In a suburban landscape created specially for this exhibition by Luciana Lamothe (Mercedes, Province of Buenos Aires, 1975), the works of more than twenty Argentinian artists from different backgrounds and trajectories express the vitality of the ideas that burst onto the scene in response to Argentina’s 2001 social, economic and political crisis. In that pivotal year, a new generation of artists set out to explore the city in search of art that could rise out of the rubble. Memories of the city became matter, experience and stories, giving substance to a poetics of waste and pollution that transforms violence into new ways of inhabiting and making sense of the environment.
At once vandalistic and constructive, Luciana Lamothe’s work functions as a stage for this unprecedented encounter linking the different art scenes that took shape in Argentina over the first decade of the new millennium. The experience of 2001 gave rise to myriad forms of restoration through poetic reinvention, which this exhibition – the title of which is borrowed from one of the songs on Excursiones [Excursions], the cult album released by Rosario Bléfari and her band Suárez in 1999 – sets out to showcase. These are versions of the city that exist somewhere between destruction and reconstruction, and point to rupture and dislocation while, at the same time, seeking refuge in the domestic space and unexpected street encounters. From this viewpoint, an explosion can also be a burst of colour momentarily transforming the serialised landscape of the city, turning the sky fuchsia and giving its domes a rainbow-like composition.
Artists: Nicanor Aráoz, Daniel Basso, Facundo Belén, Belleza y Felicidad Fiorito, Diego Bianchi, Eugenia Calvo, Paula Castro, Cynthia Cohen, Tomás Espina, Mariana Ferrari, Diego Figueroa, Graciela Hasper, Carlos Herrera, Juliana Iriart, Irina Kirchuk, Luciana Lamothe, Martín Legón, Mariana López, Valentina Liernur, Tomás Maglione, Verónica Meloni, Pablo Siquier, Clorindo Testa
Staging: Luciana Lamothe
Curated by: Jimena Ferreiro
Production Coordination: Iván Rösler
Production: María Venancio y Martina Estelí
Portrait of Facundo Belén
Facundo Belén is an artist whose works take many formats: performance, audiovisual media, sculptures and installations. His contribution to the exhibition Cien caminos en un solo día [A Hundred Roads in a Single Day] is a video-performance titled Limpieza profunda [Thorough Clean], in which the artist takes the idea of a “thorough clean” – that ideal promoted by both spiritual marketing and some diet-focused therapies – quite literally. In the piece, Belén ingests a series of household cleaning products, ranging from detergent to glass and floor cleaners. The contrast between the bright, artificial colours of the products and the artist’s pale skin – as well as the increasing and evident discomfort and distress he experiences – make for an uncomfortable, even repulsive image that Belén uses to parody our relationship with consumer goods.
Portrait of Mariana Ferrari
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