Text by Mario Flecha in
the occasion of a lecture at the University of Essex, Colchester,
December 2006
When I received the letter with the invitation for the talk
I was in a state of panic, well perhaps not panic but one
of confusion because I am not used to talking in public and
even less speaking in English.
I’ve known Jorge Macchi for a very long time, his elder
brother and my youngest one went to the same primary school
and after to the same secondary school. They went to the Colegio
Nacional Buenos Aires, which at that time was a highly political
school, if we consider that most of the founders of the Guerrila
Group Montoneros studied there.
Jorge’s brother hung around our flat for years although
I do not record meeting Jorge for more than a few seconds
- usually when he tried to find out where his brother was.
We lived in the borough of Barracas in the south of Buenos
Aires. It is a mythological borough, writers like Ernesto
Sabato, Leopoldo Marechal even Jorge Luis Borges wrote about
it. A place born in the XVII century on the north bank of
the Riachuelo, where a few precarious (Barracas) or warehouses
for the treatment of leather and other
products appeared on the landscape. In the early XIX century
it changed character to a place chosen by the rich, until
they emigrated to the north of Buenos Aires, fleeing the
plague in 1871.
After that it became the place for émigrés especially
the Italian. A popular place for working people, it was a
strange place with bars of bad reputation, a refuge for outlaws,
prostitutes and others, at the same time as being prosperous.
From 1976 I’ve lived in London. I used to go to Buenos
Aires quite frequently and on one of those trips I met Jorge
the student of art. Later, when on a trip to Paris I met Jorge,
who at that moment was there on a grant. Perhaps it was the
first time we shared a glass of
wine and a good laugh. As good Argentinians we organised the
world with words in no time.
I had a few reservations about participating in this talk
- such as my belief that a critic is a person who is hunting
shadows because of the difficulties of analysing a visual
piece of work with words. I feel somehow that in the passage
from one language to another something gets lost in the translation.
And Jorge Macchi’s latest work where the tension between
the visual and the audio is so accurate, intense and poetical,
I find very difficult to comment on or criticise.Not because
it is ambiguos: his work never is.
In the end I decided that the best I can do is to put his
work in an historical context.
He grew up during a sad period of Argentina’s history,
the Generals were in control of the government and they persecuted
any one who could read and write, as a consequence a lot of
artists emigrated to Europe and to other latinamerican countries.
Meanwhile those who stayed, survived by living a low profile
cultural life and many of them thought that to produce a work
of art under those circumstances was not only unnecessary
but treason.
A decade of Generals, during which the prediction of Leopoldo
Marechal (in his novel 'Adan Buenos Aires')that the country
was ripe for a civil war became reality, and internal confrontation
between the army and guerrilla groups resulted in the disappearance
of thousands of people. The horror and degradation of the
conflict as well as losing an
external war in which it was possible to gain an identity
and that is to begin accepting the common background with
other SouthAmerican countries. These infertile circumstances
affected the artistic, intellectual and scientific works.
It never killed it, a tradition of conceptual artists of the
60’s like Alberto Greco, Oscar Bony, Roberto Jacoby,
Pablo Suarez or the excesses of Alberto Heredia to name some
are the predecessors of Jorge Macchi’s work.
The major difference between the American and European conceptual
artists, is that the Argentinian artists were concerned with
the political and social realities of the country.
In 1983 Raul Alfonsin formed the first democratically elected
government for nearly a decade. Jorge Macchi had one of his
first exhibitions in 1989, at Jorge Elias Gallery in Buenos
Aires and as it happened, it was an eccentric exhibition.
The new freedom allowed most of his contemporaries to think
in international terms looking to Europe, where the decade
had started with an explosion of color and vitality - the
German expressionism and the Italian transavantgarde. Somehow
they restored the visual pleasure, neutralising some of the
intellectual excesses of the previous decade. The exhibition
was called The painting and altarpieces of the end of the
XX century. if at first glance the title has religious connotations
the reality is that the exhibition was unrelated to the inmediate
enviroment and totally eccentric to the international scene.
