of war scenes that feature the mutilated bodies
of combatants and semi naked women on ponds.
Norberto Gmez, once a Benzacar artist, had an important show with Maman Fine
Arts. He presented big polyester sculpture frequently representing revolting
meat cuts and grooved on scale changes that made you wonder if the stakes were
cow, dinosaur or hummingbird. The soft resin bowels made for some divine sculpture.
A super Paul Tek, Gmez seems to want to nauseate the audience into vegetarianism
while displaying a virtuoso menu of sculptural feats.
Innovation rather
than shock is well represented in the three main alternative spaces, artist run
venues focusing on contemporary art. The three like to mix different generations
and aesthetics, and to organize exhibitions in their own and other spaces. Sonoridad
Amarilla bets on an integrated experience of poetic, sensorial and communal substance.
Like an art disc jockey, the space integrates traditional visual arts with music,
video, dinners, and psychedelically flavored tecno art.
Galera Braga Menndez-Schuster features a post-conceptual, pictorial profile.
Many of the works exhibited are group installations or works resulting from communal
collaboration. Also frequent are panels on criticism and other forms of theoretical
discourse. Belleza y Felicidad features as well very low prices on original art
with witty and nostalgic overtones. The model of the high school fair seems to
inspire their format which has grown in refinement and retro appeal. They also
pursue an ambitious and totally alternative publication program.
Openings at the
Museo de Bellas Artes and the Palais de Glace, Galera Luisa Pedrousos presentation
of three young and talented artists, Palatina with a show of classic Nigro were
other highlights of the seasons opening. By the time one of the writers of this
article had to leave Buenos Aires after a very busy and rewarding month, a lot
was coming up we could hardly keep up with. We hope there is a next time soon.
