Orgullo y prejuicio

Orgullo y Prejuicio

Arte en Argentina en los 90 y después

Orgullo y Prejuicio

Arte en Argentina en los 90 y después

Orgullo y Prejuicio

Arte en Argentina en los 90 y después

Orgullo y Prejuicio

Arte en Argentina en los 90 y después

Orgullo y Prejuicio

Arte en Argentina en los 90 y después

Orgullo y Prejuicio

Arte en Argentina en los 90 y después

The online exhibition Orgullo y Prejuicio (Art in Argentina in the 90s and Beyond) reaffirms one of the gallery’s primary points of interest: to investigate and communicate experiences and artists emblematic of contemporary art from Argentina. The pandemic has turned our gaze inward and reinforced emphasis on the local. The notions of “situated” institutions and collections and of “cosmopolitan provincialism” are key to our thinking, and that implies underscoring, understanding, translating, and communicating the impulses and modalities at play in artistic practices that take shape here, in Argentina’s urban space. It implies as well savoring the histories, stories, and subjectivities, in all their nuances, complexities, and subtleties, that inevitably partake of the dialectic between global movements and the conditions particular to this part of the world.

We have invited art historian and curator Francisco Lemus, a specialist in Argentine art from the nineteen-nineties, to develop an online exhibition that, while based on the artists represented by the gallery, expands to include other fundamental figures. The conviction behind this project is that the nineties witnessed developments crucial to Argentine art, that the vectors and lines of force that that decade generated remained active for the decades that followed, and even shed light on recent art. The exhibition is envisioned as a tree trunk—this first section is its base—off of which interconnected branches sprout in the installments to be uploaded during the months remaining in 2020. The next installment will be Teen Conceptualism and Didactic Conceptualism.

“Art acted like an air shaft, a small crack to let in sensibility in a gravely hostile context. From the alternative to the mainstream, art was influenced by fashion, music, and youth culture. And as that influence grew, the virus spread. Creativity was experienced intensely as friends and lovers were bid farewell. Beauty and death comingled.”

For artists’ bios and additional information on artworks and documents, please click on each image

Art in Argentina in the 90s and beyond

by Francisco Lemus

Today, we—at least those of us who can—find ourselves confined to our homes in the face of a pandemic that seems to have put on hold what we used to call “the social.” Undoubtedly new forms of are being invented to offset confinement, to abate the impact of a plague that underscores the vulnerability of bodies and intensifies poverty. Argentine art from the nineteen-nineties is located between the end of a profound crisis of hyperinflation, on the one hand, and the onset of neoliberalism, on the other, a period that witnessed as well the HIV/AIDS crisis, a deadly and stigmatizing pandemic. From the time it first appeared in the eighties until the late nineties, HIV had an intense impact on the artistic community and on the conditions in which art was produced. Art acted like an air shaft, a small crack to let in sensibility in a gravely hostile context. From the alternative to the mainstream, art was influenced by fashion, music, and youth culture. And as that influence grew, the virus spread. Creativity was experienced intensely as friends and lovers were bid farewell. Beauty and death comingled.

On the basis of a set of lines of force, this show lays out a possible overview of Argentine art from the nineties. It includes both historical and current works. I dwell on omissions rather than emblematic spaces and representative works in order to add passages that have slipped between the cracks of writing on art and art history, to paint a scene made up of tenacious and eccentric individuals.

Art of the nineties generated debates and conflicting stances. Even today the exact nature of its commitment to society is subject to suspicion (hence the rampant prejudices about it). Some institutions and museums in dominant countries don’t seem to understand this art because it is so different from political art and resistant to the construction of a subaltern position. While it is not an art that attests to its time by means of protest, it does evidence that time’s underlying drives. Except for its queerness, the art of the nineties has none of the exoticism that, for a number of decades, has characterized curatorial agendas as guarantor of novelty and check on power. In the works, micropolitics prevails as way of life and unyielding tie to the immediate. The domestic came into art to act as a sort of sounding board. It went beyond the limits of the home to become a veritable condition for the existence of images.

Jorge Gumier Maier, Sin título, 1993, pintura acrílica sobre panel de chapadur y madera, 184 x 83 cm. Área de Documentación y Registro, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires.

