Argentine artifice - Argentinian painters

Art in America, Sept, 1995 by Alisa Tager

Buenos Aires can be an overwhelming place. Bit is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world according to recent U.N. figures, and it includes more than one third of Argentina's population. Shaped by wave after wave of immigration from Europe, the people, culture and architecture are eclectic in the extreme. Walking through the city's streets, one experiences a constant sense of deja vu. One barrio feels like a section of Paris., but turn the corner and you're in what seems a duplicate of Madrid. Round the bend and it appears that you've been beamed to Rome. (Argentine Spanish has the lilting articulations of Italian and is infused with "Itallianisms.")

After decades of political instability and institutionalized violence, Buenos Aires conveys an air of melancholy. Little more than a decade ago, this beautiful and vibrant city was still under a brutal dictatorship. Intellectuals and "subversives," plucked from the tables of the many pleasant cafes by the military, joined the ranks of the "disappeared." This is a city of bizarre juxtapositions and jarring revelations. The literature of Borges and Cortazar does not seem so surreal here, merely part of the strange reality which constitutes daily life.

This complex and changing environment has been stimulating to young artists, several of whom are the subject of this article. Amid the settled galleries and major museums is a vigorous realm of emerging artists and a number of spaces, both new and established, that show them. The 16,000-square-meter Centro Cultural Recoleta welcomes more than 2,000 visitors a day. Under the directorship of Miguel Briante, who died in a tragic accident last winter, the Centro staged national and international shows of modern and contemporary art. Now, led by Diana Saiegh, it is trying to find a new direction within the same basic constructs. A few years ago the Centro presented a group of artists associated with the smaller and "edgier" Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, which is the cultural hub of the University of Buenos Aires. Rojas artistic director Jorge Gumier Maier (also a painter whose work will be discussed below) has been organizing shows of unknown and under-known artists since 1989. After the exhibition at Recoleta, Rojas, for years an underground showcase, began to emerge as a more recognized venue. Rojas has recently opened a new photography wing. Under the guidance of Alberto Goldenstern, it will begin a regular exhibition schedule of contemporary photography by unfamiliar artists.

Several who have shown at Rojas have recently been picked up by Galeria Ruth Benzacar, the city's premier commercial space. Formerly a gallery of older, established figures, Benzacar has begun to exhibit younger artists in a series of group shows and has a growing stock of new works in the back room. Located at the end of Calle Florida, in one of the city's most fashionable commercial districts, Benzacar is next door to the adventurous Instituto de Cooperacion Iberoamericana (ICI). Laura Buccellato, the ICI's prescient director, has given first shows to many of those who now stand at the forefront of the lively art seene. The artists, always presented in pairs, are given free rein to create exhibitions, installations or performances. The ICI, which has a video department and a substantial archive of slides, books and catalogues, has provided a consistent schedule of interesting art from Argentina and Spain (its charter specifies exchange between the two countries). In addition, the Fundacion Banco Patricios, a private institution, has presented several group exhibitions of young and emerging artists. Centro de Arte y Communicacion (CAYC), founded by Jorge Glusberg, is now run by his son, Gaspar. CAYC has an active exhibition schedule with an emphasis on the more established, but sometimes includes younger people in group shows, usually in juried exhibitions and salons. (Jorge Glusberg is now director of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, where he is implementing a program of solo shows by living artists, beginning in 1996 with a large retrospeetive exhibition of the work of Guillermo Kuitca.)

As in the U.S., there is no prevailing tendency or school within the increasingly dynamic young Buenos Aires art scene. Painting, sculpture, photography and installation coexist in group shows, and several practitioners work in more than one medium. Individual artistic output is as varied as the city itself. Still, some artists demonstrate a loose esthetic cohesion or share certain technical or formal attributes. Although the works of Jorge Gumier Maier, Marcelo Pombo, Rosana Fuertes, Pablo Siquier, Fabian Burgos, Julian Trigo and Miguel Harte are thoroughly idiosyncratic and highly personal, they might loosety- be grouped under the term "nonpainting," which has lately been bandied about in the U.S. Some of them paint mechanical-looking surfaces, others collage, and others assemble materials to create something that looks like a painting but uses no paint at all. The surfaces may be as intriguing as the compositions, and there may be a tension between decorative flourish and formal rigidity.