Between Silence and Violence
Biographies

Luis F. Benedit (Buenos Aires, 1937).
A self-taught artist and a graduated architect from Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1963, he has always developed these two activities simultaneously. His work in the field of Argentine plastic art starts in 1961, with an individual exhibition of paintings in oil and enamel on canvas at Lirolay gallery, one of the exhibiting places related to the Argentine vanguard of the time.

Between 1963 and 1965, he lives in Madrid, pursuing specialization in popular architecture. In this period, he produces his works on industrial enamel treated in grounds of saturated colors simulating advertising billboards, the comic, and pop art.

In 1966, he organizes his first international exhibition at the Europe gallery in Paris; this same year he presents Barba Azul, a space-design based on the classic story Bluebeard, that takes place at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires together with Vicente Marotta.

In 1967, he introduces a series of enamels in which he addresses the topic of the Argentine fields, such as in Madre hay una sola or Lo que hay que pasar. His reflection on the Argentine rural scenario is bound to continue appearing at different times in his work as the core of it, always by means of thematic series.

This same year, he is granted a scholarship from the Italian government in order to study landscape architecture in Rome, topic that -linked to the idea of natural habitat transformation and of the approach to considering the space outside- he adds to his installation with animals and plants. His first work with fish is on exhibit at Casa Argentina in Rome.

After returning to Buenos Aires in 1968, he participates in Materiales, Nuevas Técnicas, Nuevas Expresiones, at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, where he introduces the animal habitat Tuttovetro y los pescados. This same year, Microzoo is presented at Rubbers art gallery. In this individual exhibition, he presents a collection of cabins for animals -cats, ants, fish, tortoises, etc. - and botanical experiences on fecundation and germination under artificial condition.

Operating with scientific methods, he proposes in this series his concern about the manipulation of animal habitat and behavior as a metaphor of the functioning of society. In his opposition between natural and artificial, he points at pondering upon the relationships between the cultural-scientific over-imposition onto not only nature but also human communities.

In 1970, he participates in the XXXV Venice Biennial, dedicated that year to Art and Science. There, he presents his Biotrón, a transparent acrylic structure with four thousand buzzing bees in a transparent bee-hive connected to the garden of the Biennale through a 24-acrylic-flower prairie. The bees produce their nectar controled by an e-device; as part of this game of tensions between nature and artifice, bees can “choose” from two alternative menus. After the exhibiting, this structure is given to Universidad de Buenos Aires so as to be examined by scientists.

With his inclusion since the early beginning in Grupo de los Trece -later on Grupo CAYC-, he participates in an array of international exhibitions; Benedit pursues actively his participating in individual and collective exhibitions abroad until nowadays.

Following with his proposals of artificial habitats, in 1972 he shows at “Projects” in MoMA New York, a structure with hydroponic -without dirt- crop introducing Fitotrón and Laberinto para ratones; both works are complementary to his projective drawings.

The idea of tension between natural-artificial pervades in his following sequence of works developed between 1973 and 1979; pencil drawings and watercolors in which he portrays animal and insect “projects”, including linguistic descriptions and “feasibility maps”.

In 1976, he also produces Furnarius Rufus, Caja 50 + 50=100, Trompos and Proyecto Huevos, this last work -an embalmed chicken, the drawing of such project, and a box containing artificial eggs-, is the one he presents within Grupo de los Trece to be sent to the XIV Sao Paulo Biennial in 1977, where the group is awarded the Grand Prix Itamaraty.

He also in 1977 starts his sequence of works based on his son Tomás’ drawings. He will continue to work on that series until the early 80’s. These works are arranged in three parts: the kid’s drawings of different characters such as King Kong, Snoopy, Hammer Man, etc., his analytical projection onto paper, and the realization of the object.

In 1978, he starts a brand new series in which he resumes his work on rural Argentina, this time related to symbolic over-imposition as from elements linked to life in the countryside, some of the most outstanding pieces of such work are a set of different boxes such as Caja de alambrado, Tijera de castrar, Caja de maíz, Abrebocas, Hierro de marcar, etc.

As far as architecture is concerned, he begins in 1979 together with Clorindo Testa and Jacques Bedel, the refurbishing project for the ancient convent and elderly-people home in Recoleta, nowadays Centro Cultural Recoleta. Four years later, he develops his project for Ruth Benzacar gallery on Florida 1000.

Between 1984 and 1986, he pursues his work on rural Argentina and its link to the idea of cultural identity and the construction of a historical memory; he works with established images as paradigms of the concept of the “gaucho’s scenario” and the “criollo tradition”, such as knives and slashers in struggle. Simultaneously, he produces a series of drawings based on lithographies by the nineteenth touring painter Juan León Pallière.

Between 1986 and 1988, he develops a series of works in which, as from the relationship between paintings and objects, he revisits his own relationship with nature, this time starting from the imaginery arising from scientific trips carried out in the XIX century by Charles Darwin and the Malaspina expedition. With one of these works -Paso del Soldado-, he obtains in 1987 the First Prize to Painting in the LXXXVI Salón Nacional.

In 1988, he opens a show at Fundación San Telmo where he reviews his production from 1965 to 1975. In the following years, until 1991, he works on a series of watercolors, drawings and objects in which he reinterprets Florencio Molina Campos’ production.

His industrious international career, in parallel with his involvement in the local scene, continues throughout the 90’s, when participating, for example, in the XXI Sao Paulo Biennial and in the Bienal de La Habana, and with an individual show in New York in 1994.
In 1996, an important retrospective is run at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes including his 1960-1996 production.

In 1998, he organizes at Ruth Benzacar an exhibition with recent works, among which Caballo enfermo, Silla de hueso and his Valdez installation can be seen. In these works, he continues pondering upon the gaucho scenario by means of using, for example, horse bones. In 2000, he opens at the same gallery Fitotrón 2, a new proposal of his installation from the early 70’s.

Another individual exhibition is Circular N° 1 (Daniel Maman, 2002): through this recent work he pursues his deepening into themes and materials that are at the hearth of his production: “ranchos” -the gaucho’s houses-, in this case out of stones or mercury, drawings such as Retrato de Don Segundo o 1982/1999/265, sculptures in bone that hint at the amount of suicides within the world of ex soldiers from the Malvinas War produced since the end of the war until 1999.

Luis F. Benedit lives and works in Buenos Aires.
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Oscar Bony (Posadas, pcia. de Misiones,1941- Buenos Aires, 2002).
He starts his artistic activity in his home town and when finishing his secondary studies, he moves to Buenos Aires where he attends Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes “Manuel Belgrano” for two years, and studies with Demetrio Urruchúa and Juan Carlos Castagnino. In 1962, he works as an assistant in Antonio Berni´s workshop.

In 1964, his first individual exhibition takes place in Buenos Aires at Rubbers gallery, where he presents a series of oil paintings. In 1965, he is awarded Faja de Honor at Salón Ver y Estimar due to his object Organismo Vivo, an articulated sounding construction, also movable, and of a great size which concealed, under polyurethane covers, a tape recorder producing snoring sounds.

Towards 1966, he begins his search for other media; for example when presenting his Fuera de las formas del cine at Instituto Di Tella: four items of 16-mm footage on time. This same year, he participates in Homenaje al Vietnam at the Van Riel gallery, and also in the exhibition El objeto at the Vignes gallery presenting a phallic-shaped polyester structure that triggers a heated debate.

In 1967, his Estructura, an installation somehow minimalist that proposes a set of appearances and concealments of itself at the very place of exhibition, is awarded the first prize in the VII Salón Ver y Estimar, organized at Museo de Arte Moderno. Later on, he presents Señal de Obra at Galería de las Artes; a projection of a wall’s angle produced with plastic thread.

As part of Experiencias Visuales ‘67 at Instituto Di Tella, he proposes his conceptual work 60m2 y su información: a corridor covered with 60 sq. meter wire mesh and a film projector that shows onto a wall the image of a piece of wire that, in time, generates the perception of relationship or “complementariness” between an object and its visual reproduction. This same year, he presents as part of the Semana de Arte Avanzado a sounding description of the gallery provided by a continuously played tape.

In 1968, he participates with another installation in Beyond Geometry (Center for Interamerican Relations, New York). More over, in Experiencias ‘68 at ITDT, he presents La familia obrera, that is comprised by three family members -father, mother and son- all arranged in a pedestal made out of two blocks. On this platform, Bony stands a sign that announces the amount of money that each of these people received in order to remain in their posts during the opening hours of the exhibition.

Deeply ingrained in Bony is the reflection upon the implications and reconsiderations in art and the art itself in relation to politics, and it is due to this that he makes a halt in his production between 1969 and 1974; during this time, he travels across Europe and the US earning a living as a professional photographer. After coming back, he resumes his exhibiting with an individual show, his Cielos series -“landscapes without any temporal data”- at the Art Gallery in Buenos Aires.

In 1977, he presents a set of photographs at Arte Múltiple gallery; this material is seized by the police due to its “pornographic” content. This is the year when he moves to Milan, Italy, where he develops during the following years an industrious activity; he participates in individual and also in collective exhibitions in several Italian cities -Milan, Syracuse, and Alessandria-. In Nuova Imagine, one well-known exhibition, Bony presents installations that include children objects.

In 1982, he takes part in the “Aperto” section at Venice Biennial. This is the time when Bony develops a technique to install wire mesh on walls by using colored wax. This is presented in L’ombra exhibition at Galleria Più due Cannaviello.

From this time on, he starts producing pinturas antagónicas o instalaciones-comportamiento: diptychs that represent counter-messages performed in different techniques so as to express the discontinuity of time and of contemporary activities.

He returns to Argentina in 1988, and then organizes an individual exhibition at the CAYC where he resumes the issue of dichotomy between pairs of images.

In 1993, he presents De memoria, a set of objects-installations that, arising from his work with photographs and his closeness to real objects related to his own history, addresses the issue of traces of memory. He also exhibits an installation portraying a brick-and-cement wall that crosses room 11 at Centro Cultural Recoleta diagonally, hiding a virtual “other side” as a metaphor of the inaccessibility to information, and also the ultimate sense of the artistic.

In 1994 and originating from an argument between Bony and the director of Fundación Banco Patricios, the artist confirms the news that he is not included in the collective exhibition 90-60-90 and he makes circulate, on the opening day, a pamphlet containing comments against this director, something that was covered thoroughly by the media.

He also organizes his individual exhibition Obras de amor y violencia at Filo in 1994 in which he begins to focus on the relevance of shotguns, trying different media as metaphors of the exercise and traces of violence and power, a topic that will concentrate his attention in the coming years: in this particular case there are sets of bullet-proof glass or metal shields of several thicknesses with bullet-impacts on them all purposefully framed according to museums’ regulations.

