The Hecho en Buenos Aires Art Workshop is a space of transformation. Each of its artists is also a vendor of Hecho en Buenos Aires [Made in Buenos Aires], which has, for twenty-one years, been providing opportunities for people in vulnerable situations to earn a decent living by selling the magazine. The Workshop allows the artists to put aside the state of daily alert they live in and focus on the creation of urgent and necessary works. Each work becomes pure present, embodying concerns, loves, searches and convictions. Américo Gadpen – a former student of the master Enio Iommi – and his colleagues welcome the artists every Thursday. They encourage them constantly in an intense labour to seek – and find – that precious state of mind, the creative state, where the imagination – the essential driver of human development – can play out in freedom. There, in the workshop, trust is built: Hecho’s trust in its artists, and each artist’s trust in themselves and their own creative powers.
El ojo interminable brings together works by eight very different artists from this workshop in the heart of San Telmo. These works all share the same power of enunciation: they speak out loud, they speak out clear, saying here I am, present, with all my lifeforce, to assert the importance of my convictions, my desires and my worldview. Each work is a condensation of urgencies, sincerity, concerns and stories of their own, stemming from a deep belief in the power of art as a vehicle for inclusion and transformation.
This exhibition is a celebration of the start of the collaboration between the Museo Moderno – which reaffirms its project to build a museum for all, federal, inclusive and accessible – and Hecho en Buenos Aires, the social enterprise and self-managed magazine created by Patricia Merkin (1960–2020), whose mission is today continued by her generous team. Together the Museo Moderno and Hecho en Buenos Aires strengthen their cause to promote innovative and creative artists, works and ideas in pursuit of social and cultural integration.
Artists from the Hecho en Buenos Aires Art Workshop: Alberto Díaz, César Ferreira, Jorge de Mendonça Gaziba “El Colo”, Zulema Razzotti, Helvio Rivero y Hornos, Fabián Tanferno, Zulma Villafañe, Wilson Yogurto
Curated by: Victoria Noorthoorn in collaboration with Américo Gadpen and Jorge Ponzone