This large-scale project created for the entrance hall of the Museo Moderno forms a gateway to the 2022 exhibition programme, Un día en la tierra [One Day on Earth]. With Órbita cromática [Chromatic Orbit], Cristina Schiavi extends her role in the exhibition, Vida abstracta [Life in the Abstract], which is located on the first floor of the Museum. Since the late 1980s, Schiavi has been developing her output across painting, sculpture and video. These disciplines allow her, on the one hand, to construct a language of her own to expand the possibilities of abstraction and, on the other, to combine her research into space and colour theory.
The all-enveloping way of intervening in the architecture and the creation of a circular composition are inspired by the work Hacia el infinito II [Towards Infinity II] (1977–78) by Ana Kozel, an artist from the Museo Moderno’s collection who had a long career grounded in the study of astronomy stimulated by planetary forms and orbits. Using one of the earliest computer design programmes, CorelDraw, which she has been working with since the 1990s, Schiavi creates a composition of geometric forms, which she then turns into a mural. Chromatic Orbit has mapped out a cosmic space that transforms the museum’s circuit.
Curated by: Francisco Lemus and Clarisa Appendino
The Chromatic Orbit Exhibition Factory
We invite you to discover a new episode of La fábrica [The Factory], which discusses behind-the-scenes aspects of the exhibition Órbita cromática [Chromatic Orbit] These accounts by artists Cristina Schiavi and producer Javier González King allow us to appreciate the contributions made by each area during the processes of conceiving and producing the exhibition. Órbita cromática is one of the eleven different exhibitions that are part of Un día en la tierra [One Day on Earth], the Museo Moderno’s 2022 programme. It takes place in the common areas of the entrance hall and first floor.
Portrait of Cristina Schiavi
Due to her interest in architecture and design, in the mid-1990s Cristina Schiavi began to draw using the first computer illustration programmes that were released, such as CorelDRAW. She began to integrate synthetic geometric forms made of simple, even anachronistic materials such as wood and tiles into her paintings, objects, and sculptures. Working from the spatial perspective initially introduced by artist and art critic Germaine Derbecq in her painting Juana, Schiavi constructed her own provisional architecture that has roots both in this painting and in Martha Boto’s work, Estructura óptica [Optical structure]. Recently, Schiavi has been an active member of the feminist art collective Nosotras Proponemos, which seeks to raise awareness of female artists in the history of Argentinean art.