In 1995, he presents performance El límite at the XLVI Venice Biennial in which, at one end of a gondola, a naked lady suckles her baby while, at the other end of the vessel, a casket can be spotted.

In 1996, his individual exhibition Fusilamientos y Suicidios at Fundación Klemm resumes the idea of the impact of bullets, but now triggered on self-portraits and landscape photographs. During the following year, he is invited to different biennials and international events (Istanbul, Havana, Porto Alegre, and Guadalajara).

In March 1998, one of his 1967 installations, 60m2.... is rebuilt at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, together with his 1966 films Fuera de las formas del cine. To months later, as part of the reconstruction of the exhibition Experiencias ‘68 at Fundación Proa, an updated version of La familia obrera is presented. In August of that year, his individual exhibition El triunfo de la Muerte is presented at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, in which he resumes the topic of violence in a series of bullet-shot self-portraits, that also remains on exhibit as in the case of De memoria-utopías-suicidios (Centro Cultural Parque de España, Rosario, 1999) or, posthumously, in Arte y política en los ‘60 (Palais de Glace, 2002) and in Ansia y devoción. Imagen del presente (Fundación Proa, 2003).
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Juan Carlos Distéfano (Buenos Aires, 1933).
Son of Italian immigrants. At fourteen he begins his studies at the Escuela de Artes Gráficas and, starting in 1952 he studies at the Escuela de Bellas Artes Manuel Belgrano. During 1954 he attends Demetrio Urruchúa’s studio.

On the fiftieth anniversary of its activity in industry in 1960, the Siam Di Tella company organizes a poster contest which Distéfano wins.

Immediately thereafter he is asked to organize the Graphic Design Department at the Instituto Di Tella. Rubén Fontana, Humberto Rivas, Roberto Alvarado, Juan Andralis, Carlos Soler and Norberto Coppola also participate on the design team that receives international recognition.

In 1964 Distéfano holds his first solo show at the Riobóo-Nueva Gallery. The work shown at this show privileges the distortion of forms and a free figuration with an arbitrary use of color.
In 1966 he becomes interested in polyester resin that Pablo Suárez and Emilio Renart are using at the time. During these years, he also makes reliefs on canvas, glass wool and polyester painted with oil tempera and acrylic. One example of this is his 1967 diptych Escalera. In 1966 he represents Argentina at the III Bienal Americana de Arte in Córdoba and at the Festival Americano de Pintura in Lima, Peru.

In 1967 Aldo Pellegrini invites him to participate in the exhibit “El surrealismo en la Argentina” held at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella. A year later, he participates along with David Lamelas, Emilio Renart and Julio Le Parc in the IX San Pablo Biennial. Distéfano’s contribution is subject to an attempt at censorship.

The next year he designs the publication of the essay by Antonin Artaud, Van Gogh The Man Suicided by Society, translated and edited by Aldo Pellegrini.

Thanks to the Francesco Romero fellowship granted by the Italian Embassy, in 1968 Distéfano travels to Italy with his wife, Griselda Gambaro, and children. There he makes contact with the experimental theater of Luca Ronconi and Carmelo Bene. That same year, he designs the credits for the movie Invasión directed by Hugo Santiago and based on a story by Adolfo Bioy Casares.

When the Instituto Di Tella closes in 1970 Distéfano opens a design studio where he works along with Rubén Fontana until 1976. In those years he examines the expressive possibilities of painted polyester.

At 43 he gives up graphic design and dedicates himself fully to sculpture. In 1976 he attends Eduardo Audivert’s studio where he starts working with etching.

During the 70s he makes sculptures that depict subjects related to torture and the political climate of the day. Pieces like El mudo II (1973), Figura acostada o Procedimiento (1972) and Telaraña II (1975) evidence the historical moment during which they are made. The same year that he makes the piece El Mudo II, the Asociación Amigos del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes buys it for the Museum’s permanent collection.

In 1976 he holds his first show of sculpture at the Artemúltiple Gallery and the aforementioned pieces are a part of that exhibit. Shortly thereafter, because of the prohibition of the Griselda Gambaro’s play Ganarse la muerte which is considered “immorality on a subversive background”, the family decides to seek exile in Barcelona, where it resides from 1977 to 1980. Upon returning the artist holds a show of the piece he makes during those years at the Jacques Martínez Gallery. Once settled in Argentina he teaches sculpture and drawing at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes “Ernesto de la Cárcova”. He quit the post for political reasons in 1989.

In 1982 he gives up translucent material for volumes of opaque color, as seen in the piece Adan.

A first retrospective of his work is held in the Fundación San Telmo in 1991. At that time he includes literary texts such as marginal figures from comic strips into his work. In 1991 Distéfano, Ed. Banco Tornquist / Crédit Lyonnais, Bs.As. and with a critical essay by Elba Pérez is published; this is the first monograph published on the artist. At the same time, the Fundación Antorchas buys his pieces En un camino, II (1980) and the drawing Escaleras (1967) to be donated to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes collection.

The Fundación Konex grants him the Platinum Konex Prize in 1992.
In 1997 he explores monumental sculpture and participates in the exhibit Cantos paralelos (featuring a selection of nine Argentine artists) at the el Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas in Austin; the show was curated by Maricarmen Ramírez.

A year later a retrospective exhibit curated by Martha Nanni is held at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.

In 2000-01 he participates in the exhibit Heterotopías. Medio siglo sin lugar: 1918-1968 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, and in 2004 in the exhibit Inverted Utopias, Avant-Garde in Latin America at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, U.S.A.

Both shows are curated by Maricarmen Ramírez.

He currently lives and works in Buenos Aires.
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Roberto H. Elía (Buenos Aires, 1950).
He attends classes at Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes “Manuel Belgrano” as from 1967. Since then, his works include different media and techniques such as drawing, painting and objects derived from recurrent everyday items that he resignifies by means of appropriation: matches, nails, books, pencils, and within this set, wooden clips are highlighted -already present in his early work- such as in the case of Perros.

In his first works, the text plays an important role: writing as a symbol and as an image related to different everyday media as cups, suitcases, frames, pencils, such as in El placer del texto (1970), Máquina de texto (1972) or Texto sólido de transporte (1973). Throughout the artist’s production, the work is mixed with the object and with a thoughtful conceptual reflection that, according to critics, has been influenced by hermetics, the kabbalah, the Buddhist Zen, and by Roland Barthes and Gaston Bachelard`s writings and readings.

In Recuerdos de África (Homenaje a Raymond Rousell) (1969-1970), he has already worked with burned paper, another recurrent resource throughout his production; he himself also appears in his 1971 work on the “rayuela”, a children’s game resignified in Cortazar’s work.
Simultaneously to painting and since the beginning of the 70’s, he works as a craftsman on tapestry and wood objects and he also tries advertising.

Since 1975, he frequently visits the Grafein workshop on writing and theoretical research, organized by Mario Tobelem, where he discovers “text and word’s material specificity”.

Starting in 1977, he participates in some collective exhibitions at Artemúltiple, together with Víctor Grippo, Luis Felipe Noé, Felipe Pino, Jorge Pirozzi and Eduardo Stupía, among others. In one of these that stretch until 1980, he presents his installation Desde la resistencia: several sheets of paper pierced by heat and that, hung in an empty room, silhouetted letter shapes on the walls.

Although he produces an array of works in the 70’s, his first individual exhibition is not open until the end of 1978 at Ática in Buenos Aires, where he presents a collection of ink-work. Later on, he travels abroad and stays in Barcelona and Madrid.

In 1980, he organizes an exhibition in the Fundación San Telmo together with Jorge Pietra, the second exhibition from the cycle Jóvenes Valores. There, he presents work of his from the early 70’s.

Since the early 80’s, he works on boxes and assorted objects, as in Texto (1983) or in Chien or in Lo creativo (1986).

In 1984, he starts participating in collective exhibitions worldwide, as Trois aspects du realisme en Argentine, Maison de l’Amérique Latine de París or Realismo: tres vertientes at Museo de América, Madrid. In 1985, he travels to the US after being awarded the first prize for drawing -Premio Esso-, aimed to artists under the age of forty, where he also sells his designs for wood tables.

In December 1985, he makes a comeback to Fundación San Telmo: this time with a retrospective of his 1980-1985 production presenting a collection of objects, sculptures and paintings. One of his recurrent images, the “rayuela”, is the thematic axis of the project he develops in New York in 1986, and that is when he is granted the Fundación Simón Guggenheim scholarship. Afterwards, Elía once more travels to Madrid.

In 1989, he participates in the collective exhibition Mas allá del objeto at Patio Bullrich in Buenos Aires and also in the VII Bienal Iberoamericana del Arte at Instituto Cultural Domec in Mexico; in November he opens an exhibition in the Van Eyck gallery in Buenos Aires where he shows paintings in acrylic, objects and a collection of black-ink-works somehow faded or “burned” because of chlorine.

His 1991 intervention in the IV Bienal de Arte de La Habana and in L’Atelier de Buenos Aires at CREDAC, Ivry-sur-Seine, France takes place the same year that he participates in two collective exhibitions that, in Buenos Aires, make a second reading of the recent Argentine artistic production: Los 80 en el MAM. Instalaciones de 27 artistas and Una visión de la plástica argentina contemporánea, 1940-1990.

In 1992, he organizes his first individual exhibition abroad, at Salón Decouverte, Galleria Mitend de París. This same year, he enters the collective show Entre la imagen, la idea y el objeto at Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires and is granted the Monocopia prize at XXXVII Salón Municipal de Artes Plásticas “Manuel Belgrano”. He is also awarded by Fundación Konex as one of the most important figures in the field of Visual Art in Argentina from 1981 to 1991.

In his 1993 exhibition at Ruth Benzacar gallery, he presents his series Klammer together with other works such as El pincel de fuego (1992) and the series El pasajero de la luz (1993), works performed on paper in which he resorts to the image of a clip in order to represent the human body framed by brackets. His Mesa, territorio del río (1991-1993) is also on exhibit in this show even though he keeps on providing changes to this work while the exhibition is opened. The topic of the table with distinct objects is another of his repertoire’s recurrent elements.

Since 1993, he also lectures in art at several national institutions such as Facultad de Humanidades y Artes de la Universidad Nacional de Rosario; Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes “Prilidiano Pueyrredón”, Buenos Aires; Casal de Cataluña, Buenos Aires; Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes “Ernesto de la Cárcova”, Buenos Aires. In May 1995, he is granted the Scholarship of the Fondo Nacional de las Artes en Proyectos Especiales and also the Primer Premio Gunther, organized by CAYC; in June he opens with a review of his work the center “Proyectos” that Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes dedicates, at the time, to the “in-between generation”. It is there where he introduces some of his paintings, objects, and works on paper, together with other elements from his workshop.

