Argentine artifice - Argentinian painters

Art in America, Sept, 1995 by Alisa Tager

Pablo Siquier (b. Buenos Aires, 1961), like Fuertes, seeks absolute formal precision in his highly wrought graphic compositions. Since the late '80s, Siquier's work has passed through three distinct phases. At first, he used vivid colors to concoct mannered paintings centered on a single large emblem and reminiscent of cryptic mandalas or rococo abstractions. In 1990 he adopted monochrome backgrounds upon which black and white lines constituted image, volume and shadow. Looking at these from across a room, one is almost persuaded that a three-dimensional object protrudes from the canvas. These are not simple plays of illusion, however, but complex compositions which slip through the standard systems of classification. The backgrounds are flat, industrial, light-sucking hues of blue, green, gray and mauve. Some of these later works have a large, simple motif at center, while others are orderly arrangements of a small image exactly repeated. Motifs are very architectonic; many look like derivations of pre-Columbian designs or suggest automobile grilles or ornate architectural detailing. Although these patterns often evoke specific traditions, such as Art Nouveau, Aztec style or 1950s streamline design, all are invented. Siquier's fastidious rendering in part makes the compositions seem tangible and, therefore, referential. Yet the scale is so large (his canvases are usually 59 by 59 or 59 by 79 inches) that context is forgotten and they exist as physical specifics.

Siquier's most recent works are his most complex. The clearly delineated image has all but disappeared. He uses a single color to define the pictorial space - black on light surfaces and white on dark surfaces - resulting in an optical illusion of shifting inside and outside, foreground and background. While some of the esthetic attributes are reminiscent of Op art, these works are not visual games as much as perception puzzles that conjure up the writings of Borges. Like elaborate labyrinths, they lead your eves through circuitous routes which flow round and round, in and out, and then are abruptly terminated, only to immediately resume above or below.

Two other artists, Fabian Burgos (b. Buenos Aires, 1962) and Juban Trigo (b. Buenos Aires, 1965), also use a single hue on a drab monochromatic canvas, but to very different effect. Burgos uses a baupoint pen and thin lines of acrylic or oil to make little circles or tight doodles that fill up the entire canvas. The surfaces are ultra flat; only the obstinate repetition makes the fine lines take on a formal mass. Burgos has also drawn on carbon paper over painted surfaces; the results look like photocopies of paintings in which reproduction has broken down the image. In some recent works, he replaces the allover curves and doodles with zigzags that look like a brain scan repeatedly drawn over itself.

Trigo, like Burgos, straddles a divide between Tpainting and drawing. He paints pastel-colored canvases and then, using charcoal, draws strange and disturbing pictures of children at play. Most of the Idds are only half dressed, but their gender is never certain. Their Umbs are frequently entwined and they wrestle, fondle each other and dig into their own flesh through slits in their skin. Trigo sometimes smudges the charcoal for a more painterly effect, and he often strategically blurs the children's sketchy little faces. Stains on the canvases add to the pictorial distress. His most recent works are more overtly sexual and violent, but they still defy easy deciphering.