La nobleza del absurdo
por Marcela López Sastre,
registro Agustina Pesci
La obra de Pablo Curutchet nos extraña ante lo que podríamos entender como: otra vez… la infancia. Pero no, no vamos hacia allí (por suerte). Su cinismo y sutil ironía que desarrolla desde los materiales “poco nobles” y los personajes “poco serios” en permanente riesgo de pasar el límite que divide lo tierno de lo bizarro, lo violento de lo amoroso, lo sucio y lo gracioso de lo morboso y feliz.
No sé si es posible descifrar desde que lugar nos habla, seguramente tampoco es necesario si afrontamos que todas estas categorías son imposibles o inexistentes fuera de los pre-conceptos que existen de la belleza, la felicidad, el amor, la infancia y tantos “grandes temas” que construyen al arte y a su historia como otro “gran tema” cimentado sobre una serie de prejuicios legitimados por el tiempo.
Y es esta posibilidad de instalarse en lo ambiguo la que enriquece su relato; Curutchet sin abrir preguntas nos llena de dudas y cuestionamientos respecto al arte, su nobleza, sus materiales y sus “temas”. Sin golpes bajos, ni excesos… sin dejar evidencia del ultraje, el sabor extraño nos queda dando vueltas y la nostalgia de ser niños (y de ser artistas, porque no…) se empaña de sombras, de malosentendidos embarrados por el halo del supuesto. Su capacidad crítica no se ejerce desde falsos intelectualismos, ni se complejiza abriendo heroicas batallas, simplemente propone un jardín, un gigante de cartón que asoma desde la oscuridad, un paisaje donde es posible no exigir coherencia, aboliendo la falsa moral y la nobleza.
registro Agustina Pesci
“yo amo a los artista-etc.”
La aseveración de Ricardo Basbaum (San Pablo SP 1961) quien se denomina a sí mismo artista-etc.: artista-curador, artista-crítico, artista-gestor, docente y escultor, pintor, fotógrafo, etc. en simultáneo. Piezas paralelas de un proyecto que recorre las diversas zonas del arte. Basbaum conceptualiza una figura que emerge de la evidente complejización del contexto artístico actual: su juego de relaciones y las vinculaciones entre las instituciones simbólicas del mundo del arte.
Este perfil de artista enmarca perfectamente la práctica de Curutchet quien no solo produce su obra de manera continua sino que se ha desarrollado como editor, curador y gestor en diferentes proyectos. Junto a Agustina Pesci crearon Loba /producciones a través de la cual trabajan en la circulación, producción y experimentación de obra. Realizaron intervenciones urbanas como el “proyecto caja” y la obra “simpático”. Estuvieron al frente de la sala Real Visuales en el Teatro Real. Organizaron la residencia de artistas en la ciudad de las Artes y publicaron el libro, que también editaron a partir de la invitación a un grupo de artistas, el “Block de Dibujo”.
La obra de Curutchet es una exquisita ironía sobre el gusto, el éxito y el fracaso, desde donde pone en jaque los conceptos del arte, la nobleza y la infancia revirtiendo la nostalgia bucólica con su lenguaje ácido y ambiguo donde los personajes: insectos y robots gigantes , murciélagos sangrientos, chanchos atravesados por un hacha, entre algunos de su fauna, cuestionan al paisaje lúdico y precario hecho de cartones, telas e inflables.
Su producción de obra, en paralelo a la gestión de proyectos, atraviesa sus intereses como artista que experimenta diversas disciplinas, sin inmolarse ante definiciones taxativas, ni prácticas excluyentes o exclusivas. La complejizacion del mundo del arte actual conlleva la transformación de las prácticas artísticas. Los artistas actuales se diversifican en sus saberes generando un discurso personal construido sobre cruces, referencias y vinculaciones. Estas capacidades múltiples y paralelas, delimitadas por la necesidad de la obra, indefectiblemente produce prácticas particulares y la obra de Curutchet nos permite reflexionar sobre esta situación, que se repite en las diversas escenas del país. Loba/producciones como un tipo de espacio autogestionado responde a una escena donde las faltas y las ausencias movilizan a los artistas a producir su propio contexto positivo para la realización de sus obras. Haciendo parte de la obra al proceso de construcción, registro, difusión y circulación en el espacio artístico con el que se relaciona.
La autoria pierde el centro de escena, ya que se comprende que la obra no deviene de un momento iluminado de inspiración, sino que se construye por la transpiración en el campo y sus zonas diversas; como atravesando una geografía heterogénea el artista busca soportes adecuados, gestiona espacios y recursos, registra y reflexiona, critica e invita a otros artistas como parte del proceso creativo de la obra misma.
registro Agustina Pesci Bender plastilina
Charla miércoles 29 de Febrero a las 18:30 hs en el museo Carffa., se podrá hacer un recorrido con el artista Pablo Curutchet por su muestra Nube.