In 1999, he carries out (El Kamino) exhibition, at Le 19, Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain de Montbéliard, France. Almost at the same time, he organizes Jazz at Filo introduced by a Hugo Mujica´s text. It comprises two series of works on paper, focusing once more onto matter, signification and the text’s “sound”: one of this series originates from the phrase “so as to order the darkness in a word” written initially on a pencil. This set is resumed in his 2001 exhibition at Centro Cultural Borges, where he also presents a series of objects and drawings of this year such as Calamares en su tinta or Para sostener la memoria de los trajes.

In 2003, an important exhibition, somehow an anthology, is organized at Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires, El laboratorio de Roberto Elía (1969-2003).

He lives and works in Buenos Aires.
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León Ferrari (Buenos Aires, 1920).
Graduated in engineering in 1947, this self-instructed artist starts exhibiting sculptures in wood, plaster and ceramic at around the middle 50’s and in 1959 he begins to work in wire.
In 1963, he develops his “written drawings” series in which he examines the relationships between visual discourse and the power of the word and of the image that stand as one of the axis in the artist’s production; among other works, it is noticeable Carta a un general, a series of ink-work. In 1964, he publishes in Milan his drawings in Escrito en el aire, accompanied by Rafael Alberti’s poetry, the first of a sequence of his “artist’s books” a task that he pursues until this very decade.

Also in 1964, he works on a series of writings in which the lines drawn are linked to the meaning of the word offering a reading between text and interpretation. In Swish and swallow, he includes comments on a passage from the written media, or handwritten copies of news articles so as to shed light upon the difference in decoding an original text and just a copy. In this series, later on gathered in his book Cuadro Escrito, he already starts criticizing Christianism.

In 1965, he presents at Premio Di Tella, a collection of works that announces the American action in Vietnam and in the Dominican Republic: a scene of the bombing of a Vietnamese school; clippings of news articles published in the papers covering this war event; another work in which fourteen planes in action are portrayed, hinting at the fourteen votes of the OEA backing the American invasion to Santo Domingo and, his most controversial work, La civilización occidental y cristiana, a wood religious image of Christ “crucified” onto an American bomber. Jorge Romero Brest, ITDT director, had the work unhung and separated from the exhibition, stirring a heated debate around it.

Ferrari is one of the most proactive promoters of collective exhibitions in which politics of the 60’s play a central role: as from the initial Homenaje al Vietnam in 1966, the introductory text of which he co-writes, Homenaje a Latinoamérica in 1967, the outstanding Tucumán arde-produced in 1968 by an array of artists in the avant-garde from Rosario and Buenos Aires and that are on exhibit at the Argentine CGT premises in both cities-, and also the 1969 Malvenido Mister Rockefeller.

His Palabras ajenas “literary collage”, that is a selection of texts by Johnson, Hitler, excerpts from the New Testament, etc, is edited by Ferrari himself in 1966; it is staged as a play in London in 1968 and later in Buenos Aires in 1973.

In the 1971 II Certamen Nacional de Investigaciones Visuales, in which several plays openly addressing political issues participate -in the end two of the main awards are censored-, Ferrari introduces El calendario de la Casa Rosada, a blank sheet of paper with instructions so as to write or stick on it every day news about the repression: the work was not considered by the board.

In 1972 Contra-salón, he portrays an official armor car for crashing demonstrations, through which he promotes in the advertising style the benefits of the product; this ad is published in the Ramparts magazine -the same one that has published the Malvenido Mister Rockefeller billboards.

Between 1972 and 1976, he is a member of the Foro por los Derechos Humanos and also of the Movimiento contra la Represión y la Tortura.

The 1976 Nosotros no sabíamos is a collection of news reports on repression in Argentina. This year he seeks political asylum in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he lives until 1991.

His numerous productions in the Brazilian artistic scene participate increasingly in the international circuit of exhibitions since the 80’s until now.

During the first years in exile, he resumes his work on metal sculptures and examines the experimental parameters of graphics. Ferrari is one the leaders in the use of the photocopier or xerography and heliography such as in his series of immense blueprints produced by means of heliography and in which he includes patterns for architecture drawings or “Letraset” shapes, developed between 1980 and 1982; this series is exhibited in 2003 at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires.

He undertakes a new project and tries to go international in mail art, working on different artist’s books that compile his thematically-arranged graphic work such as in his book Hombres, with drawings from 1979, edited in 1984 -200 numbered copies.

In Brazil, he resumes political-religious themes in the form of collages about the Bible, in which he offers a link and juxtaposition between provocative heterodox images and those belonging to the classic Catholic iconography. He also starts in 1985 a series of installations in which diverse birds are caged together letting their droppings fall onto images from Juicio Final by Michelangelo; these works are exhibited in Sao Pablo, New York and Buenos Aires, where he also presents La Justicia, that is comprised of a laying chicken standing on a scale. These works are bound to be resumed in part of another series that starts towards the end of the 90’s.

In 1989, he is one of the organizers of the exhibition-book NO al indulto, obediencia debida, punto final.

Upon returning to Buenos Aires, in 1991, he continues producing pieces in which he questions the link between religious discourse and politics. In 1992, he pays homage to the condom in Surrealismo Nuevo Mundo; the artist reckons at the time that “in order to minimize the campaign that the church has been promoting against the use of condoms in the struggle against HIV, he wants to praise the undervalued condom”, and exhibits bottles and pots containing condoms and various objects. That year he makes his address “Conquista y religión” within the IV Jornadas del Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte (CAIA); later on he pursues his theoretical works in the academic arena, always aiming at the connection among religion, power and violence.

In his book Exégesis, a 1993 “literary collage” that addresses once more the idea introduced in Palabras Ajenas, he offers a train of thought that is repeated by several characters that enter and leave the scenes.

In 1994, he produces a series of dummies accompanied by different texts -biblical sources, Borges’ poems- in which he reconsiders the materiality of writing.

In 1996, he is one of the organizers of the exhibition-book XX años, and is in charge of the illustration of Conadep’s Nunca Más published in sections by Página 12 newspaper, images that are reprinted later on in La bondadosa crueldad (Editorial Argonauta, 2000).

His series of Braille texts starts in 1997: there he displays texts from the Bible in braille over pictures portraying bodies, erotic scenes or devices for torturing; in other occasions for example, he takes advantage of this sort of printing-to-be-touched and engraves Borges’ poems onto nudity photographs shot by Man Ray.

In 1998, he participates in Identidad, a collective installation that suggests a second thought over the identity and current life of the children of the “desaparecidos”.

His Infiernos e idolatrías and L’osservatore romano, critical to religion, keep on being part of the exhibition opened at ICI in 2000, and in 2001 at Sylvia Vesco art gallery.

In 2004, his Escrituras shows at Ruth Benzacar, and the main retrospective of his work at Centro Cultural Recoleta, stand as the latest recognition to the outstanding career of this artist

He lives and works in Buenos Aires.
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Norberto Gómez (Buenos Aires, 1941).
He attends Escuela de Bellas Artes “Manuel Belgrano” between 1954 and 1956; then quits formal education. Simultaneously, he works in advertising and commercial design.

Between 1965 and 1966, he travels to Europe; in Paris he works at Julio Le Parc’s workshop. When back in Buenos Aires, he starts a series of geometric constructions in enameled wood in opaque white and bright black; the interaction of light and shadow is linked to the examination of relationship and development of forms in space.

In 1967, starts showing his work. His first solo exhibition Geometrías takes place at Arte Nuevo gallery and at the same time he participates in Premio Ver y Estimar, places in which he is bound to be back the following year, introducing works where the geometric inorganic characteristics vanish as from a successive alteration to the forms.

On the outset of the 70’s, he abandons artistic production; his next individual exhibition is organized in 1976 at Carmen Waugh in Buenos Aires: he presents a collection of wooden and plaster geometric bodies painted in synthetic lacquers; the shapes of the bodies are modified due to fading torsions or movements in the space. With a group of this series, Gomez is awarded this year the De Ridder prize for sculpture.

As from 1977, and during the period of the coup d’etat, Gomez examines the representation of innards and viscera tied together; later on he focuses on the drama of burning human remains after tortured. These thematic explorations happen at the same time that he starts to use colored polyester resin. The first exhibition of one of his innards’ representations takes place at Ruth Benzacar, as part of a collective one in 1977.

A much more comprehensive collection from this series is presented at the end of 1978 at Arte Nuevo. The text of the catalogue is written by Víctor Grippo, who concludes that: “to his immaculate constructive gesture, [Gómez] adds sectioning, also as a gesture, an everyday reiteration, an everyday over imposition of pain”; in this case, Grippo’s words support the brutality in the sculptures, in a historic moment when pain plays the main role.

The following year, he pursues his examination of the biomorphic representation in a sequence of skeletons, teeth and innards on “barbecues” that, he exhibits in Valparaiso, Chile. He also participates in several collective exhibitions in Buenos Aires.
In 1979, he begins to take part in La Post-figuración; a series of shows, organized by Jorge Glusberg in which Jorge Álvaro, Mildred Burton, Diana Dowek, Alberto Heredia and Elsa Soibelman also participate.

In 1980, he presents at Estudio Giesso, another aspect of his series of skeletons and innards but this time produced in foam rubber and polyester fiber. In the following years, he continues participating in national exhibitions, biennales and international events (Tokyo, Montevideo, and Medellín). In 1982, he is awarded the prize from Asociación Argentina de Críticos to the Artist of the Year and the CAYC organizes an individual exhibition that includes his latest work.

His Anuncio y Asunción exhibition at Tema Art Gallery, in 1993, stands as the end of a phase of his work in which he examines, according to Ricardo Martín-Crossa, the “imagination of the wounded”. Staring at the tortured organic matter it is impossible for certain concern not to arise in us and that such concern determines our time: fear of beings harassed by the magnitude of their own predatory power. To this series belongs a shocking representation in which a crucifixion of human remains is portrayed. That year, he also participates in Confrontaciones, a collective exhibition at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, together with Jorge Álvaro, Hugo de Marziani, Hugo Sbernini and Jorge Tapia, among others.
In 1984, in his Por amor al arte at Tema, he resumes for the last time his work in polyester so as to produce a set composed of an Eucaristic keeper, a pyre and a whip that, hinting at repression and power, pre-announces his following series displaying gigantic weapons in poly-chromed cardboard. It is a set of nails, Denver boots, shackles, swords, etc., that are presented in 1985 at Vea gallery in Buenos Aires.

Norberto Gómez... Ocho años..., is on exhibit in 1986 at Museo Municipal de Artes Plástica “Eduardo Sívori”, as a kind of review of his work during the years of the military coup. The following year, he begins to work in plaster: the artist’s Las manos belongs to this period.
In 1990, he opens an individual show at Ruth Benzacar, where he presents sculptures that mix “out of orbit” human figures, animals and architectural fragments all part of a discourse that revolves around fantasy and parody.

