The artist studied visual art at Villa Arson in Nice, and scenography and costumes at the National Theatre of Strasbourg. Since 2014, she developed an artistic practice in relation to the Modernist architecture of a forgotten Bucharest, creating works that fascinate with their elegant aesthetics. Whether it is painting, sculpture, installation or photo and video montage, her creations are the result of a meticulous analysis of the geometry of space.

“The performance Alphabet by French artist Arantxa Etcheverria is complementary to her current solo exhibition at Sector 1 Gallery. Since 2014, the practice of Arantxa Etcheverria developed in relation to the modernist architecture of her studio in Bucharest, expanding into new works that fascinate with their elegant aesthetics. Whether it is painting, sculpture, installation or photo and video montage, her creations are the result of a meticulous analysis of the geometry of space.

Gruppalli, who has previously worked with other media such as performance and sculpture, proposes a kind of novelty as he reveals to a wide public his recent facet as a painter. The artist brings together portraits and still lifes with (not so) veiled references to the world of art and counterculture in a room with a café concert atmosphere that includes a stage. The audience of “Private Function” is invited to step onto a stage while the characters created by Gruppalli watch from their respective tables, each one decorated with flowers and objects that evoke the history of art.

Around a series of self-portraits and compositions with seated characters, the artist builds a café concert scene that puts into play the pose and the relationships we build with objects. Bananas, shoes, vases, small busts, and record covers create somewhat encrypted surfaces of pleasure, which indicate a world of references linked to the history of art and counterculture of the twentieth century, where Picasso, Buñuel, Brancusi or Andy Warhol cross with some local icons such as Virus, Los Redondos or Rosario Bléfari. According to the artist, the interesting thing is the dialogue between a countercultural record like “Oktubre” by Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota, which is printed on many T-shirts, and the most canonized art.

In “Función Privada”, the painting has not been confined to the wall but is presented as part of the construction of a scene; essential to the meaningful articulation of the space where the bodies of the spectators can relate to the bodies represented in the territories of the night. They are spaces in which the penumbra counts at the time of constructing sensations and senses. Each character enigmatically represented in a corner or seated at a table is waiting for the beginning of the show in front of an empty stage. The atmosphere is very surreal, something that is affirmed by the sum of references that also operate as winks to the spectator. These are key to deciphering quotes from the history of art or popular music.

According to the curators, the Recoleta Cultural Center's 2024 program begins with four artists who explore in depth the representation of the body in contemporary times. The selection was based on a search for empathy with the bodies that have been present at the cultural center in recent times, through urban dance experiences, shared workspaces, and recreational activities. By allocating several rooms for the visual arts, these first exhibitions seek to generate a dialogue and an opening to the imagination between the bodies present and those represented.

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Museum of Modern Art

The exhibition proposes a counterpoint between tearing and repairing contained in Lamothe's large installation, called "suburban landscape", which dialogues with works by artists who investigate the possibilities of urban and playful art in a context of social and economic crisis. The exhibition's name comes from one of the songs of the cult album "Excursiones" by Rosario Bléfari, Argentinean singer and poet, with her band Suárez in 1999. The song is articulated between the idea of tearing and repairing, a product of the crisis, and shows a new generation of artists.

As for Lamothe's installation, it is a monumental suburban landscape made with a structure of pipes-like scaffolding that contains and envelops the works of other artists. Lamothe transforms and envelops the space of the room to house a group of artists of his generation who emerged on the contemporary art scene after the 2001 crisis. These works portray the memory of a city on the verge of collapse and transform violence into new ways of inhabiting the environment and giving it meaning.

The selected works range from installations, sculptures, videos, and paintings, either on loan, from the museum's collection or produced especially for the exhibition. Among the participating artists, Mariana exhibits a mural in situ on the only white wall, in contrast with the red of the rest of the hall and the access corridor, Facundo Belén with a video performance, the collective Belleza y Felicidad Fiorito exhibits its cartonero cart, and Diego Bianchi with recent sculptures made of silver exhaust pipes.

Irina Kirchuk participates for the first time at the Moderno with an installation of large reconverted objects, such as a refrigerator, which are associated with building profiles. In contrast, Clorindo Testa exhibits a more brutalist and expressive work from the 60s, which is enveloped by Lamothe's large device, where "the irruption of the degraded, the broken" poses one of the contrasts of the tour.

 

Graciela Martinez

Leone Sonino

"Danza Actual" is an unpublished investigation promoted by the Museo Moderno on a series of experimentations that have not been historically recognized. The proposal explores modern dance from a double approach: the expansion of limits through interdisciplinary research and female liberation, by the emancipation of bodies that took place in those years.

During the first half of the twentieth century, modern dance spread and consolidated in different training spaces in Argentina and occupied a scenic place that enabled its aesthetic renewal. In the sixties, dance assumed a more experimental position through its presence at the Di Tella Institute and other stages in the city of Buenos Aires.

With a renewed approach and a focus on the experimentation of Argentine dance, the exhibition unfolds as a "missing chapter in the history of art and the history of dance," according to Lemus on this "story rarely told in museums and art institutions." Modern dance is thus consolidated as a crossroads between the Argentine avant-garde and resistance to conservatism.

The exhibition brings together Argentine artists from different disciplines who have had a relevant participation in modern dance. Among them, photographers specialized in dance such as Alicia Sanguinetti, Eduardo Newark, Leone Sonnino, and Susana Thénon. It also includes videos by Ignacio Masllorens, Julia Parodi, and Silvina Szperling.

In addition, the proposal focuses on fundamental experiences for dance as a practice of rupture and freedom aligned with the construction of a regional seal of its own. Groups, choreographers, and dancers, who marked that modern dance, from the group Danza Actual (1962), the Dance Laboratory of Susana Zimmerman, the Center for Audiovisual Experimentation of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute of Buenos Aires, the Theater of the Alliance Française and the Friends of Dance Association, to end the historical journey with the creation of the Ballet of the San Martín Theater in 1968, a milestone in the institutionality of modern and contemporary dance.

"Danza Actual" is part of the annual program "El arte, ese río interminable" (Art, that endless river) which, together with two other exhibitions, aims to visualize the under identity of the 80s and 90s, key decades for the history of Argentine art.

Nicolás García Uriburu

Florencia Böhtlingk

Luis Fernando Benedit

Melé Bruniard

Juana Butler

Feliciano Centurión

Nora Correas

Casimiro Domingo

Ricardo Garabito

Juan Grela

Aid Herrera

Lido Iacopetti