Gumier Maier was a cultural manager and a central figure in Argentine art in the 1990s. He is considered a catalyst of a generation. To make this trajectory known integrally, the exhibition concentrates on the period from 1978 to 1989, precisely the years before his paintings and objects linked to geometric abstraction that Gumier has given great diffusion. The exhibition is dedicated to those years of under and artistic activism to analyze the network of multiple practices he deployed before leaving his indelible mark on local art.

Gumier not only played a key role in the defense of sexual minorities in democracy but also modified the way of thinking and making art once and for all. He gave a place to those who occupied a marginal place because they were not engaged in the painting of the eighties and developed a way of thinking where hierarchies between high and low culture, between design, decoration, and art do not prevail.

After interviewing the artist between 2009 and 2020, the curator gained access to the corpus of works left behind in Gumier's house. From that point on, she exhaustively researched the 80s. Much of the material was restored especially for this exhibition.

 

Gumier Maier

As an artist, Gumier's work challenged the boundaries of abstraction with decorative elements and popular culture. Organized into seven thematic nuclei, the exhibition includes numerous works that the artist produced under the influence of avant-garde movements such as surrealism and artists such as Jean Dubuffet, Libero Badii, and René Magritte. Also on view are works whose protagonists are male figures, which recover aspects of the metaphysical painting of Giorgio de Chirico and Lino Enea Spilimbergo. During the 1980s, "Maier linked plastic creation, theatrical and performative performance, the production of scenery and costumes, art criticism, the writing of essays on the gender-sexual question and activism within the homosexual movement," writes the curator.

There is a sensual stamp on many of the works. A series of portraits condenses her love. A man with long hair, wearing a naked torso and white pants, rests on a red armchair. A painting in tempera on scenography paper was presented in his first individual exhibition in 1982 at Café Einstein, a pioneer space of the local underworld. The images of Rodolfo, Lucho, Alexos, Juan Pablo, and Riky follow one after the other. Sensual, resting, or abstracted. This is how Gumier contemplated them.

Rosemberg Sandoval

The common thread of Gold and Dirt is the element Earth associated with a series of questions. If land, a central problem in Colombia, is associated with space and the warmth of a home, what happens when the right -and all that it entails- to housing is violated through the use of violence? How can artistic practices transfigure those tears? In turn, Sandoval's work is closely linked to his life experience.

The circumstances that have traversed Sandoval's life and his artistic training have not differed much from those that have marked millions of Colombians for decades, such as drug trafficking, crime, and guerrilla groups' actions, among others. Sandoval's family, in particular, was the victim of forced exile when he was just a child, which is why the displacement of rural and indigenous populations is directly related to the Earth in this exhibition.

The curatorship by Karime García Martinez proposes two themes where family and childhood are paramount. The first, "The façade", deals with the symbolic housing conditions. While in the second, "Shelter", the deficiencies both within the home, as well as in the home itself, are highlighted through the affectation of the materials.

Through means such as drawing, frottage, photography, video, and performance, Sandoval performs actions on and with the objects -true remains of real events- denouncing situations of social inequality generated both by war conflicts of deterritorialization and uprooting, as well as by inoperative policies that jeopardize fundamental rights.

Images become effective when the materials are chosen and the traces impregnated in them not only accompany but also construct and unveil meanings. Rosemberg Sandoval explains it as follows: "What we artists seek is to produce sensations through images and supports, the point is to produce them in a heroic and ephemeral way to reveal the soul. Art is the purge of the Inhuman and making art from the marginality and with the marginality is my only crime".

Location: W-Gallery, Defensa 1369, C1143 San Telmo, Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Opening Date: 3rd November 2023

End Date:9th February 2024

Working hours: Tuesday-Saturday: 12pm to 6pm

Official website: 

Mentioned Artists: