In this exhibition, the great Argentinian artist Eduardo Basualdo (b. Buenos Aires, 1977) invites us on an imaginary journey through the profundities of the human mind. Through dozens of drawings, he generously shares his researches into the power of the gaze both as a constituent act in the process of human development and a performative act transforming life – or, more specifically, human relationships. What is the sea that inhabits us like? Who infest our abysses? How do we visualise such images? In Pupila [Pupil], the artist shares his extensive research process – which he refers to as ‘a process everyone could do!’. With these words, he invites the audience on a fascinating journey of introspection.
Major catastrophes have the capacity to bring down the walls – or membranes – that separate one person from another, and the inner from the outer world. The artist’s eye turns outward to contemplate the same figures that had, until then, nestled only in their nightmares, as if the caverns of their brain could no longer contain this malignant seething. It is then they understand that these images do not belong entirely to them, that they arise out of the atavistic background of all the foregoing generations who bequeathed us the froth of their dread. The inability to know which way one is looking brings with it the most insidious of torments. To exit this unreality, the artist sets it down on paper: in ink, pencil or charcoal, traces signs that will not be erased before being deciphered, like the writing in the water of dreams, traces which can be looked at and looked at again, and which others will perhaps look at, too, and understand even better than they do. The future comes knocking at the door. The reward will not be to awaken from the nightmare, but merely the paltry but precious power to distinguish what is nightmare from what is not.
Curator: Victoria Noorthoorn, in collaboration with Alejandra Aguado and Clarisa Appendino