In October 1995, the main retrospective Norberto Gómez, veinte años is organized at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires making a splash in the exhibition arena. During the following years, he participates in several collective exhibitions such as Puente Aéreo II at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile, 1996, Otro mirar. Arte argentino contemporáneo, in Barcelona, 1997 or the “mega exhibition” Siglo XX Argentina at Centro Cultural Recoleta in 1999.

With his Torres de la memoria, in which he resumes the idea of representing repression as from a “medieval” object for torturing, he participates at Concurso Internacional “Parque de la Memoria” in 1999, where he stands as one of the four Argentines who are especially invited due to “his artistic career and his commitment to Human Rights”.

In October 2000, he presents an individual show at Ruth Benzacar: a series of “bronzish” figures and distinct elements from monuments’ rhetoric wich, as from his representation with an absurd look in unrest, ponder upon certain rhetorical aspects of history construction. This same year, he is awarded the prize from Asociación Argentina de Críticos de Arte due to his career; two years later, he is granted the Premio Konex.

In April 2003, he opens Ejercicios materiales 1978-1983 at Daniel Maman Fine Arts, Buenos Aires, where he presents a set of works that, according to the artist, “have been so silently concealed... Giving an answer to the time in which they have been created and now, as time goes by, they are telling us what we have been and what we are. They represent a moment, important of my work, which is always a transition, flesh and language.”

He lives and works in Buenos Aires.
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Víctor Grippo (Junín, pcia. de Buenos Aires, 1936 - Buenos Aires, 2002).
This artist, one of the main representatives in Argentine conceptualism, studies chemistry at Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica de la Universidad de La Plata, where he also works as a professor in the field for some years.

His first exhibition takes place in Tandil, Buenos Aires Province, in 1958. During the first years of his career, he develops an expressive figurative discourse that leads, around 1963, into geometrically-based abstract work.

In the middle 60’s in Buenos Aires he meets Emilio Renart, Kenneth Kemble and Enrique Barilari, with whom he opens at Vignes art gallery Investigación sobre el proceso de la creación; this same year, he organizes his first individual exhibition in this city, presenting a collection of paintings at Lirolay gallery. In the same art gallery, he also shows two years later Entre la simetría y el diseño, abstract paintings performed in synthetic enamel.

Towards the end of the 60’s, he starts to produce kinetic three-dimensional objects in which he emphasizes the internal mechanism that moves the machinery, a series that is later on destroyed. The inclusion of his model Cubo in 1969 in the VI Biennale des Jeunes in Paris, stands as his first entry in the international artistic circuit. This same year, he starts to participate at CAYC, and as from 1971 in the Grupo de los Trece.

His 1971 Analogía I opens his series of works in which he uses potatoes as source of energy and as an analogy to conciousness, presented among electrodes and conceptual definitions. In this work, he already shows one of his recurrent features: the use of everyday elements that, tensioned from the scientific discourse, are symbolically analysed in depth.

Shown in Arte de Sistemas I at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires and donated to Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1974, Analogía I presents forty potatoes arranged on a pigeon-holed board that has been intervened with copper and zinc electrodes, generating an electric current that is read by means of a voltmeter that can be switched by the audience.

In 1972, he participates in Premio Acrilicopaolini, where he is awarded the Second Prize for his Analogía IV, a table divided in two areas, one of which is covered with a white tablecloth ad presents a plate with potatoes shown with real silverware. The other area is covered in a black tablecloth and the same objects are reproduced in translucent acrylic. The table is a theme that Grippo reworks in various forms and materials throughout his career.

He also in 1972 participates in a collective exhibition at Roberto Arlt square, Arte e ideología. CAYC al aire libre, where he introduces Construcción de un horno popular para hacer pan produced together with Jorge Gamarra and A. Rossi: from the act of baking bread and distributing it, they hint at recovering a connoted communal ritual.

In 1976, he presents at Artemúltiple, Algunos oficios, in which he gathers elements and tools linked to the mason, blacksmith, farmer, carpenter, and stonecutter’s work.

This same year, he organizes his first “little case”, Valijita de un marchand: in this series, he locks up different objects so as to refer to various characters and crafts. This format will be used by the artist until the end of this decade, and it will be rethought in his ulterior series of boxes.

In 1977, he is granted as a member of Grupo de los Trece, the Gran Prix Itamaraty at the XIV Bienal de Sao Paulo for his Signos en ecosistemas artificiales. He also presents a second version of his Analogía I in his individual exhibition at CAYC, Víctor Grippo, conciencia de la energía. In this case, wired potatoes are scattered on a table covered with a white tablecloth beside a chair. This series of analogies finishes with La papa dora la papa, la conciencia ilumina la conciencia, on exhibit in 1978 in Sao Pablo.

Together with Roberto Elía, Luis Felipe Noé, Eduardo Stupía and Felipe Pino, among others, he participates also in 1978 in an exhibition at Artemúltiple where he introduces Tabla, a wooden table onto which he writes in ink -and also photographs in a crate- a text on the table’s potential uses and stories.

In this gallery, he also exhibits in 1980 Vida, muerte y resurrección in which he displays under a glass case sets of pairs of geometric bodies, each pair of bodies filled with beans in germination that, in time, force the forms initially sealed to open up.

In 1983, he presents his following individual show, Frate Focu [Brother Fire], at Arte Nuevo gallery, where he presents twelve glass wooden boxes containing panels in painted plaster, lead, and graphite to which he adds other elements such as rosebush twigs, bread, a crucible; there he ponders upon the symbolic value of fire, “as a symbol of spiritualization and transformation, as part of nature manipulated by man”, from the artist’s point of view.
His boxes from the series Equilibrio, iniciated in 1985, combine elements from construction and geometry, such as suspended plumb lines, maps, and geometric bodies. He remakes this series in the 90’s, offering a new reading in a new version of Desequilibrios.

In 1988, he organizes his retrospective Víctor Grippo: Obras 1965-1987 at Fundación San Telmo. The following year, he presents his recent works in Cercando la luce, at Álvaro Castagnino gallery. It is a collection of plaster items with which he develops“scenery” displaying different characters and actions.

Grippo’s work gains momentum in the international scene of exhibitions, since the early 90’s, taking part in collective shows in different European and American cities. In Buenos Aires, he presents in 1991 at ICI, La comida del artista (Puerta amplia-mesa estrecha): here a long narrow table is placed next to a white door and holds a set of plates containing burned corn, a golden egg, and dry food; on a wall, a text reads the extreme resource of geophagy, or the practice of eating cooked dirt.

That year, he tackles the potato theme again in his work Tiempo: connected to a digital clock and accompanied by a text by Dostoyevsky in Russian and in Spanish, he points at the idea of the analogical-digital.

In 1994, he produces Mesas de trabajo y reflexión for the V Bienal de La Habana: the installation is comprised of a set of tables lit by dimmed light bulbs; each of them, bears writings and phrases by Latin American intellectuals, together with other materials such as plaster, clay or corn. His topic of tables is resumed in Mesas esperando, an installation presented in 1988 at XXIV Sao Paulo Biennial in a sector named Roteiros.

In 1995, a retrospective of his work is shown at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and at Palais de Beaux-Arts in Brussels.

On April 28, 2001, he opens at Ruth Benzacar, his last solo exhibition, where he introduces a collection of his white boxes, objects such as El tiempo de trabajo and his series Anónimos, at about fifty anthropomorphous pieces performed in painted plaster, arranged in uneven sets in display glass boxes. During this year, he prepares four of his tables to be sent to Documenta 11, a collection that will be finally presented posthumously in 2002. This year, he is granted, also posthumously, the “Konex de Brillante” Prize.
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Alberto Heredia (Buenos Aires, 1924- 2000).
Even though his background is framed within the system of art schools and workshops, this sculptor considers himself as “self-taught by principle”.

In 1948 he meets the concrete artists Claudio Girola and Emio Iommi and starts attending their workshop in 1952. Getting to be acquainted with concrete art determines a change in his work that is clearly witnessed in the formal abstraction portrayed in his work with constructive pieces of clay and iron wires that replaces his figurative art and modelling.
Since 1955, he participates in collective exhibitions, his first one-man show does not take place until 1960. At the end of that year, he travels to Europe where he gets in touch with informalist artists such as the Spanish group El Paso; he meets Alberto Greco in Paris with whom he develops some vivo-dito.

In this city, in 1962, he begins his famous series of 16 Cajas Camembert that is presented the following year at Lirolay art gallery in Buenos Aires and later on in the exhibition El surrealismo en la Argentina, organized by Aldo Pellegrini at Instituto Di Tella. The heterogeneous content comprised of bone remains, objects, broken tiny toys, hair, rotten matter, among others, is disclosed when opening a box that contains them.

The work in rough material and found objects that take an ironic look onto the idea of mass consumption society is developed in thematic series and stands as one of the very features of his provocative work. During the 60´s, he produces several series: in 1964, Los Castillos and Los Carritos, sculptures in rough material -wood, cardboard, fabrics- as an “imagining portrayal of waste”; in 1967, he starts Los Embalajes, that he will develop until 1973, and in 1968 he begins Cajas Palabras in acrylic that contains phrases either from the French May or from classic authors. In 1971, he participates in El artista y el mundo del consumo exhibition at Carmen Waugh, together with Aldo Paparella, Libero Badii, Horacio Coll and Enio Iommi, and in Salón Objetos útiles e inútiles con Acrilicopaolini which is awarded the first prize for Useless Objects.

This same year, he is granted the third prize for his Construcción in the unrest of the II Certamen Nacional de Investigaciones Visuales but due to the visible practice of censorship throughout the exhibition, Heredia rejects the award. Next year, he participates in Contra-salón at Sociedad de Arquitectos exhibiting his boxes. This large exhibition organized by some artists so as to challenge the official LXI Salón de Artes Plásticas.

In 1972, within the exhibition at Carmen Waugh that reviews his work since 1963, Heredia presents his series Engendros: wood, cardboard and wire are the elements for the scaffolds used to install plaster figures. The years 1972 and 1974 frame the development of his Las lenguas, Los amordazamientos, Los sexos and Los embalajes series, in which dental prostheses, waste material, bandages, and woods are mixed with objects from different origins in order to become part of connoted portrayals of the violence of the time. Such series were on exhibit in 1974 at Carmen Waugh in the show De lenguas... y otras cosas más, where they are installed on a grass-covered table laid on sawhorses.

During those years, he also starts his series Ángeles, in which he resumes iconographic elements from The Passion, like the thorn crown and the spear, that he pursues until the end of the decade.

