Argentina-Brazil: a binational team that dazzles in the field of abstraction

As on previous occasions, the Brazilian Embassy in Argentina is joining BIENALSUR with Critique of Pure Abstraction , an exhibition that explores this aesthetic as a way of producing images , in an interesting counterpoint between Brazilian and Argentine artists of different generations. This 1.4 km stretch of international cartography that runs through the Biennial is an exercise in signage that uses elements and devices that encompass subtle works, others more expressive, and even a grand change of scale as a tribute to an iconic artist.

“Today, the canon of abstract art is being revisited and reinterpreted by artists who, far from the purism and antagonisms between poetics characteristic of modernity, navigate the waters of an aesthetic pluralism that introduces vital problems and issues of our contemporary world into the language of abstraction,” curators Florencia Battiti and Fernando Farina explained in their selection.

As you tour the galleries, you can see some gems from two Argentine collectors, a generational cross-section that fosters dialogue within a group of artists who already have a recognized identity. These are the generations who, in the 1960s and 1970s, took very seriously the idea of overcoming the boundaries between art and everyday life. Among them are Waltercio Caldas (Rio de Janeiro, 1946), recognized for his participation in Neo-Concretism, and Mira Schendel (Zurich, 1919 – São Paulo, 1988), who developed a unique body of work influenced by philosophy, phenomenology, and language, using materials such as rice paper, talcum powder, and brick dust.

Caldas's box combines the conceptual object with minimalist drawing and sculpture, exploring perception, emptiness, and space. Beside it, Schendel, with a series of connected pieces that suggest silence, uses lines, dots, and basic shapes that barely occupy the space of the paper plane. An exercise in introspective reading that stumbles upon the table containing the subtle black forms of Elba Bairon (Bolivia, 1947), sculptures with smooth surfaces that rest tensionlessly on the white table.

Two interesting sequences contrast in the hallway. On one side, a series of silkscreens by Macaparana (José Souza Oliveira Filho, 1952), a self-taught artist who began his exhibition career in 1970 in Recife and has lived and worked in São Paulo since 1973. His work, centered on geometric abstraction, is impeccably crafted, with intense planes of color and a marked graphic signature. It is contrasted with a series by Florencia Caiazza (Buenos Aires, 1982), a visual artist trained in the UTDT Artist Program, which proposes a crossover between the material and the symbolic, incorporating a few contrasting signs or simple forms, hand-woven and functioning as a drawing-style paper medium.

Some canvases by Natalia Cacchiarelli (Bahía Blanca, 1971)—a visual artist who was a member of the Ø Cero Barrado group in the 1990s—feature subtle contrasts and well-segmented shapes with small touches of color, very balanced in the composition. This is different from another series, where almost unmixed grays predominate, and of a smaller size, where the composition is forced by the brushstroke to go beyond the edges of each shape.

Very apt are the variations in the paintings of Juan José Cambre , (Buenos Aires, 1948), an Argentine visual artist who was part of the New Image movement in the 80s, participating in the São Paulo Biennial (1985) with exhibitions in Caracas and Paris. The works are recent and explore certain restricted variations of color in the large-scale work, but by changing the scale to a 30 x 30 cm square, he uses diagonal forms that seem to enter the plane from outside, using color in low contrast.

In contrast to Cambre's angularity, Jessica Trosman 's textile sculptures stand out. The Argentine designer and artist founded Trosmanchurba in 1997 and her eponymous brand, Trosman, in 2002, and began her career as an artist in 2019. Focusing on textile sculptures—a combination of fabrics with distinct materials, shiny or covered in certain sheens highlighted by the color—they appear well spaced out in places where they stand out on their own , such as the end of a hallway or a wall where they make an impact due to their volume.

The sculptural objects of Marcolina Dipietro , who was already part of BIENALSUR 2017 with interventions in Rosario and Rio de Janeiro—and also won the Fortabat Foundation First Prize in 2021—now present a series that combines metal and organic matter. Creating a nexus that enhances the surfaces, with slender, well-chosen branches that are inserted in continuity with the regular metallic forms.

