2017
Bilingual edition, Spanish/English
Texts: César Aira, Sergio Bizzio, Rafael Cippolini, Luis Diego Fernández, Carlos
Gamerro, Inés Katzenstein, Benito Laren, Lux Lindner, Lucía Puenzo, Matías Serra
Bradford, Graciela Speranza, Beatriz Vignoli y Javier Villa
Graphic Design: Eduardo Rey
Translations: Ian Barnett y Kit Maude
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300 pages
Format: 25x20cm
ISBN 978-987- 1358-29-8
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3 dust jackets:
The Bipolar Bear: Mental Disorders in the Large Arctic Mammals. Erik Gundor
The Madí’s Baby: Gyula Paul Ansky
Never Mind The Pollocks: Spitting over Dripping. Jack Lydon
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Far from being a catalogue of the exhibition, Detournalia, staged by the Museo de Arte
Moderno de Buenos Aires in 2014, this artist’s book by Fabio Kacero is a work of art that
grew out of it and withstood the test of time. The ‘territory of detours’ – the artist’s essential
method of creation cyphered in the neologism of the exhibition’s title – intervenes, deforms
and remakes every structural element of a publication: indexes, titles, lists of works,
images, texts, references, epigraphs. Here we find images of Kacero’s works, but also of
spectators looking at images of his works and spectators looking at books and others’
works on other books; texts by a dozen writers, artists and critics talking about the book,
the exhibition, other books by Kacero, and other exhibitions; indexes – a lot – and indexes
of indexes; the designs of the three dust-jackets for the published book appear again within
as works in themselves, along with other unused cover designs and covers of other books;
and even a story by Jorge Luis Borges written out long-hand by the artist in an immaculate
simulation of Borges’s own microscopic hand. Fabio Kacero’s metamorphosis of an art book
in this publication makes it a ‘fractal’ work, where the whole and each of its parts is a pretext
to apply his methods, to try a fresh detour.
‘The concentrated patience of Kacero’s conceptual works can also be found in his stories,
which move on unhurriedly and last for an indeterminate length of time. Patience is an
essential tool for someone who cherishes certain obsessions. It is the repetitions and
variations that give the book its unique form. The scenes echo each other from one story
to another, linking them in different ways, both explicit and surreptitious. Stories by Kacero
may continue in another version of the same story, as if it were his counterpart. Stories as
remakes. This rewriting is the aspect that is most similar to his artistic work. A repetitive
inscription on a smooth surface. Reappearances, doppelgangers, spectres. Memory loans
and exchanged identities. ’
Matías Serra Bradford