In 1974, he works on a series of Crucifixiones and also on a series of monuments, as El San Martín, in which the equestrian monument tradition is parodied by means of the traditional-iconography deformation, the use of the matter and the saturated-red color. That year is when he is threatened by Triple A, the reason why he seeks shelter in Uruguay for two months.

He comes back in 1975 and starts his Copas Melba series. In May 1977, he shows at Art Gallery International-Víctor Najmías his Ricky y el Pájaro and El caballero de la máscara series, drawings from the previous year, which, located beside two homonym sculptures, comprise a narrative promenade on the man-animal symbiosis.

In 1978, his first ropero is shown at Artemúltiple: El ropero MC o de la novia, in which assorted objects and clothing are arranged as if it were a scenery, creating a story about a character. The same year, he participates in Esculturas para la ciudad, organized by Ennio Iommi, who includes different artists linked by their non traditional approach towards art.
The following year, his Serie Plateada is exhibited and in it he portrays several objects -“little closet”, night table, coat stand, used furniture-, their everyday connotation is resignified when such elements are covered in the color. This aesthetic-symbolic strategy of silvering these ordinary objects is resumed in his series Los muebles on exhibit in 1980.

Since 1979, he starts to participate in a series of exhibitions, labelled La Post-figuración, organized by Jorge Glusberg, who also gathers Jorge Álvaro, Mildred Burton, Diana Dowek, Norberto Gómez and Elsa Soibelman. In one of these shows, that takes place during Jornadas de la Crítica ‘80, at galería del Retiro, he introduces his impressive Niños envueltos a la Heredia, a fierce performance in which he parodies the scientific discourse in relation to the impositions upon the human body, as a metaphor of social violence and power.

At the outset of the 80´s, he develops both his series Los juguetes and Los tronos; the latter portrays structures that hold different kinds of chairs on which several figures with distinct objects are arranged. At this time, due to Luis Wells’ driving will, he shares the workshop with other painters and sculptors such as Gorriarena, Smoje, Grippo, Kemble, Suárez and Renzi at Osvaldo Giesso’s premises on Cangallo 1227.

When democracy strides in, he has a solo exhibition in which he reviews his work from 1970 until 1984 at Fundación San Telmo.

During this time, he keeps on working on different tensions and parodies among iconography, matter and color concentrating on death and violence: Chernobyl (Main Prize to Sculpture at Bienal de la Fundación Fortabat, 1986), Alejandro, cuidado con los platos or the series on San Sebastián (introduced in 1990) are examples of this. He exhibits his Juguetes at ICI in 1992, and in 1995 he decides to arrange a retrospective of his work from the 80’s named Algunas metamorfosis at Ruth Benzacar’s.

In 1998 an important retrospective takes place at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires; this year, the Asociación Argentina de Críticos de Arte grants him Premio a la Trayectoria artística.

Together with Antonio Berni, Juan Carlos Distéfano, León Ferrari, Víctor Grippo, Rubén Santantonín, Pablo Suárez and Jorge de la Vega’s production, his work participates in the touring Cantos paralelos. La parodia en el arte argentino contemporáneo exhibition, that opens in 1999 at the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin.
After his death, in 2002, he is awarded the Konex de Honor, a posthumous prize granted only to the big names of national art. Next year, Alberto Heredia por cinco coleccionistas exhibition was organized at Centro Cultural Borges.
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Jorge Macchi (Buenos Aires, 1963).
He graduates from Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes “Prilidiano Pueyrredón” in 1987 as a painting proffessor.

Frequently considered a neo conceptualist by the critics, he starts exhibiting in different collective shows around the mid 80’s. At that time he becomes a member of Grupo de la X and as such he exhibits at Museo Castagnino in Rosario and at Museo Sívori in Buenos Aires.

In 1989, he produces his first individual show: Pinturas y retablos de fines del siglo XX at Alberto Elía’s gallery. One of the conceptual concepts that will run across his work is already evident: the tension between two dimensions, “artistic” and “real” as from the questioning of everyday logics. In 1990, he is awarded the first prize in painting at the Premio Fundación Mundo Nuevo.

His next solo exhibition, in 1991, at Fundación Banco Patricios de Buenos Aires is comprised of paintings, objects, and installations; this year he also participates in the collective Los 80 en el MAM. Instalaciones de 27 artistas exhibition, at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires and in Una visión de la plástica argentina contemporánea, 1940-1990, at Patio Bullric. Simultaneously, he organizes his first international exhibitions at the collective Feria Decouvertes at Grand Palais de París and at L’Atelier de Buenos Aires, CREDAC, Ivry-sur-Seine. He is, also in 1991, invited to the Bienal de Pintura de Cuenca, (Ecuador) and is there granted the scholarship for art from Fundación Antorchas.

His first one-man show abroad takes place in 1992, at Francois Mitaine gallery in Paris: an installation of objects and also Herramientas místicas in which reminiscences of gothic architecture pervade, displayed on everyday rough materials such as rusty metal and mop threads.

In 1993, he organizes an individual exhibition at Casal de Catalunya de Buenos Aires and is awarded the first prize at Premio Braque de escultura that is on exhibit at Fundación Banco Patricios. This award allows him to study at Cité des Arts in Paris, the first of his attending workshops and internships in Europe.

In 1994, 32 morceaux d’eau, a solo exhibition, is organized at Galleria Jorge Alyskewycz, París and the following year he introduces a series of everyday objects, the use of which seems to be “redefined” as from the very use of the material involved in the construction itself. His first appearance in the UK is searching south, two South American artists, at John Hansard Gallery of the University of Southampton together with Arturo Duclos.

He travels to Rotterdam in 1996 thanks to a scholarship granted by the Rotterdam Art Council and by the Duende Artist Initiative, and it is there where he presents his extremely recent works and composes his photographic work Accident in Rotterdam.

During his stay at Delfina Studios in London, in 1996-1997, he creates an installation: Incidental Music that is presented in 1998 at the University Gallery, University of Essex, UK, and at Ruth Benzacar gallery. In this work, he proposes a reading on violence, accidents and death: three boards stuck onto a wall stand as “blank staves” portraying lines made out of clippings of news articles about victims of gruesome crimes. On the empty spaces of the paper that frame the reports, a piece of music is written and it can be listened to by means of a pair of headphones available in the room.

He also exhibits in 1998 together with Gustavo Romano, Evidencias circunstanciales at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, where he presents 6 historias de amor and is awarded the prize to the young artist of the year from Asociación Argentina de Críticos de Arte.

At this time, he starts his work on theater scenery as from his involvement in a workshop on stage experimentation at Fundación Antorchas; since then, Macchi produces scenery for Rafael Spregelburd, Daniel Veronese and Alejandro Tantanián’s plays, among others.

In 1999, he puts a project forward at Concurso Internacional “Parque de la Memoria” so as to build in Buenos Aires a monument for the missing detainees later slaughtered by the Junta repression in Argentina. There, he introduces Posdata, where he hints at “the absence of a place to communicate symbolically with the “desaparecidos”. It is a project in which a white mailbox, bearing no sign, and the lid of which is welded and connected directly into an undergroun chamber, isolated from the surface, allows receiving and keeping
letters that will eventually be put into the mailbox but will never be taken out or read.

He is awarded the First prize at Premio Banco de la Nación Argentina in 2000; the following year he organizes an individual exhibition at Le 19, Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain Montbéliard and is granted the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.
He presents also in 2001, his Nocturno instalallation at Centro Cultural Recoleta: “sixty spheres of light, similar to the ones at a pharmacy -white and holding a green cross-, are displayed as a constellation of stars in the vault (of room 9)”, according to the artist’s own project.

In 2000, he presents Fuegos de artificio at Ruth Benzacar; among others, he presents Ornamento, The speakers’ corner and Anatomía I - a scheme from a medical encyclopaedia in which the names and location of arteries and veins are displayed connected by lines- together with 46 tiny watercolors from 1996 that revolve around the idea of “craft” and the visual artist’s language. This same year, he is granted the Premio Konex de Platino for production resulting from mixed-media techniques for the period 1997-2001.

At the end of 2003, El final del eclipse. El arte de América Latina en la transición al siglo XXI exhibition arrives in Buenos Aires. There, Macchi participates with his video-installation Víctima serial (2000): a selection of several texts from urban advertising (billboards, graffiti, screens) that offers a discourse-collage on “anger”, “blood” and “victims”. He also engages in A Parasite Showing with his El navegante, a movable skeleton scheme made out of names of different bones, hung by means of transparent lines that swing against one another as though there were “ghosts” suspended in the boat-space of the exhibition.

Between November 2003 and January 2004, he presents Buenos Aires tour at Espacio Distrito cuatro de Madrid, an installation that is also on exhibit at the VIII Istanbul Biennial. It displays a tour around an image of Buenos Aires defined as from the lines determined by slivers of a broken pane of glass displayed onto a map of the city; simultaneously, his artist’s book is published.

He lives and works in Buenos Aires.
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Cristina Piffer (Buenos Aires, 1953).
In 1976, she graduates from Facultad de Arquitectura de Buenos Aires, and since 1984 studies theory and visual practice.

Since 1994, she participates in collective exhibitions such as A E I u O, at Centro Cultural Recoleta, and in several contests. In 1997, she is awarded the 4th Prize at II Bienal de Arte de Bahía Blanca, organized by the local Museo de Arte Contemporaneo and participates in Anna Frank, a collective show, in the same museum that is also presented at Centro Cultural Recoleta de Buenos Aires the following year.

In March 1998, she opens her Como carne y uña show, together with Claudia Contreras, that is on exhibit at Centro Cultural Borges. Through her work in organic materials and their symbolic connotation, the artist offers in this exhibition a reading on national identity and its violent history such as, for example, Perder la cabeza, an installation that is comprised of three boards produced out of beef covered in polyester resin that imitates the solemnity and coldness of marble. Each one of the boards, installed on steel tables, function as grave-stones or mortuary reminders of Genaro Berón de Astrada, Francisco Ramírez and Pedro Castelli, who have been slaughtered during the civil war between the harbor of Buenos Aires and the Argentine inlands.

Among other works included in this exhibition, Piffer presents her work on viscera, displayed in aseptic glass containers filled with liquid that reminds of the techniques used by slashers in a symbolic link with the “desaparecidos” who have been dropped into the Río de Plata during the military coup.

In 1999, she introduces a project to Concurso Internacional “Parque de la Memoria” together with Claudia Contreras and Hugo Vidal: La Cruz del Sur which is pre-selected. In this project, the shape of a constellation takes shape from the alignment of buoys in the Río de la Plata by using a system of shackles and chains tied to a “dead” weight.