Jorge Gumier Maier, Untitled, 1993.

Marcelo Pombo, Untitled, 1995.

Fernanda Laguna, Obseción, 1995.

Alfredo Londaibere, Sin Título, 1998. Acrílico, Oleo, Latas sobre Madera, 31 x 54 cm

Alfredo Londaibere, Untitled, 1998.

Fabulous Nobodies (Roberto Jacoby y Mariana Kiwi Sainz), Yo tengo sida, 1994, remera con serigrafía. Área de Documentación y Registro, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires.

Fabulous Nobodies (Roberto Jacoby and Mariana Kiwi Sainz), Yo tengo sida, 1994.

Cristina Schiavi, La torta, 1993.

Omar Schiliro, Untitled (Batato I understand you), 1993.

Over the course of the decade, a group of artists clustered around a dimly lit and noisy gallery outside the mainstream art circuit captured the attention of the Buenos Aires scene. The gallery formed part of the Centro Cultural Rojas, the cultural engine of the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Rojas opened its doors in 1984, just a few months after the end of the dictatorship that seized power in Argentina in 1976. It was—and is—located in the Once section of the city, a commercial district of storefronts, modest apartments, and—thanks to its train station—a great influx of people from the outskirts of the city. In those years, the cultural center became an institution key to artistic experimentation. Visual artists, actors, intellectuals, and writers circulated through Rojas’s different departments. The gallery, directed by Jorge Gumier Maier from 1989 to 1996, quickly became autonomous thanks to his direct ties to the art world. A major player because of his bold vision, Gumier Maier offered artists a chance to disregard the great themes privileged by mainstream art and to formalize the countercultural images astir in every corner of the city.

Gumier Maier had been a member of the Grupo de Acción Gay and a contributor to independent magazines. His curatorial discourse generated creative affinities between artists. He was able to take to the elevated terrain of exhibitions a misshapen sensibility that encompassed with the same rigor adornment, abstraction, surrealism, comic books, and life stories. Through shows, often-controversial interventions, and texts that eschewed stiff theory, a new artistic model was formed in the context of the Rojas gallery, one that blurred the rigid limits of the representable.

But not everything that happened happened at Rojas. Artists’ trajectories vary; sometimes they intersect and sometimes they lead down opposing paths. Some frequented discotheques and alternative venues like Cemento and Bolivia; others came from cities like Rosario, Mar del Plata, San Miguel de Tucumán, and Bahía Blanca where the return to democracy was also driving changes in art. A network began to take shape as artists appropriated the cultural landscape.

Jorge Gumier Maier - Avatares del arte - La Hoja del Rojas - Galeria Nora Fisch

Jorge Gumier Maier. ‘The Avatars of Art‘, June 1989.

Click on image for translation

1 2 3 4 5 6

Volante del Grupo de Acción Gay, junio de 1984. Archivo Marcelo Pombo, Buenos Aires.

Flyer from Grupo de Acción Gay, june 1984.

Fyer from Grupo de Acción Gay, 1985.

Afiche de la exposición El Rojas presenta Algunos Artistas, Centro Cultural Recoleta, 1992. Diseño Jorge Gumier Maier. Archivo Magdalena Jitrik, Buenos Aires.

Poster from the exhibition El Rojas presenta: Algunos Artistas, 1992.

Pierre Restany, Arte guarango para la Argentina de Menem , Lápiz, Año 13, Nº 116, 1995, p.50. Documents of Latin American and Latino Art, ICAA, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

Pierre Restany.’Arte guarango para la Argentina de Menem‘, 1995.

arjeta de invitación a la exposición Gumier Maier Alfredo Londaibere Benito Laren Omar Schiliro, Espacio Giesso,1992. Diseño: Omar Schiliro. Documents of Latin American and Latino Art, ICAA, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas.

Invitation card to the exhibition Gumier Maier Alfredo Londaibere Benito Laren Omar Schiliro, 1992.

Tapa del catálogo de la exposición 906090, Fundación Banco Patricios, Buenos Aires, 1994.

Cover from the catalog of the exhibition 906090, 1994.

