Argentina
The Plush Era by Gerónimo Araquistain at Cultural Center San Martin
April 26, 2023 | nadiaevangelina"La Era del Peluche" (The Plush Era) is a solo exhibition by Argentine artist Gerónimo Damián Araquistain at the Cultural Center San Martin, located in Buenos Aires. The proposal revolves around a series of large-sized Spanish plush playing cards, whose objective is to offer an analysis of the significance of Spanish playing cards in our society and especially in Latin America.
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| Gerónimo Araquistain |
The pieces are exhibited in the hall of the cultural center, a central space that captivates the attention of the spectators. The pop aesthetics, in contrast with the black walls, create a very striking atmosphere. Behind this visually captivating world, the artist intends to leave us with a reflection on the relationship between colonialism and Latin America. For the artist, the cards are not a game, but "the motif of a relationship between our everyday life".
Throughout this exhibition, Araquistain invites us to rethink those cards loaded with images of kings, knights, swords, golds, clubs, and cups that correspond to European iconography and not to Latin American culture. This is how the artist appropriates the figure of the playing card to create one of his own, such as "The Queen of Quinoa" under a pop aesthetic. The playing cards are an example of imitating and transfiguring the commonplace, that is, transferring an everyday object and its functionality to an artistic space, as an object with an aesthetic function.
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| Gerónimo Araquistain |
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| Gerónimo Araquistain |
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| Gerónimo Araquistain |
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| Gerónimo Araquistain |
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| Gerónimo Araquistain |
Araquistain's plush playing cards are an attempt to reconfigure the present by altering symbols of the past that are still every day. For the artist, the Spanish playing cards do nothing more than cover up the processes of colonization and the Eurocentric gaze. Therefore, the artist reveals that "there is no alternative but to resignify the conquering sword and begin the decolonizing process".
Araquistain operates from the threshold through the seduction of the softness of the material (plush), which always keeps us in the limits of the textile or the pictorial, of the plane or the object. Pop aesthetics also contribute to the attempt to reconfigure the present from the alteration of symbols of the past that, as I mentioned before, continue to operate today. The preoccupation with color, composition, and form is present in a group of abstract works that are part of this exhibition and that accompany the saga of playing cards and one of the divas of Renaissance painting.
"La Era del Peluche"
Location: Cultural Center San Martin, Sarmiento 1551, C1042 ABC, Buenos Aire (Argentina)
Opening Date: 2nd March, 2023
End Date: 7th May 2023
Working hours: Monday-Sunday: 8am to 22 pm
Official website: https://elculturalsanmartin.ar/
Participating Artist:
