The Political Tendencies
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In the spaces devoted to the theme of politics, the New Figuration from Argentina stood out, particularly the canvasses of Luis Felipe Noé and Jorge De la Vega who continue to exert an enormous influence. The series of paintings by the Brazilian João Câmara Filho were very interesting as were the now quite well-known installation by the Brazilian Cildo Meireles about the Jesuit Missions, a particularly hermetic and well-done piece by Luis Camnitzer, the subtlety of the Brazilian Rosana Palazyan, the customary intelligence and precise formulation of the Chilean Gonzalo Díaz and the excellence of two of the best political approaches of the Biennial: that of the young Uruguayan Jorge Soto and that of the veteran Argentine León Ferrari.
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Luis Felipe Noé |
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León Ferrari is truly repulsive and contentious. He presents a series of photos with interventions of Braille in which he uses biblical texts, newspaper images, prints of Japanese erotic art and Persian engravings to attack the Church, the cruelty of certain messages from the Old and New Testaments, the violence contained in religion, and he allows himself to make analogies with a brutal demystification.
João Câmara Filho manages to relate in a singular fashion the polemical history of Getulio Vargas with a style in which elements successfully comingle which could be traced to German »New Objectivity« (Neue Sachlichkeit), Pop, hyperrealism, realism, and surrealism, without identifying himself with any of those aesthetics in particular. He navigates the hazards of narration and achieves some outstanding moments. His is a bet in which syncretic and idiosyncratic representation are joined. He is an artist of great character. Despite the rise of installations and environments, painting is not dead and no matter how insistently the ever-present predictors of doom hand painting its death certificate, the works of Câmara Filho bear witness to its vigor.
Rosana Palazyan dares to work with Eucharist wafers - a
unique surface without a doubt - upon which she imprints the faces of murdered children and produces a terrible criticism of violence made metaphor in that symbol of the body of Christ. The photo performance by Gonzalo Díaz criticizes orthodox Marxism, applying his fierce irony to the hammer and sickle in Cybachrome, neon, objects, and enormous panels bringing together diverse techniques of expression of great current relevance and with a fine thematic aim.
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León Ferrari |
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The Uruguayan Jorge Soto showed his talent and professionalism once again in the form of an installation. Fifty-two engravings (bas-relief impressions) surrounded an enormous structure of galvanized pipes in which were located water basins and spigots. In spotless white were the names of some of the protagonists of a period of the political confrontation during the Uruguayan military dictatorship (1973 - 1984) including prisoners, victims of torture, and the dead from both sides: the military, members of death squads and the disappeared.
On the metal base one could see the dates of the three coup d'etats in the history of Uruguay. The water-filled basins served as baptismal fonts and sinks, playing with the idea that we all have a bit of Pontus Pilate in us, while a very significant sign, »Made in Uruguay«, allowed for a variety of sarcastic readings. A tube made of red rubber alluded to the blood poured into the River Plate. All of it suggestive, intelligent, well-made, and lacking demagogic stances or univocal readings; it contained a multiplicity of metaphors without falling into the explicit or the hermetic; it was conceptual but without losing the force of the object's presence.
The Last Five Years
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Jorge Francisco Soto |
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Here as well were testimonies to the vigor of painting, above all in the work of the Uruguayans Javier Bassi and Martín Verges Rilla. The former displays an undeniable kinship with Francesco Clemente while the latter, an emerging young man still unknown in his own country, converses intertextually with the Renaissance. In both artists, however, their influences mingle in a juicy syncretism in light of their undeniable pictorial gifts.
In the realm of installations, two very subtle Chilean women stood out: Nury González and Rosa Velasco, as well as the original work of the Brazilian Rosana Palazyan, always imaginative at the moment of selecting her supports. This time she opted for the underpants of very small children in order to reveal the terrible scourge of violation and violence. Another contribution to that space were the neodadaist sculptures of the gaucho Félix Bressan.
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Javier Bassi (detail) |
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But above all, it was the project of the Venezuelan Javier Téllez that stood out. With an emotionally moving installation, almost unbearable in its severity yet very well realized and with a dead-on social marksmanship beyond all demagoguery and simplicity, Javier Téllez recreates a terrible room in a Third World psychiatric hospital where problems of psychic imbalance, psychiatric medication, and emotional conflicts are piled on top of poverty. »La extracción de la piedra de la locura« (»Extracting the Stone of Madness«) is made up of hospital beds, wheelchairs, furniture in deplorable condition, rotten oranges and other fruits, and screens with videos repeating the same scene of a monotonous delirium of sick people rendered imbeciles through medication. It all is rooted in actual experience in the San Pedro Hospital in Porto Alegre where Téllez did his field research. There are multiple critical readings regarding abandonment, poverty, and the psychiatric medication of society proposed through the names of Moises Roitman, Esquivel, Ana Freud, Philip Pinel, Mario Marins, and Sigmund Freud. And the art is paradoxically in the hands of the sick people for their subtle embroideries laying on the beds are what brings beauty to the claustrophobic space, barely ventilated by a small, barred window.
Unevenness and Ups and Downs
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Javier Téllez |
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These are only a few of the dozens of valuable projects in a successful biennial that demanded of the visitor a marathon effort and which required a minimum five-day stay, a visit that certainly was worthwhile apart from the unevenness and the ups and downs of the show. However the famous names were not always represented by top-quality work. The School of the South of Torres García was in quite good form but not so its master, Joaquín Torres García, of whose work a better submission should have been sent. There were historically interesting paintings by the Argentine Alfredo Hlito but they didn't reflect the substance of his later production. More demanding eyes might have excluded the Paraguayan Enrique Careaga and the Argentine Nicolás García Uriburu. There was only one sculpture by the Uruguayan Gonzalo Fonseca, an artist whose three-dimensional art has not been exhibited in the Southern Cone and needs to be made better known. The Argentine Julio Le Parc was undervalued by a minor work while his countryman Boneverdi had too many pieces. There were other cases of minor works by major artists: the Brazilian Adriana Varejao has more interesting and better-presented pieces, the Uruguayan Carlos Capelán has achieved fuller postulates in other installations and the same is true for the Argentine Guillermo Kuitca, who has produced far more substantial installations.
A much better selection could have been made of work by the Chilean Alfredo Jaar and the Argentine Graciela Sacco was far below her usual level. And perhaps in this first Biennial, the high tech tendencies could have been left out as it was poorly represented, quite weak, and projected a provincial image in the Mario Quintana Cultural Center. It was of a dreadfully low quality given what one sees in this field in any international biennial, museum of any developed country, or the Kassel Documenta. But successes surpassed failures, among the former, an extraordinary and efficient organization visible above all in the weeks following the inauguration of this mega event.
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