Roberto Jacoby (Buenos Aires, 1944). Son of a family of immigrants who arrived in Argentina fleeing Nazism, Roberto Jacoby was born in Buenos Aires, completed his secondary studies at the National School and studied sociology at the University of Buenos Aires. Since he was a child he has been attracted to art. In the mid-sixties, with his painting studio partner Ricardo Carreira, he began to frequent the Bar Moderno, a meeting place for the most prominent artists of the time. In 1965 he participated in the Braque Prize and in the exhibition Noé + Collective Experiences, organized by Luis Felipe Noé at the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires. That same year he presented the installation Living here at the Guernica gallery, for which he moved his home and workshop to the exhibition rooms and for 24 hours. In 1966 he won a prize at the XXVI Art Salon of Mar del Plata with a sculpture that refers to the Vietnam War and participated in the group exhibition Homenaje al Vietnam organized at the Van Riel gallery. Invited to participate in Plastics with Plastics at the National Museum of Fine Arts, he does so with a Model of a Work, a structure of Styrofoam spheres and plastic human figures, accompanied by a text that indicated that the object was not the work but the mental construction of the spectators by modifying their scale. Between 1966 and 1967 he produced the first experiences of “mass media art”, a genre created together with Eduardo Costa and Raúl Escari based on a manifesto. In July 1966, the three artists executed their founding work entitled Total Participation or Happening for a Deceased Wild Boar, consisting of sending a report to the press about a non-existent happening, which some media published as an action actually carried out. That same year, Jacoby and Costa carried out the First Audition of Works Created with Oral Language at the Torcuato Di Tella Institute, a broadcast of sound recordings taken in the streets presented as sound poetry. They also participate in the First Festival of Contemporary Forms or Antibienal, the exhibition organized by Jorge Romero Brest, in parallel with the III American Art Biennial of Córdoba. In 1967, Jacoby traveled with Oscar Masotta to New York and performed the action Mao and Perón, a single heart within the framework of the Be In hippie meeting in Central Park. The following year he participated in Experiences ’68 with Message in Di Tella, an installation that includes a panel with a text that questions artistic institutions and a teletype machine that reports on the latest political events. That same year, together with the Grupo de Vanguardia de Rosario and other artists from Buenos Aires, he joined the work collective that gave life to Tucumán Arde (1968), a counter-information experience that was presented at the Rosario and Buenos Aires headquarters of the CGT of the Argentines, although the last one is closed immediately. During the 1970s he formed the activist group Agitación y Propaganda with Beatriz Balvé, Octavio Getino and Antonio Caparrós, which held clandestine screenings of the film La Hora de los Ovens (1968) by Fernando Solanas and Getino, and published the magazine Sobre. At the same time, he resumes his sociology studies, joins research groups at the Social Sciences Research Center (CICSO) and participates in several publications. In 1979 he came into contact with Federico Moura who invited him to write songs for the rock group he led, Virus. During the following decade, he actively participated in the Buenos Aires underground scene in the context of the return of democracy. He proposes a “strategy of joy” as a political response to the terror of the immediately past years and carries it forward by organizing events and traveling parties in places such as the Palladium nightclub or the Eros Club. In 1988 he returned to exhibit in an institutional space (the Institute of Ibero-American Cooperation, today CCEBA) in the group exhibition The intangible scene. He maintains fluid contact with the gallery of the Ricardo Rojas Cultural Center since it opened in 1989 and exhibits there twice. Together with Mariana “Kiwi” Sainz, he profiles the fictitious creative agency Fabulous Nobodies in 1993, as a design brand without products that runs advertising campaigns that promote nothing. That same year, they produced the Maresca operation, everything is delivered in the magazine El Libertino, the work of the artist Liliana Maresca, and in 1994 they launched the campaign I have AIDS (1994) to warn about discrimination against people living with HIV. At the end of the nineties he made some theatrical experiences. In 1998 he presented a remake of Andy Warhol’s 13 Most Beautiful Boys at the Centro Experimental del Teatro Colón. In the following years he created coexistence and exchange projects such as Chacra 99, Bola de Nieve, START Foundation and Proyecto Venus. In 2000 he promoted the appearance of Ramona magazine, apublication without images on Argentine art, and in 2002, after winning the Guggenheim Scholarship, he gave substance to the Venus Project by minting a currency that allows its associates to exchange goods and services outside the standard economy. This same year he presents Darkroom at the Beauty and Happiness gallery, an installation for a single viewer at a time, who, equipped with an infrared camera, perceives through it a performance performed by 13 people in complete darkness. The piece was later repeated at the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires (2005), the Pontevedra Biennial (2006) and the Recoleta Cultural Center (2007). In 2004 he published the novel Moncada, written with Jorge Di Paola by email. Two years later, he carried out the project La chastidad (2006) together with Syd Krochmalny, from which a video installation emerged that is presented at the Espacio Fundación Telefónica. Within the framework of the growing fetishization of Argentine artistic production from 1968, he presents the installation 1968, el culo te abrocho (2008) at the Appetite gallery. That same year, together with Fernanda Laguna, he carried out the Donations project, consisting of the creation, at the ByF Cultural Center of Villa Fiorito, of a museum with tracings produced in the Museum of Calcos and comparative sculpture “Ernesto de la Cárcova”. In 2009, during the conflicts between the national government and representatives of the agricultural sectors, he performed performances at the Museum of Latin American Art and at different political demonstrations impersonating an angry, oppositional landowner. Simultaneously, he produces T-shirts with the phrase “Hasta la Victoria Oh Campo!” and the image of Victoria Ocampo with Che Guevara’s hat. This same year she founded CIA (Artistic Research Center) together with Graciela Hasper and Judy Werthein and participated in the Mercosur Biennial. In 2010 he participated in the San Pablo Biennial with the piece The soul never thinks without images, which he created together with a collective of artists calling themselves Brigada Argentina por Dilma, in support of the candidate of the Workers’ Party who was presented on those same days. to elections. The work generates a scandal because it is carried out during times of an electoral ban and the biennial authorities are forced to close it. In 2011 the Reina Sofía National Art Museum inaugurated a retrospective exhibition of his production with the title Desire is born from the collapse. He lives and works in Buenos Aires.

More information: http://cvaa.com.ar/03biografias/jacoby_roberto.php