Alberto Goldenstein, El mundo del arte (1989-2002). Videoproyección 10′, 2018. Edición 1/5

Lux Lindner, El infectado, 1991.

The Argentine art field as we know it today was constituted in the nineties. Artists’ spaces and foundations proliferated, commercial galleries began looking to contemporary art, the arteBA fair was created, and art critiques organized. The influx of transnational, but not only transnational, private capital to promote art jibed with the innovation that began with post-dictatorship cultural policy. The artists’ program started and led by Guillermo Kuitca, the Taller de Barracas, and fellowships funded by the Fundación Antorchas all instigated professionalization and visibility. The Espacio Giesso, the Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, the Casal de Catalunya, the Fundación Banco Patricios, and some municipal museums housed, as best they could, contemporary art. Argentine art history was passed from one generation to the next orally. Though uninterested in quotation, let alone in replicating old glories, Argentine art of the nineties had creative ties to the country’s avant-gardes of the fifties and sixties.

The works from this period are diverse; there is no homogenous narrative that holds them together. What they do share, though, is an irreverent attitude toward traditions and a twisted use of images. A notion key to artists from the nineties was to dignify what was disdained by high culture and traditional politics. In response to limits and the scarcity of resources, these works evidence the splendor of the new as it brushes up against the remains of the past. And that is manifest in how they look: the works are small and extremely tidy; they often require handiwork; they include collages and readymades produced with a range of materials; some made obsessive use of drawing. The most conceptual proposals are rich in humor, comically giving in to the allure of objects.

Intimate habits and rituals that produced either pride or shame, or a combination of the two, when exhibited; gay culture; reflections on gender; and the stereotypes of a feminine imaginary enabled relationships that exceeded sexual identity to implicate a bold artistic stance experienced collectively. The sensibility that emerged in those years in a poor Buenos Aires haunted by the ghosts of modern utopias captures the attention of young artists today who find, in the nineties, a legacy indisputably and vitally relevant to the present.

Lux Lindner, Argentino tipo, 1991.

Lux Lindner, ‘Variación sobre Andrea S.’, 1991.

Lux Lindner, Buena niña, 1991.

Lux Lindner, Uñas para el Orden, 1994.

“Gumier Maier offered artists a chance to disregard the great themes privileged by mainstream art and to formalize the countercultural images astir in every corner of the city. His curatorial discourse generated creative affinities between artists. He was able to take to the elevated terrain of exhibitions a misshapen sensibility that encompassed with the same affect and rigor adornment, abstraction, surrealism, comic books, and life stories.”

Marcelo Pombo, Disco, 1985.

Alfredo Londaibere, Untitled, 1990-2013.

“Painting has dissolved in the world’s saturated and vibrant landscape. Like an exhausted phoenix, it must be propped up in every scene, at every appearance. But it is thanks to that very negativity, to that dogged whim, that painting is capable —sometimes— of recovering its sacred breath.”

Jorge Gumier Maier. ‘The Avatars of Art’, June 1989.

Feliciano Centurión, Caracoles, 1991.

Fernanda Laguna, Ella me cuida, 1997.

“In the works, micropolitics prevails as way of life and unyielding tie to the immediate. The domestic came into art to act as a sort of sounding board. It went beyond the limits of the home to become a veritable condition for the existence of images.”

Fernanda Laguna, Paisaje con moneda, 1999.

Fernanda Laguna, Paisaje con flores, 1999.

Fernanda Laguna, Ventana, 1999.

Cristina Schiavi, Untitled, 1993.

“Argentine art history was passed from one generation to the next orally. Though uninterested in quotation, let alone in replicating old glories, Argentine art of the nineties had creative ties to the country’s avant-gardes of the fifties and sixties.”

El Tao del arte. Curador: Jorge Gumier Maier. Centro Cultural Recoleta, 1997. Colección Gustavo Bruzzone

Rosana Fuertes, Sin título, 1997-1998, acrílico sobre cartón passe-partout con marco de madera, 36 x 36 cm

Rosana Fuertes, Untitled, 1997-1998.