While space dominates each work in this series at Marcolina, Elvira Amor (Madrid, 1982), who has lived and worked in Madrid, Cuenca, Buenos Aires, Puebla, Brussels, and Yogyakarta, places shapes on the wall that even mimic a kind of mini-shelf. A way of inhabiting the space with a very singular form that barely detaches itself from the wall, creating a certain projection, in one case due to the intense color or the subtleties of the cool, light tones, achieved with industrial paint with a glossy finish.

In a small room with lower ceilings, the light works of Rosario-born Juan Ignacio Cabruja were displayed. Cabruja's visual practice articulates contemporary art, technology, and critical thinking. Two luminous signs, striking in their golden yellow glow, are grouped horizontally and vertically, their connections highlighted by black accents that blur the cables and supports of the lit neon lights.

The great Leda Catunda (São Paulo, 1961), a key member of the Geração 80 movement, is present. She is known for her "soft paintings" on fabrics such as towels, velvet, and silk. Her works combine manual techniques—painting, collage, silkscreen printing, and sewing—and address themes such as consumption, emotions, and identity. The piece on display is a combination of collage and watercolor with few color contrasts that remain similar to her hanging pieces without glass or any frame protection.

The tribute to the master is dedicated to Malevich, by Andrés Sobrino (1967), with a change of scale invading the entrance hall. A territorial appropriation that makes one miss the impactful dimension of the originals, the small but yet so richly expressed painting, measuring 79 x 79 cm.

Meanwhile, the selected works are by Silvia Gurfein (Buenos Aires), a multidisciplinary artist who began her career in theater, dance, and music and, in 1996, turned to painting, the central axis of her practice. Her work explores time as matter and memory, with lines that wander freely across the plane, allowing us to retrace a course with some changes in direction and color, barely noticeable due to the softness of her clean lines. Exploring the image as a remnant or ghost, two whispering tones and lines that end in small pieces recovered from other paint scraps on the palette.

Critique of Pure Abstraction can be visited until October 11 at the Pereda Palace, Cultural Space of the Brazilian Embassy, Arroyo 1130, from Tuesday to Friday from 12 to 6 pm, and Saturdays from 2 to 6 pm.

On August 4, BIENALSUR continues in Córdoba with the inauguration of Exercises in Insubordination , a series of artistic interventions at the Cultural Center of Spain in Córdoba , led by Spanish artists Núria Güell and Alan Carrasco.

While on the 7th will be the opening, at the Museo Superior de Bellas Artes Evita - Palacio Ferreyra , of The Unfaithful Copy , an exhibition that reflects on the gesture and exercise of copying in contemporary art and in which artists as diverse as Alfred Stieglitz (USA), Sol Le Witt (USA), Marta Minujín (ARG) and Liliana Maresca (ARG) participate, among many others who share a similar concern in their work: the presence of the copy as a critical and political gesture characteristic of contemporary art.

On August 6, the exhibition Errázuriz – Lestido. Heroes | Sepu Zarco. The Conquest of Home opens at the MATTA Cultural Center of the Chilean Embassy in Argentina . This exhibition , for the first time in Argentina, brings together the work of renowned Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz and prominent Argentine photographer Adriana Lestido . Both share a visual force that questions the invisible, the excluded, and the silenced.

In this fifth edition, four group exhibitions will open in Rosario on August 8th. On the façade of the Juan B. Castagnino Municipal Museum of Fine Arts, the exhibition "Lights of My City" brings together three light interventions (one historical and two contemporary) by Margarita Paksa (ARG), Ivana Vollaro (ARG), and the Fuga Collective (ARG).

The Parque de España Cultural Center (CCPE) opens The Garbage Rebellion , a group exhibition featuring works that "seek to open up other temporalities that integrate actions of collection, re-appropriation, and reinvention," while in Ládano , Spanish artist Mario Espliego proposes a poetic, political, and multidisciplinary survey of the geography of central Spain. Both are framed under the general subtitle "Fragmenting Obsolescence," which invites us to reflect on the possible fissures or splinters of so-called "technological progress."

Finally, at the macro Museum of Contemporary Art of Rosario, Brave New World opens, curated by the museum's director, Roberto Etchen , and Fernando Farina, with works that evoke the dystopian universe announced by Huxley in the book of the same name.