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7/5/2008

Jorge Macchi

Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea CGAC, Santiago de Compostela

According to the logic of Jorge Macchi (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1963)the simpler and more unblemished an object is, the more personal andsentimental are the references it contains. This is how Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, the curator of Jorge Macchi’s exhibition, sees it. The Anatomy of Melancholy, a retrospective exhibit revolving around a group of objects that are asdelicate as they are meaningful. The show, the artist’s firstretrospective, presented in collaboration with the Blanton Museum ofAustin (Texas, EE UU), is on view in the basement of the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC) and in the neighbouring Bonaval church.

Macchihas been an artist of renown for some years now and has enjoyed therecognition of the public, art critics, public and private artcollectors- even before he participated at the Venice Biennale in 2005as a representative of Argentina. This show at the CGAC, as theexhibit’s curator, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, points out, offers a uniqueopportunity for us to familiarise ourselves with the work created byJorge Macchi from the early 1990s to the present. A collection thatfluctuates between a most sophisticated conceptuality and a deepemotional content. Jorge Macchi has stockpiled different formats andmaterials – photography, video, installation, artists’ books,– and heputs the spectator face to face with an everyday object, which, afterbeing subjected to the artistic process, becomes exceptional. This mayvery well be the case of a pillow made taut by five strings in thedisturbing work, Pentagrama (Pentagram) (1993) or the two, perfectly arranged matchboxes in Vidas paralelas (Parallel Lives) (1998).

Tension,conflict and absences. Macchi’s work has been associated with nostalgiaand even sadness. His own biography, which, since 1996 includes staysin different countries -Holland, Italy, Germany, France, England, andthe United States- made him a kind of traveller who had to constructhis vital space after realising that it doesn’t exist. Works like Guíade la inmovilidad (Guide to Immobility) or Buenos Aires Tour, bothdating from 2003, delve deep into this idea of the artist as an urbanwanderer who rediscovers his city after the pre-existing referencepoints have vanished. The essence of other pieces like Monoblock (2003) and Still Song(2005) lies in absence – in the former case, through obituaries wherethe names are erased and in the latter, through the end of a party thatwill never take place again.

Still, what really stands out inMacchi’s works for most of the art critics who have centred theirattention on the Argentine artist is, without a doubt, this sheerchance, the notion of an accidental occurrence that sparks thing off.It is not a question of chance building his work, but rather theartist’s reflection on the weight of imperceptible accidents in theevolution of events. At times the artist plays with chance by creatingfiction as is the case of Accidente en Rotterdam(Accident in Rotterdam) (1996-1998). In others he tries obsessively tofight against it, as exemplified by the two panes of identicallyfragmented glass in the series.

Vidas paralelas (2003). And in the case of the holes in the sheets of the pentagram in Canción marginal (Marginal Song) (2004) the random way he places them, will determine whether or not a melody is born.

Macchihimself recognises the fact that the ephemeral is a constant theme inhis creative process, and that it almost always begins with an imagethat looms obsessively. An image that has always belonged to theeveryday landscape of the artist –and also usually to the public– andwhich, at some point in time, changes the meaning in his imagination.“The more familiar an object is, and the less I work on it, the moreeffective and more enigmatic it will be” the artist affirms.

Musicand its inclusion in Macchi’s work support this enigma that JorgeMacchi refers to. Music was a language that had a special presence inthe life of the artist during his adolescence, particularly because heused to play the piano. In the artistic work he developed later on,music serves as a counterpoint to the situations or objects he haschosen. In some way it responds to the artist’s need to put order inchaos and chance. However, in may of his works, the result is an addedambiguity, created by including sound: the piece for piano that is bornof the empty spaces that sensationalist news leaves in Música incidental (Incidental music) (1997); the notes that emanate from a grand avenue in Caja de música(Music box) (2004), the ascending lines of the pentagram in Laascensión (The Ascension) (2005), the repetitive soundtrack that comesabout from the mixing of different endings of Hollywood movies from the1940s in Time Machine (2005, CGAC Collection) and the violoncello from the video Streamline (2006), produced in collaboration with the musician, Edgardo Rudnitzky.

JorgeMacchi studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires andreceived his degree as professor of painting in 1987. At the presenttime he lives and works in the capital city of Argentina. In 1996 heset out on a journey of several years that led him to take up residenceas an artist in different places in Europe. His desire to put himselfto the test in new contexts and a constant feeling of being out ofplace have followed him in the subsequent trajectory of his career, asGabriel Pérez-Barreiro points out. Among his latest solo exhibitions,in addition to the performance and installation entitled, La Ascensión presented at the Venice Biennale in 2005, the following stand out: Doppelgänger (Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2005; Galería Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires, 2005), Time Machine(Galería Distrito4, Madrid, 2005; Galería Kilchmann Martin, Mexico DF,2006) and Gallery Night (Galería Luisa Strina, São Paulo, 2007). He hasalso continued his collaboration with the composer Edgardo Rudnitzky onthe project The Singers’ Room(Galleria Continua, San Gimgnano, Italia, 2008). His works are part ofthe following collections, among others: Tate Modern in London, Museode Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, The Museum of Contemporary Art ofAntwerp (MUHKA), Fundación Arco in Madrid, Blanton Museum of Art inAustin (Texas) and Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC) inSantiago de Compostela.

Jorge Macchi. The Anatomy of Melancholy,a retrospective exhibition that was presented at the 6th MercosulBiennial (Porto Alegre, Brasil, 2007) and later at the Blanton Museumof Austin (Texas, U.S.A., 2007-2008), is being shown at the CGAC andin Bonaval Church until July 13, 2008. Here the show will be greatlyenhanced as compared to the exhibitions staged in Porto Alegre andAustin with the use of the church as an expository space, affording theshow a new perspective for the intense and mysterious pieces by Macchilike La flecha de Zenón (1992, in collaboration with David Oubiña), Fin de Film (2007) and Tiempo real (2007).The show offers over forty works created by the artist from the earlynineties – works that comprise an ensemble that is tremendously baroque -despite their conceptual roots- and contrived -despite the formalsynthesis that characterises them.

Jorge Macchi believes thatover the course of their lifetimes, all artists create a work of artthat is nothing more than an obsessive self-portrait. As regards thistask, the artist leaves the spectator in suspense, confronting him withrecognisable elements that have been mediated and processed by hisimagination. The exhibition at the CGAC will be accompanied by apublication with texts written by the exhibit’s curator GabrielPérez-Barreiro, who served as head curator at the 6th MercosulBiennial, is currently director of Latin American art at the BlantonMuseum of Austin and who has recently been named director of theCisneros Collection (based in New York and one of the most prestigiouscollections of Latin American Art in the world), and texts by thedirector of the CGAC, Manuel Olveira.

Image: Tevere, 2006. Courtesy Galleria Continua San Gimignano, Italy

Opening May 8, 2008 h. 8 pm

Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC)
Valle Inclán s/n
15704 Santiago de Compostela
Hours: Tuesday – Sunday: 11:00-20:00. Monday: Closed.

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