In 2000, she is granted an honorable mention by the jury in Premio Banco de la Nación Argentina a las Artes Visuales 2000 on exhibit at Centro Cultural Recoleta, then participates in Dos x Tres, a collective show, at Galería del Infinito and in the III Bienal de la Crítica organized at Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes “Juan Castagnino” in Rosario.

At Luisa Pedrouzo gallery in Arte BA 2000, she presents Trenzas criollas -animal innards anchored with steel contained in a glass box filled with formol, and also Las nazarenas, two modules in polyester resin, beef and iron.

In 2001, she takes part in Expo Inaugural II, a collective exhibition at Galería Luisa Pedrouzo in Buenos Aires. This year, she is awarded the subsidy to Artistic Creation from Fondo Nacional de las Artes.

The work produced during the period of this scholarship is included in her individual exhibition Entripados, organized at Galería Luisa Pedrouzo in Buenos Aires in April 2002. There, the artist presents works from her series “trenzas” -braids- produced in animal innards contained in glass pots displayed on steel props as if they were scientific dissection tables, and linked to texts that are used as a background explanation to the system of braiding. She also exhibits her series of tables: historic accounts written on smooth white surfaces that, though simulating marble, are made out of animal fat and paraffin.

Also in 2002, she participates in Ay, país nuestro, a collective exhibition organized by MAR (Movimiento Argentina Resiste) at Centro Cultural Recoleta, together with Norberto Gómez, León Ferrari, Luis Felipe Noé and Juan Carlos Distéfano, among others. Moreover, she organizes Proyecto Resistencia, in Resistencia, Chaco and together with Hugo Vidal, she takes part in Estudio Abierto editions in San Telmo-Monserrat and La Boca, in Últimas tendencias at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, and introduces an installation at III Bienal Iberoamericana de Lima, Peru.

In 2003, she is chosen to participate in Proyecto de Arte Público in San Juan de Puerto Rico, where she presents a floor-mural in Río Piedras urban-train station: an unfolded flag on the floor stretching from the lobby to the platform, disturbing the symmetry on the floor. On the flag, she writes the names of the surrounding community inhabitants, “that show different origins and backgrounds witnessing cultural mixtures”.

She is, also in 2003, included in collective exhibitions such as: Ansia y devoción. Imágenes del presente, at Fundación Proa and in 4000 cm3, a project headed by Horacio Zabala that gathers around twenty artists such as Roberto Elía, León Ferrari, Luis Felipe Noé, Gustavo Romano and Juan Carlos Romero, among others, at Centro Cultural de la Cooperación in Buenos Aires. Furthermore, she participates in Arte BA, once more at Luisa Pedrouzo’s stand.
In 2004, in Imagen y suceso, a collective exhibition at La Casona de los Olivera in Buenos Aires, she exhibits two works from her table series. The group of artists including Fernando Bedoya, Luján Funes, Res, Juan Carlos Romero, among others, proposes a work that aims at offering a new reading to the Argentine history of politics.

She is also in 2004 called together with Gustavo Romano and Gabriel Valansi, to join the cultural exchange program Diálogos Berlín-Buenos Aires: comparing the previous ideas on the urban imaginary with the reality of this European-style city, each artist puts forward a proposal to intervene in the Berliner public space. In September, Puntos de contacto takes place at CeDinCi in Buenos Aires together with Hugo Vidal, where they present their 1999-2004 production.

She lives and works in Buenos Aires.
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Liliana Porter (Buenos Aires, 1941).
She studies at Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes “Manuel Belgrano” between 1954 and 1958. In 1958, she travels to Mexico and joins Universidad Iberoamericana, where she deepens her knowledge in engraving with Colombian artist Guillermo Silva Santamaría and studies with Mathias Goeritz. Her first solo exhibition will take place in this city.

After three years she comes back to Buenos Aires and pursues her studies with the engravers Fernando López Anaya and Ana María Moncalvo. In 1961 and 1963 her etchings and engravings are on exhibit at Lirolay art gallery.

In 1964, she settles in New York; were, she studies at Pratt Graphic Art Center, at a time where engraving makes a splash worldwide. In 1965, she organizes together with Luis Camnitzer and Jose Guillermo Castillo the New York Graphic Workshop, an experience that, two years later, proposes a program that intends to go beyond engraving rhetoric rising from conceptually redefining its social function: FANDSO (Free Assemblage Nonfunctional Disposable Serial Objects) or sequenced objects, also dispensable, a functional, and freely interchangeable.

At this time she begins to examine three-dimensional engraving, collage and non conventional materials, such as Plexiglas and acetate introducing elements from the conceptualist discourse in her graphic work.

With her 1968 “artist’s book” Arruga, Porter begins to focus on photoengraving, a technique that she develops during the following years in different works in which graphic records overlap; in 1969 she presents an space-design at Instituto Di Tella, where she engraves virtual figures and shadows on a wall, playing with the relationship among space, real beings and the projection of their “virtual” shadows. She also presents a series of works of mail art, such as Sombra para una aceituna or Sombra para un vaso.

Since the late 60’s, Porter organizes continuously individual exhibitions in Europe, the US, and Latin America: in Caracas and Santiago de Chile (1969), Amsterdam (1972), Milan (1972, 1976), Venice (1973) Bogotá (1974, 1975, 1982, 1984), Cali (1978, 1983), Montreal (1983), New York (1973, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1980), among others. Her intervention in different international shows is steady until nowadays. She also engages towards the late 60’s in numerous collective exhibitions in Argentina and abroad, and even at biennials in Latin America, United States and Europe.

In 1973, she opens an individual exhibition in “Projects” at the Museum of Modern Art of New York. During this period, she produces her series of hands and geometric shapes either “intervened” or completed by the artist’s graphic recording, or of patterned hooks that hold real threads.

Between 1975 and 1977, she develops her series Magritte, in which she suggests a new reading and intervention over the surrealist artist’s iconography that is produced with a series of color photo-engravings as from Susi Gablik’s book pictures.

After some years without exhibiting in Buenos Aires, in 1977 she opens an exhibition at Artemúltiple, where she comes back the following year.

In the same year, she establishes with Luis Camnitzer a studio in Lucca, Italy, dedicated to graphics. That same year she produces her series El viaje, in which she presents a sequence of objects, geometric shapes and excerpts of texts, patterned, stuck or intervened, aligned and many times separated by punctuation marks on the patterns or directly on the wall.
Afterwards, she transfers these photo-silkscreen elements onto acrylic painting, pondering upon visual representation in a reflection on “real” forms, graphic schemes and representations of geometric bodies displayed on painting.

In 1980, she is awarded the Guggenheim scholarship, first of a sequence of scholarships for research in photography, video and multimedia. That year, she organizes an exhibition at Arte Nuevo in Buenos Aires and at the Center for Interamerican Relations of New York.

The idea of juxtaposition or complementariness of objects and their support still pervades in her work of the 80’s. On surfaces often structured as diptychs or triptychs, she adds elements from Pop iconography, from Borgesian literature and everyday elements of mass consumption. Books, mirrors and geometric bodies share the space of her painting-serigraphy-collage works, or Mickey Mouse appears besides a Roy Lichtenstein visual quote, for example, in Naturaleza muerta con crayón rojo (1984).

The first review of her career is attempted through the exhibition Selección de obras 1968-1990, at Fundación San Telmo de Buenos Aires and at Museo Nacional de Artes Plásticas de Montevideo, in 1990.

In 1991, the show Obra gráfica 1964-1990 opens in San Juan de Puerto Rico at the premises of the important biennial of Latin American Graphic Art. This year she is appointed teacher at Queens College, University of New York.

The following year, she presents another retrospective at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York: Fragments of the Journey 1968-1991 that is also on exhibit at the Archer Art Gallery, University of Texas at Austin in 1993.

Since the early 90’s, the artist starts to resort to photography as the only medium, as in her series of Diálogos between kitsch objects and plastic dolls photographed and imprinted in silver or cibachromium jelly. These same objects -in a three-dimensional version- are also included in other works on photographed objects, linking “representation” and “reality”.

She presents this series in exhibitions such as Fotografías, at Ruth Benzacar in 1997 and Diálogos at Museo de Bellas Artes “Juan Manuel Blanes” in Montevideo, the same year.

In 1999, she produces Para usted, a movie, in which different dolls and objects are shot in 16 mm. -then transferred to video- working on the interrelation of image and sound (the music is composed by Silvia Meyer).

She produces again another set with these features in 2000: Solo de tambor, presented at Galería Espacios Mínimos and at Ruth Benzacar in Buenos Aires. This year, she also participates in the VII Bienal de La Habana and in Tamarind Institute: 40 years at the Institute in Nuevo México dedicated to teaching and producing lithographies, among others. In 2002, she is granted “Premio Konex de Platino” for her production with mixed techniques for the period 1992-1996.

Porter continues working with objects -photographed or “real”- many times “completed” by drawing, such as in her series Él y los otros. Her installation El caminante is included in the touring exhibition El final del eclipse. El arte de América Latina en la transición al siglo XXI that, organized in Spain, is presented in Buenos Aires at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, later in 2003.

Just in November 2003, she opens at Centro Cultural Recoleta an important exhibition Liliana Porter. Fotografía y ficción, with an outstanding selection of her works as from 1967.

She lives and works in New York.
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Juan Carlos Romero (Avellaneda, provincia de Buenos Aires, 1931).
He studies engraving with Fernando López Anaya at Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de la Universidad de La Plata where he starts seeking non orthodox engraving. He graduates in teaching in 1961 and pursues his profession at the same institution until 1975. In parallel with his artistic production, he aligns from the 60’s with the telephone workers’ union wich he joins as an active militant.

In 1966, he participates in Homenaje al Vietnam with his work American way of life. This decade’s production begins with the examining of the possibilities of graphics in stamping, collage, stencil or photocopy. The aesthetics in his work from this period is related to pop art as from the examination on the effect of lines and articulated geometric forms in juxtaposition that he exhibits at Arte Duro group shows of geometric engravings between 1964 and 1967. One of these experimental works, the pochoir O, is awarded the Gran Premio de Honor from the LVIII Salón Nacional in 1969.

In 1970, he is granted the First Prize at Segundo Salón Swift de Grabado with his work Swift in Swift in which, as from a text excerpt by Jonathan Swift printed with a stencil on a 14-meter-long surface, he hints symbolically at the unrest that at the time is gripping the homonymous cold-storage plant in Buenos Aires.

At the end of this year, Romero settles -together with other engravers such as Horacio Beccaría, César Fioravanti, Julio Muñeza, Marcos Paley and Ricardo Tau - the group Arte Gráfico Grupo Buenos Aires. Comprised of a mixed array of artists, it stands as an experience to spread graphic work generally at non academic premises, such as factories, plants, or parks, parallel with the idea of artistic work “moving to the streets” that is circulating at the time.

