STREET ART, Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires - Today was unusually cold for Buenos Aires (around 8°C) and, as I was walking to the gym, a small flock of beautiful green parakeets flew overhead and landed in what looked like a cocoa tree. As they noisily picked at the fruit that was left on the tree, a group of people gathered to watch and discuss. There’s always something interesting to look at outside here, and it gives strangers a good excuse to have a conversation.

In Buenos Aires public life is engaging and that translates to the art. There seem to be some exceptional street artists working here judging from the examples you can find when wandering around. This isn’t your average graffiti: the quality of some of the work is extremely high. It ranges from stencil to free-hand, and cartoon to lyrical. 

I guess you could link this to the Latin American muralist tradition, and it would be a pretty valid connection. But I think the street art here speaks more to the urge to transform public spaces into works of art, to make something spectacular out of a piece of crumbling wall, and to make someone stop and take notice of a space that used to be only “in between.”

So with this strong presence of street art here, it was no surprise that, as part of its 60th anniversary celebrations, Puma chose to sponsor the Urban Festival of Street Art in Buenos Aires this past May 24 and 25. 

Nathan Tichenor

SIBYL COHEN, Braga Menendez Contemporaneo

Buenos Aires - Perhaps more subtle than Juan Tessi's work, but no less powerful, Sibyl Cohen’s giant canvases (roughly 7'X7') delineate vast and palatial interiors. While they might be empty like Videla’s, her spaces do not resonate with the absence of figures. Instead, her paintings are of space itself. They masterfully exemplify the ever-persistent miracle of reproducing the three dimensions of the outside world onto the two dimensions of the painting’s surface. Or, vice versa, they transform the two-dimensions of the painting’s surface via the illusion of the three dimensions of the outside world.

And, more precisely, we can feel the tension when that reproduction and transformation happens. Cohen's illusion is not perfect: it oscillates between the abstract two-dimensional shapes on the canvas and the illusion of three-dimensional space these shapes can trick our eye into believing. Her paintings seem to represent that very moment when illusion begins to gel.

Cohen’s large scale and prominent line depict a space that draws in and surrounds the viewer. This, combined with her matte surfaces, recalls frescoes, especially those of the Italian Renaissance. As a time when horizons – geographic and philosophic – were broadened and the wonder of discovery infused all practices, this Renaissance wonder in turn imbues Cohen’s paintings. So while her interiors might seem old and formal, they are nonetheless transformed anew. By way of perspective and paint, Cohen gives us that same sense of dizzying Renaissance awe when confronted with the illusion of vast space.

Nathan Tichenor

JUAN TESSI, Braga Menendez Contemporaneo

Buenos Aires - Juan Tessi’s work pulls no punches – especially his series of small paintings (roughly 8"X11") of boys behaving badly. Boys on the cusp of manhood – in various stages of undress – tie up, strangle, and have sex with other boys (and sometimes girls). When only one figure appears in the painting, it’s clear from the engaged yet absent expression that something is being done to him, or he’s watching something being done to someone else. All his figures are completely engrossed in the act – be it sexual or violent or both. And Tessi captures that un-posed absence of self-consciousness of someone in the exact moment of fulfilling desire.

Like Juan Videla’s paintings, Tessi’s dialogues with photography and, moreover, video. But Tessi’s images come from pornography – a form that commands viewing – and by co-opting this genre, he crystallizes painting’s punch. One way we safely consume and know our world – one way we safely fulfill our desires – is through looking at art. And the analogy to the consumption of pornography is apt. Tessi mediates the pornographic/photographic image through paint thereby making the subject of his work not the pornography’s sex or violence, but rather the desire itself. We are no longer selflessly engrossed: through his paintings we end up looking at ourselves looking.

Nathan Tichenor

JUAN VIDELA, Braga Menendez Contemporaneo

Buenos Aires - Braga Menendez Arte Contemporaneo recently showed Juan Videla’s new paintings (22"X28") of empty public spaces. Almost still-lives of nothingness, the paintings are so empty of people that their absence becomes a felt presence. Trains, restaurant kitchens, building hallways – spaces usually occupied – are depicted without figures, seemingly late at night, after a shift or rush hour. The rooms’ overhead fluorescents highlight their emptiness, and we can almost feel the energy that, now gone, once filled the room. Each image could easily be a still from a Kubrick film, whose rooms often resonate with the psychic imprint of previous, intense incidents.

Clearly Videla can paint. He achieves a perfect tension between painterliness and an almost-photographic realism. And his work’s relation to photography seems to highlight painting’s dominance in Buenos Aires: Videla might flirt with photography’s language, but they remain paintings. I think all really good paintings have an impact like a punch in the stomach. But instead of punching, Videla’s painting withholds – both its punch and figures – and thereby these absences only heighten their presences, creating a very engaging tension.

Nathan Tichenor

BRAGA MENENDEZ ARTE CONTEMPORANEO

Buenos Aires - Recently I visited Braga Menendez Arte Contemporaneo, perhaps Buenos Aires’ best-known gallery for contemporary art. When Guido Ignatti (Produccion de Exposiciones) invited me into the gallery’s office, it became clear that the young and playful tone is clearly not limited to the art they represent. While the gallery takes contemporary art seriously, their passionate yet casual atmosphere also insists that art should have nothing to do with intimidation. The gallery’s backroom is an embarrassment of riches. This office-cum-salon-cum-gallery-cum-studio is crammed full of works -- most good, some spectacular -- that emerge one by one after careful but relaxed exploration.

And the gallery’s embarrassment of riches is embarrassing not only because there is so much high-quality work to choose from and see, but also because the prices are so damn reasonable. Even after accounting for shipping and brokerage, the strength of the dollar, euro, and pound against the Argentine peso makes art-buying in Buenos Aires an incredible opportunity.

Especially if you want to buy paintings. Even after taking into account Braga Menendez’s taste for and expertise in painters, I get the impression that Buenos Aires is about Paint. The city seems to have produced (and is producing) an inordinate number of really good painters. Moreover, this is a town of representation. There is a fascination with the image, and with mediating that image through the artist, his brush, and his paint.

Nathan Tichenor