He used waste materials, assembling them primatively. Rough
pieces of wood set as a triptych provided support for nails,
glass, asphalt and were sometimes combined with figurative
painting deliberately using poor craftmanship. Some of the
works presented were folded and closed making it necessary
to touch them in order to open them and look inside. This
participation of the viewer from a contemplative to a more
active role perhaps gives the clue to the title , written
in the style of The letters from Indias, it reminded me of
the missionaries who came with the conquerors preparing for
prayer in some remote place in this vast continent.
Macchi returned to the colonial origins as a starting point
= a pretty awkward attitude for an exhibition of contemporary
art in cosmopolitan Buenos Aires.
Helena Olivera states "Signs of the collective memory
with religious connotation are used by Jorge Macchi to develop
a personal vision of the contemporary world" Macchi looks
around for clues and continues his aesthetic investigation
using paints on traditional canvas. He starts painting large
scale monochrome interiors of church or palace vaults. Small
unidentifiable strokes appear, interfering with the central
image making it difficult to define these fragmented houses
of power despite their mysterious simplicity. In 'Untitled',
1992, Macchi continues his idea of a culture in decay and
uses rags as the support for his paintings. These are normally
square, grey and thick in texture. He attaches 9 of them to
a canvas and draws another of his vault interiors over them
in black ink. The top right hand corner of each square is
peeling off interfering with the image. This is unsettling
as he is keeping his intentions hidden. The continuous reading
between the lines is a part of anyone who has lived under
a brutal regime. You learn how to say one thing and mean another.
Macchi's ambition escapes the confines of the canvas and starts
working with the space. His first installation work was shown
at the Fundacion Banco Patricios.The building was a beautiful
XIX century parisian store and was renovated by the Fundacion
Banco Patricios as a Cultural Centre. The installation took
place on the top floor the only space not yet refurbished.
The floor of cement was uneven, the iron column deprived of
any ornamentation, a dismantelled ceiling the space chosen
by him to create a mystical experience in a very unmystical
city. Armed with his skills as a painter, craftsman and sculptor
he transformed the room into a temple. In the centre, suspended
over the
floor, a circle of candles blazed. Above hung an open umbrella,
a persistant image.
Echoing that of the painted domes. Assembled on the floor,
a hexagon represented the Tao's union of yin and yang. The
walls were subdivided by painting black, white and brick red
over them. Different objects were hung, such as ropes, small
photographs of a cathedral, and a huge canvas in the shape
of a star stretched by springs at each point.
Edward Shaw, reporting on the installation in the Buenos Aires
Herald said, "It will be hard for anyone to duplicate
the spiritual electricity that Macchi generates. While each
of his pieces is minimal in its content, sketchy in execution,
each atom combines to produce an
essential entirety that envelops the observer." But why
do religious rituals get in his way? Is that a reaction of
a cultural and political climate which pushes him to the unfashionable
realms of religion? Or a form of developing and confirming
his individuality in a world where fiction and reality are
seperated by a narrow gap? It is a question without any answer
because Macchi continues his search apparently finding a channel
of communication only to abandon it and begin all over again.
In an exhibition at the Casal of Catalunia in Buenos Aires,
he departs from his past towards a new and uncertain future.
The work becomes more conceptual and the execution more professional.
He still uses domestic and ready made objects as in a magnificent
piece called Pentagram, where a cushion is pressed against
the wall by rope and springs. Images are created by painting
or changing the nature of an object. In 1993 I organised a
group show in BuenosAires in a disused basement, it was called
'Oie como va' , the other artists were Eduardo
Gazzotti, Claudia Fontes and Dean Whatmuff. Macchi teamed
up with David Oubina and used a video form for "The Crime
of the Super 8", a short story of how films on super
8 died. This consisted of a 3 minutes scream. The poorly lit
space was ideal for the overall effect of the installation
in which each artist presented one work. In 1995 I had the
chance to organise an exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery
and invite two artists a Chilean Arturo Duclos and Jorge Macchi.