As such, he also takes part in 1971 CAYC al aire libre, in Roberto Arlt square in Buenos Aires, with his work El juego lúgubre: action in which a rope, tied as for hanging someone, is expected to arise tensions between two “dialectic opposites”, together with a balloon containing a text written in lunfardo (porteño slang), the meaning of which is: “The repressor hits the detainee”.

Between 1971 and 1975, Romero plays a central role in Grupo de los Trece; at the show Hacia un perfil del arte latinoamericano, where the group exhibits, Romero presents his photographic performance La Realidad Nacional vista desde la ruta 2.

The fact that he is included in Experiencias visuales con medios fotográficos at Centro de Experimentación Visual in La Plata this same year, witnesses the breadth of his interest as regards art. Simultaneously, he works from the conceptualism on photographic images published in the mass media.

This is the idea portrayed at his installation Violencia that is on exhibit at CAYC in April 1973. There, he shows photographs in large size of the covers of a tabloid that addresses the issue of political actions and police repression in Rosario and Córdoba. The building was covered with enormous billboards displayng the word “Violence” in connection with quotes of several personalities of history related to those two cityes. The artist’s reading revolves around the possibilities of a “liberating violence” opposed to a “repressing violence”.

This same year, he participates with the mural Proceso a nuestra realidad - as a result of a cooperative work with Perla Benveniste, Eduardo Leonetti, Luis Pazos and Edgardo Vigo- in Cuarto Salón del Premio Acrilicopaolini at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires; as from the phrase “Ezeiza is Trelew” beside a red drop in acrylic he suggests and recognizes the two most shocking political events at the time.

Together with Emilio Renart and García Palou, he exhibits in 1976 Dibujos y ejercicios de convivencia.

Between 1977 and 1978, he lives in exile in Honduras.

Since the 80’s, he resumes his working with xerography and the photocopier as from appropiation of photographs, mainly taken from newspapers stating social injustice. As far as his work with the photocopier is concerned, Romero and Fernando Bedoya organize between 1987 and 1994 the four editions of Gráfica Alternativa-Artistas con fotocopias at Centro Cultural Recoleta. This is the place that concentrates work of artists that explore different practices derived from the use of photocopy.

Between 1986 and 1988, he is a member of Grupo Gráfica Experimental together with Rodolfo Agüero, Hilda Paz, Susana Rodríguez and Mabel Rubli. This group challenges the engraving’s traditional parameters, in an attempt to explore the possibilities of three-dimensional printing through unconventional techniques. In 1988, they present Gráfica y espacio at Centro Cultural Recoleta.

In 1988, he establishes Grupo Escombros, together with Horacio D´Alesandro, David Edward, Luis Pazos and Héctor Puppo. Such group self-defined as “artists of the remaining” tries to raise awareness on cultural and ecological issues through the succession of actions generally taken in either abandoned or secluded spots. The group is awarded in 1989 the prize for Visual Experiences by Asociación Argentina de Críticos de Arte.

During the 90’s, the artist pursues his seeking in various approaches and genre: experiential graphics, installation, mail art, artist’s book, performance and visual poetry. He is also a member of 4 para el 2000, together with Agüero, Paz and Teresa Volco, and between 1999 and 2001 of La Mutual Art-gentina, a group that organizes several interventions in the public space. He is also the co-organizer of several “exhibition-books” comprised of graphic work belonging to different artists such as NO al indulto, obediencia debida, punto final (1989), 500 años de represión (1992), 20 años (1996), Nunca más (1997) and La desaparición (1999).

In 1997, he is granted the First Prize at V Salón de Dibujo de Santo Domingo; in 1999 the First Prize Joan Brossa to Visual Poetry in Spain, and in 2000 he is invited to participate in Bienal de La Habana.

In 1998, he takes part in Identidad, an installation in which an outstanding group of artists aims at asking about the identity and whereabouts of the progeny of the “desaparecidos”. In 2000, a main review of his work from the 70’s is organized in the exhibition Violencia at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. In 2001, he presents together with Carlos Boccardo Otras voces. A 25 años de la dictadura militar, an installation, at Centro Cultural Recoleta. In 2002, he shows at Archimboldo gallery a collection of collages and graphic clippings that gather together several manifestations of pain or endurance that comprise the series “Gritos”, and he also introduces another installation: 6 minutos, 700 palabras. His extended teaching activity at Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes “Prilidiano Pueyrredón” and “Ernesto de la Cárcova” is recognized when awarded Premio a la Labor Docente de la Asociación Argentina de Críticos de Arte in 2001.

He lives and works in Buenos Aires.
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Graciela Sacco (Chañar Ladeado, provincia de Santa Fe, 1956).
She graduates in Visual Art from Facultad de Humanidades y Artes de la Universidad de Rosario; she also teaches there since 1987.

Still attending school, she starts exhibiting in 1982 in different collective and individual shows, in which she presents xylographies, installations, videos, and mail art graphic production. At the time, she begins to examine photographic processes and heliography technique.

Between 1989 and 1991, she receives a scholarship from Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (Conicet) for her work “Análisis de los procesos de producción, distribución y consumo de los no objetualismos en Rosario en el período 1970-1990”. She also develops research on the 70’s Rosarian avant-garde, and on contemporary graphics.

After being granted her research scholarship by Subsecretaría de Cultura de la Provincia de Santa Fé and her Subsidio a la Creación Artística from Fundación Antorchas (1993), the artist plunges into the possibilities offered by photograph printing through heliography. If it is true that at the early beginning the artist prints on paper, since 1992 she starts producing printings on several surfaces and transfers heliography onto glass, metal, etc. Sacco spreads these experiences in her writing Escrituras solares, La heliografía en el campo artístico (author’s edition, 1994) and through teaching. She also since 1992 produces different “urban interferences” and mail actions in several cities in the world.

Among her first works from this period of expansion in her heliographyc technique is Serie de la Maja anunciada, produced between 1991 and 1993, or her 1992-1993 Historias de Venus. In 1993, she develops at Museo Sívori de Buenos Aires her installation Transporte crítica, in which she displays nine suitcases the surfaces of which show her Venus empaquetadas wrapped in nylon.

In 1994, she is awarded the scholarship from Creación Fondo Nacional de las Artes. This year, she organizes a series of “urban interferences”: in Señalización en Escuelas Públicas, she sticks wings to the sides of the doors in some public schools in Rosario city signaling as “endangered spots”. En peligro de extinción is another of her series from this year -mouths printed on metal spoons- together with her series Bocanada, billboards -displaying open mouths- stuck on several public walls. Images pertaining to this last series are on exhibit in 1995 at Ruth Benzacar gallery and at Museo de Bellas Artes “Juan B. Castagnino” in Rosario, and resumed in new urban interventions at Arthus, Denmark and in Buenos Aires in 1997.

Between 1996 and 1998, she produces her series of urban interferences El incendio y las vísperas, large heliographic panels displayed in different urban spots, where different images published in the media on outcries and demonstrations, aim at promoting a second thought over social violence; such images are resumed by means of different media e.g. posts and woods in her series Cuerpo a cuerpo.

In 1996, she participates, as the only Argentine representative, in the XXIII Sao Paulo Biennial, the main theme of which is: “Art Dematerialization at the Turn of the Century”. There, she presents -as part of but also outside the premises of the Biennale- her installations El incendio y las vísperas and Esperando a los bárbaros: seventy printed pairs of eyes adhered onto a wall and framed in rough wood that operate visually as if they were slits to peep through or to hide behind, generating an environment for multiple looking or watching. She also resumes in Sao Paulo the topic in her series Bocanada, presenting an installation that displays an immense amount of images printed on stamps stuck on the floor. This installation is later on exhibit at Centro Cultural Parque de España in Rosario city.

In Primera Bienal de Artes Visuales del Mercosur in Porto Alegre in 1997, she participates signaling the very premises of the exhibition, and that the artist includes in her series Cuerpo a cuerpo. This year, she also represents Argentina at the VI Bienal de La Habana with El combate perpetuo at Convento Santa Clara and in urban buildings on the verge of collapsing.

In 1998, she takes part in Arte del mundo, a collective exhibition, at Unesco, Paris and also her first individual show takes place in the United States at the World House Gallery, New York, where she introduces Un lugar bajo el sol, a book-installation that is “activated” when a ray of light from a torch arranged on an acrylic prop “makes visible” the image printed onto the book’s surface. This work is on exhibit the following year at the theater El círculo in Rosario. She also opens in 1999 a permanent installation of her series Sombras del sur y del norte at Universidad Nacional de Rosario and participates, among others; in the collective show Mastering the Milennium, at Museo de la OEA in Washington that is later on exhibit at Centro Cultural Recoleta.

In 2000, she represents Argentina once more at the VII Bienal de La Habana and takes part in the IX Bienal de Fotografía in Vigo, Spain. Moreover, she organizes her first individual exhibition at an American museum, the Mass Art of Boston. In October, she presents Outside, a retrospective of her work at Museo Castagnino in Rosario; part of this material is on exhibit in December at Diana Loweinstein Fine Arts gallery in Buenos Aires: an installation displaying hundreds of mouths printed on tiny spoons that are suspended by means of transparent lines, wood fences and a crowd flinging stones, or Venetian blinds displaying images of people looking to or from this outside linked to the title of the exhibition.

In 2001, she is selected to participate in the 49° Venice Biennial, where she introduces Entre nosotros: a sea of eyes printed onto the walls of the city. In the author’s wording they are “stares that disclose a desire of, a fear of, an urge for a city. [...] among the eyes “set” onto Venice, there are everyday men and women’s eyes, the outsiders, the ones on the verge of being out of law”. This year, she is granted the Prize to the Artist of the Year from Asociación Argentina de Críticos de Arte.

In 2002, a version of Entre nosotros is set at the Berkeley Square Gallery and at the Scholar Fine Art in London is shown at her first individual European exhibition. In 2003, she takes part in Sanctuary, a collective show, at the Museum of Modern Art in Glasgow, and also attends a 3-month internship at Cité des Arts, Paris, producing an installation from her series Sombras del sur y del norte to be on exhibit at Maison de l’Amerique Latine.

In 2003, she is once more awarded, now the Prize to Artist of the Year by Asociación de Críticos de Arte.

She lives and works in Rosario.
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Edgardo Antonio Vigo (La Plata, pcia. de Buenos Aires, 1928-1997).
He attends Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de la Universidad de La Plata in the early 50’s, and in 1953 he receives a scholarship in order to travel to France, where he meets the Venezuelan Jesús Soto.

After his return, he exhibits in 1954 a series of mobile wooden objects that can be manipulated by the audience, aiming in this initial work at the idea of participating in and acting onto a piece of art; this criterion of “interaction” -taken from different poetic approaches’ angles such as conceptualism or actions -stands as one of the axis on which the future development of the variety of his dynamic work revolves around.