Next chapter: Teen Conceptualism / Didactic Conceptualism

Francisco Lemus holds a bachelor’s degree in art history from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and a master’s in curatorial studies and a doctorate in comparative art theory from the Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero. His dissertation was entitled Guarangos y soñadores. La Galería del Rojas en los años noventa (Vulgarians and Dreamers: The Rojas Gallery in the Nineties). Thanks to a post-doctoral fellowship awarded by the CONICET, Lemus is doing research on the political and artistic responses to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Argentina during the post-dictatorship period. He is a professor in the History and Social Studies division of the Art Department at the Universidad de La Plata and in the Graduate Program in Gender Studies at Universidad Tres de Febrero. He has published articles in academic journals and non-specialized magazines in Argentina and abroad. The exhibitions he has curated include Imágenes seropositivas. Prácticas artísticas en torno al vih durante los años 90 (La Ene, 2017) and Tácticas luminosas. Artistas mujeres en torno a la Galería del Rojas (Colección Fortabat, 2019).

We are specially thankfull for the images of the artworks to MALBA (Museo de Arte latinoamericano de Buenos Aires), to the Colección de Arte “Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat” and to the Documentation and Archival Area of the National Museum of Fine Arts, Buenos Aires. We further extend this thanks to Sergio Molina, Jane Brodie, Horacio Lardiés, Gustavo Bruzzone, who gave us access to the audiovisual record of The Tao of Art (1997) and to the artists Jorge Gumier Maier, Marcelo Pombo, Magdalena Jitrik, Martín Di Girolamo, Cristina Schiavi, Roberto Jacoby and Mariana “Kiwi” Sainz, who facilitated their personal archives for the making of this online exhibition.Some documents are part of the digital archive Documents of Latin American and Latino Art, International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas. The cataloging was made by Natalia Pineau.

ORGULLO Y PREJUICIO

Art in Argentina in the 90s and beyond

by Francisco Lemus

Jorge Gumier Maier, Untitled, 1993.

Marcelo Pombo, Untitled, 1995.

Fernanda Laguna, Obseción, 1995.

Alfredo Londaibere, Untitled, 1998.

Fabulous Nobodies (Roberto Jacoby and Mariana Kiwi Sainz), Yo tengo sida, 1994.

Cristina Schiavi, La torta, 1993.

Omar Schiliro, Untitled (Batato I understand you), 1993.

Jorge Gumier Maier. ‘The Avatars of Art‘, June 1989.

Click on image for translation

Flyer from Grupo de Acción Gay, june 1984.

Fyer from Grupo de Acción Gay, 1985.

Poster from the exhibition El Rojas presenta: Algunos Artistas, 1992.

Pierre Restany.’Arte guarango para la Argentina de Menem‘, 1995.

Invitation card to the exhibition Gumier Maier Alfredo Londaibere Benito Laren Omar Schiliro, 1992.

Cover from the catalog of the exhibition 906090, 1994.

Alberto Goldenstein, El mundo del arte (1989-2002). Videoproyección 10′, 2018. Edición 1/5

Lux Lindner, El infectado, 1991.

Lux Lindner, Argentino tipo, 1991.

Lux Lindner, ‘Variación sobre Andrea S.’, 1991.

Lux Lindner, Buena niña, 1991.

Lux Lindner, Uñas para el Orden, 1994.

Marcelo Pombo, Disco, 1985.

Marcelo Pombo, Disco, 1985.

Marcelo Pombo, Disco, 1985.

Marcelo Pombo, Disco, 1985.

Alfredo Londaibere, Untitled, 1990-2013.

Jorge Gumier Maier. ‘The Avatars of Art’, June 1989.

Feliciano Centurión, Caracoles, 1991.

Fernanda Laguna, Ella me cuida, 1997.

Fernanda Laguna, Paisaje con moneda, 1999.

Fernanda Laguna, Paisaje con flores, 1999.

Fernanda Laguna, Ventana, 1999.

Cristina Schiavi, Untitled, 1993.

El Tao del arte. Curador: Jorge Gumier Maier. Centro Cultural Recoleta, 1997. Colección Gustavo Bruzzone

Rosana Fuertes, Untitled, 1997-1998.

Rosana Fuertes, Untitled, 1997-1998.

Rosana Fuertes, Untitled, 1997-1998.

Next chapter: Teen Conceptualism / Didactic Conceptualism

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