I called the show, Searching south, two southamerican artists,
it was interesting specialy for me to show them togheter because
they have little in common, Arturo is a figurative painter
who combines political and religious symbols on his canvas
with a kind of barroc style. On the opposite side was Jorge’s
delicate and by then, conceptual sculpture. I remember going
a day before, to help in the hanging of the show and my heart
sank, when I saw the work displayed on the floor of the Gallery,
what a crazy idea to put them together I said to myself. On
top of that I felt more responsible because it was the first
time they had shown in the UK. Luckily my fears disappeared
when the show was installed somehow they complemented each
other. If i remember correctly Pillow and glass a piece belonging
to UECLAA and showed lately at the Tatewas first shown at
that exhibition.
After a brief period at Delfina Studio, in 1998, he showed
Incidental Music, I wrote some Notes for the catalogue. I
suspect very few people read it because I believe it was a
very small edition so what i will read to you now encompasses
three exhibitions: one in Buenos Aires, in Rotterdam and London.
NOTES FOR A PROLOGUE
BUENOS AIRES
Gulliver’s Travels
ROTTERDAM
Accident in Rotterdam
LONDON
Incidental Music
JORGE MACCHI’s expression is one of surprise. Walking
in the hot and humid summer of Buenos Aires, sorting his present
and past with the silent passion of somebody wanting to apprehend
reality knowing, that to believe in something is to refer
every thought and action to advance and justify it.That is
why with a perverse methodology, each time he reaches a point
of understanding he abandons his way and starts again.
His steps are certain, his art increasingly a simulation
At Gulliver’s Travel in the ICI (Instituto de Cooperacion
Iberoamericano) in Buenos Aires 40 toy football players support
a huge piece glass. Each one has been glued to the glass and
all of them are looking in the same direction, to where in
split second reality, fantasy and accident converge - the
glass having been smashed - scattering pieces around the gallery
floor creating accidental shapes.The piece refers to the broken
history of anyone who begins a process of moving to a different
country and culture, the conceptual
enrichment is met with a confused sense of otherness. It”s
easy to imagine the action of breaking glass, a hammer in
hand and a swift movement towards the glass - a dead sound
and a drawing similar to a web is created.
Fragmented images, fragmented memories, fragmented
realities
Jorge Macchi suffered, the European winter in Holland and
felt the cold on a bicycle in Rotterdams’ streets where
the voices never stop and solitude plays silly games. He decided
to fabricate reality in Accident in Rotterdam two slides are
projected onto the wall . They are two different views of
an accident. The accident only occurs in Macchi’s imagination,
the shadows of the Rotterdam studio window frame form a cross
on the floor where two toy cars crash. The image created appears
real, simulating a
circumstance where shadows and car crash meet, in time and
space.
Mi padre había estrechado con el (el verbo es excesivo)
una de esas amistades inglesas que empiezan por excluir la
confidencia y que muy pronto omiten el dialogo.
Jorge Luis Borges.
Tlon,Uqbar,Orbis Tertius
Ficciones 1941
In London Macchi has the same surprised expression on his
face as in Buenos Aires while living at Delfina Studios, where
space and all necessary support are provided to a group of
young artists from around the world.
He walks around the Borough of Southwark and perceives of
a ghost city where the code of communication is a mystery....
Incidental music
Three big pieces of white paper hang on the wall. From a
distance they look like manuscript paper for writing music.
Close up the lines become words cut out of the news from newspapers,
glued onto the paper in parallel lines. The news selected
has a twist,
It all tells of violence, accidents and murders. A gap of
about one cm separates each story. That gap transposed has
been translated into contemporary music,that one can hear
while looking at the work.
The combination of a narrative text, music, and visuals,
hidden within a minimal work make the piece open to interpretation
. The horror of the text is powerful because it tells a real
story objectively leaving any ambiguity of the language. It
happens out there in the real world. In contrast, the music
is pure invention.
Perhaps fiction and reality are one, only a desire to be
difficult pushes one to separate them.
Mario Flecha
London 1998
From Incidental Music onwards Jorge Macchi operates in a
zone where his work is in an instant a place where things
live in a permanent state of transition, intellectually and
emotionally.
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