In the middle 50’s, he creates his first mathematical poems, and since the end of this period, he starts to produce his “useless machines” accompanied by his text “Máquinas inútiles. Solteras imposibles” (1959). In such machines -initially linked to the “non married machines” by Michel Carrouges- he combines heterogeneous elements that, since the stating of their function, make use of the absurd and the parody: for example, his Cargador eléctrico (1957), his Bi-Tri-Cicleta Ingenua (1960) or his Palanganómetro mecedor que no se mece para críticos de arte (1965). Along these lines of aesthetics, in accord with his resignifying of the Dadaist aesthetics, the development of his work labelled Relativuzgir’s: is sustained objects with light and movement that can be manipulated by the audience, and the name of which comes from a combination of the idea of the relative -Einstein’s philosophical-mathematical stand- the electricity as a performing element and of the ability to spin.

The appearance of the five numbers of W.C. in 1958, stands as the beginning of his activity as an editor of several experiential publications of “visual poetry”, in which xylography and some literary texts also play a central role. In 1960, the three numbers of DRKW are issued, in which his first xylographies are presented, and between 1961 and 1968, he publishes Diagonal Cero. Afterwards, he launches Hexágono ‘71: thirteen numbers that appear between 1971 and 1975, and on the pages of which it is displayed, as from visual poetry, some events of the time such as the slaughter in Trelew; in 1973, he devises a slogan for his publication: “Hexagon Magazine, for sure, the most dangerous”.

In 1967, he establishes the Museo de la Xilografía de La Plata as a way of spreading this production among the general audience. Devised as a “touring museum”, Vigo presents his production in different non conventional premises so as to prevent the work from becoming “a collector’s closed box”. Even though, he never abandons this traditional graphic technique, his works incorporate progressively certain “unconventional” procedures. For example, at Festival de las Artes de Tandil in 1968, one of his xylographies from the Homenaje a Fontana series is awarded. In it, the artist proposes a new reading, in graphic terms, of the aesthetics of the creator of “spacialism” by intertwining, printing and cutting images.

His proposals iniciated in 1968, pertain to the times of a strong criticism to the role of mass media and the system of art, and hint at a second reading of the artist’s chosen object as “a gratuitous act for an aesthetic wandering”, pointing at the latent aesthetic quality of certain objects originally not devised as “artistic”.

His first urban proposal is Manojo de Semáforos. In this case, he puts forward the idea of an action around the traffic lights at a crossroad in La Plata; the artist leaves it up to the pedestrians to consider “the aesthetics” in this urban object, without his presence.

Vigo extends his search for the art to exit the traditional circuit - aiming at an opening to “the streets” so as to approach the big audiences. In 1969, he publishes “Un arte a realizar”, in which he suggests that the production should not be a finished object but an everyday “modifiable project”, inviting the audience to participate in the aesthetic event. Enlarging this train of thought, in the early 70’s, he proposes a reading on “La calle: escenario del arte actual”, published in his Hexágono’71 magazine.

In 1969, he organizes Exposición Internacional de Novísima Poesía (Visual Poetry) at Instituto DiTella; two years later, Expo de Proposiciones a Realizar that opening in 1971 at CAYC gathers an array of Latin American artists.

He pursues his actions, performances, and signalling during the early 70’s. For example, between 1970 and 1971, he produces Devolución del agua, a signalling with the lapping waters of Bocacerrada beach, at Punta Lara, Buenos Aires Province; in 1973 his action El tapón del Río de la Plata takes place. This same year, he participates in a collective exhibition presenting at Museo de Arte Moderno Proceso a nuestra realidad, in which the recent killings at Trelew and Ezeiza are hinted at.

In 1975, he organizes together with Horacio Zabala Última exposición de Artecorreo, the first collective exhibition carried out in Buenos Aires of this kind of touring work through mail interchange, known in the international circuit as Mail Art and labelled by Vigo as “communication at a distance”. The artist has been developing this graphic production since the beginning of the decade and continues during the 80’s and 90’s, attempting to explore the international mail art circuit that is highly valued, and becoming an inescapable reference for this type of production.

During the military coup, his son Abel Luis is kidnapped and later becomes a “desaparecido”; Vigo uses the pluralistic international circulation of mail art in order to state and announce the Junta crimes.

In the 90’s, Vigo’s work regains momentum, due to a series of outstanding exhibitions: his retrospective at Fundación San Telmo in 1991 labelled Anteproyecto de Proyecto de un pretendido panorama abarcativo, his highlighted participation in the Argentine sent to the XXII Sao Paulo Biennial, his Retrospectiva de Edgardo A. Vigo at Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes “Juan B. Castagnino” in Rosario in 1995, or his Edgardo A. Vigo, poeta de la distancia exhibition at ICI in Buenos Aires in 1997.

These exhibition-homage continue after his death, for example with the show at Ojo al país in Centro Cultural Borges in 2002-2003, in the opening of Espacio Fundación Telefónica in 2003, and in the show Xilografías y ediciones (1962/1972) at Museo Nacional del Grabado de Buenos Aires in August 2004.

In november 2002, on the premises of Vigo’s workshop, the Centro de Arte Experimental was established in La Plata, Buenos Aires. It houses Vigo’s private files and a load of works.
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Horacio Zabala (Buenos Aires, 1943).
LSince the late sixties, the production of this artist and architect, who is a graduate from Universidad de Buenos Aires, has been performed by means of several media, bringing light upon the relationship among image, information and power linked to current social context. Such work is performed through conceptualism, as many artists did in those days.
His first individual exhibition takes place in 1967 at Lirolay gallery.

He is a member of the early Grupo de los Trece, with which he participates in exhibitions such as Arte de Sistemas, organized by Jorge Glusberg, and in Cayc al aire libre that is displayed at Roberto Arlt Park, in 1971, where he introduces 300 metros de cinta negra para enlutar una plaza pública.

In 1972, he writes his first theoretical text, Diecisiete interrogantes acerca del arte, published by CAYC: it is a survey-manifesto, a style of discourse that he will go back to in the future. The same year, he produces Forma y función, three bottles filled with liquid accompanied by labels that read their use as follows: to be filled with wine, a flower and gas. This work revolves around one only element, apparently similar, considering different readings and connotations.

In 1973, he begins his known series Anteproyectos de cárceles, exhibited at CAYC; they are drawings and sketches of different designs for jails: underground, on a column, floating in the Río de la Plata, “arquitectura latinoamericana para artistas”, etc. The artist uses the conventions in architectural planning so as to open a debate on repression and the lack of freedom. In other works from this time, he also ponders upon the metaphor that describes that paper or language as “a jail”.

The series of his maps of the Americas and his censored-repressed-stained books are from 1974: an example is that of the image of a Latin American map that holds the word “censored” throughout.

Since the middle sixties, he starts taking part in several exhibitions and international biennials. In the local scene and also in 1975, he organizes with Edgardo Antonio Vigo a collective exhibition named Última exposición de Artecorreo at Arte Nuevo, an event that stands as the first one portraying mail art in Buenos Aires.

In 1976, he seeks political asylum in Rome, and then he moves to Vienna and later on between 1992 and 1998 he relocates in Geneva. During these years, the presence of his work in the international art scene begins to gain momentum whether by exhibiting individually or collectively in European and Latin American cities such as Mexico (1977), Avignon (1978), Rome and Medellin (1981), Barcelona (1983), Paris (1984), Havana (1986), among others. In 1985, he makes a comeback into the Buenos Aires scene at CAYC.

His production since the late 70´s has revolved around transmission of information, media and fiction. In the dawn of the 80´s, he works on a series on atomic bunkers, according to the artist, it is a socio-aesthetic operation in which people, institutions and media interact so as to generate diverse critical views upon the production, real and symbolic, of such places. This work was exhibited in October 1983 at Centro Documentazione Ricerca Artistica Contemporanea “L. Di Sarro” in Rome and it was labelled Il rifugio antiatomico, estetica della catastrofe?. There, he shows several types of advertising material from Italy related to products designed for atomic shelters, documents from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, answers to a test on this issue developed by the artist himself and his sketches and drawings on bunkers.

Since 1984, Zabala works on the series on the duplication of pages from written media. His first works are performed on covers of the German magazine Der Spiegel, the French one L’Express and the American Time; afterwards he starts using European and American newspapers.

The duplications are mock newspapers, writings following their lay out as from drawings of illegible “texts” and unrecognizable “photographs”: the phrases become lines; the images, stains and hazy silhouettes as in Información-ficción (1990). This series, part of Réitérations, exhibited in Le Refuge, Centre international de poésie Marseille towards the end of 1991, unveils his intension to ponder upon mass media, the circulation of information and language.
If since the 60´s the artist has presented his works by means of different media -drawings, objects, paintings, post art-, it is in the 90´s that he plunges into digital art, the WEB and video art.

In 1997, he develops L’art ou le monde pour la deuxième fois, an interactive work designed for e-networks produced by the Centre pour l’Image Contemporaine from Geneva: it is a 10-question quiz on art with ten thousand answers provided by an array of authors -philosophers, artists, etc. - to which other answers given by the site-visitors are added. In 1998, a Spanish version of El arte o el mundo por segunda vez was published. Its edition is under the supervision of Facultad de Artes y Humanidades de la Universidad Nacional de Rosario.

Zabala comes back to Buenos Aires in 1998 and opens an exhibition at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires in which he includes his works from 1972 until the present: Ejercicios y tránsitos.

In the end of the 90´s, he produces Diario de viaje, boxes containing cards portraying saints that are given in the streets in return for a coin, and Parásito, a design for homeless’ shelters. In 2000, it is published El arte en cuestión, conversations between Luis Felipe Noé and Zabala himself, edited by Adriana Hidalgo.

In 2002, he participates in the collective exhibition Arte y política en los ‘60 that takes place at Palais de Glace and he also organizes the solo show Futuro Imperfecto at Centro Cultural Recoleta where he presents, for example, A sangre fría, chess pieces on a “board” manufactured with a piece of cloth -painted in blue- stretched on a frame: without the ruling of any pre-existent spaces, the pieces can be used freely and each player can decide on the rules.

In November 2002, a new anthological show is opened, now at the Fondo Nacional de las Artes where his work is revisited thoroughly. At the end of 2003, he organizes 4000 cm3, a collective exhibition, in which twenty three artists (Marcelo Boullosa, Xil Buffone, Claudia Contreras, Roberto Elía, León Ferrari, Luis Felipe Noé, Teresa Pereda, Juan Carlos Romero, among others) develop a work from a cardboard box in order to resignify the functional use of a box.

He lives and works in Buenos Aires.
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