Agradecimentos A Marcela Lopez Sastre, Agustina Pesci, Leo Nucci, Gustavo Limperis, Manuel Pascual, Graciela Perez, Gille, Jose Lorenzo, Paula Abalos, Jessica Covacich, Roly Arias, Luis Gomez,
Sobre el Museo Caraffa
Muestra Nube en la sala 5 multidisciplina
Catalogo tríptico muestra Nube
Director Jorge Torres, asistente de produccion Claudia Aguilera, Juan Longuini , iluminacion Santiago Aramburu, Comunicación Gina Giraldo Eugenia Dünkler,Diseño grafico Pablo Guidi, Mariana Robles, Julia Romano
Museo Emilio Caraffa | Av. Poeta Lugones 411 Nueva Córdoba | X5000HZE | Cordoba, Argentina | Tel.: (54-351) 434-3348/49
www.museocaraffa.org.ar | comunicacion@museocaraffa.org.ar
Facebook: Museo Emilio Caraffa (Grupo) / Educación MEC | Twitter: @museocaraffa
Horarios del Museo: Martes a domingos y feriados: 10hs. a 20 hs.
Entrada: General $3 / Estudiantes $2 / Menores de 12 años, jubilados, estudiantes de arte. Gratuito / Miércoles Gratuito.
Transporte: (Líneas Plaza España) A-A2-A3-A4-A6-A8-A9-A10 / C3-C7 / D1-D4-D5 / E1-E5 / N3-N6 / CV / R4-R
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“I love the artist-slash.”
The title is a statement by Ricardo Basbaum (San Pablo SP 1961) who identifies himself as an artist-slash: Artist/curator, artist/critic, artist/manager/instructor/sculptor/painter/photographer, etc. All of them in simultaneous.
They are the independent pieces of one project that walks the different fields of art. Basbaum conceptualizes a figure that emerges from the obvious complexity of the current artistic context: the game of interconnections and links between the symbolic institutions of the world of art.
This profile perfectly describes the practice of Curutchet, who is not only and constantly the producer of his work, but has also evolved as editor, curator and manger of different projects.
Alongside Agustina Pesci he created Loba /producciones to work in the promotion, production and experimentation of art. They have performed urban interventions such as “Proyecto caja” and the piece “Simpático”. They were in charge of the space Real Visuales in the Teatro Real.
They also were the organizers of the “residencia de artistas” (artists’ residence) in the Ciudad de las Artes; and they published and edited the book «Block de dibujo» which is a collection gathered from a group of artists specially summoned to this end.
The work of Curutchet is an exquisite irony about taste, success and failure; through his work, he questions the concepts of art and nobility, and he switches the bucolic sadness of childhood by means of an acid and ambiguous language in which his characters: Gigantic bugs and robots, bleeding bats and axed hogs, to mention just a few members of his fauna, question the playful, scarce landscape built with cardboard boxes, fabric and inflatable rubber.
His production, in parallel to his project management work, covers all his areas of interests,
because he is an artist that experiences different disciplines without surrendering to restricting definitions or to excluding or exclusive practices. The current complexity of the world of art carries with it a transformation of the artistic practices. Today’s artists are diversifying their knowledge thus producing a personal speech built on top of crosses, references and bonds.
These abilities, which are multiple, parallel, and outlined upon the needs of each work, will
inevitably generate particular practices; in this sense the work of Curutchet allows us to
meditate about this situation, that is a common denominator throughout the country.
Loba/producciones is a self-managed space that responds to a scene where the voids and
absences drive artists to produce their own positive context to produce their work thus making the process of construction, registry, broadcasting and distribution of the work of art equal components of the artistic space they relate to.
Authorship is moved away from the spotlight because it is implicit that the work of art is not the by-product of a strike of inspiration, but the result of a lot of hard work in the field and its different areas; as though taking a trek through a very heterogeneous geography, the artist is trying to find adequate support, managing to find spaces and resources, recording and meditating, being critical while inviting other artists to join this crusade, and it all forms part of the creative process of the work of art itself.
Pablo Curutchet’s work startles us; we could understand it as: a trip back to … childhood. But no, we will (fortunately) not go there; the subtle irony and the cynicism he develops even through the “questionably noble” materials he uses and the “questionably serious” characters he portrays, always put him in the risk of crossing the thin line between cute and bizarre, violent and loving, filthy and funny and morbid …. and happy.
I am not sure it is possible to decipher his stance on this matter; I am sure it is not even
necessary if we face the fact that all of these categories are impossible or inexistent outside
the preconceptions about beauty, happiness, love, childhood, and all the many other “big
topics” that conform art; and its history which comes along as another “big topic” filled with
preconceptions that time has made legitimate.
And it is this possibility of settling within the ambiguous what makes his work so rich; without posing any questions, Curutchet fills us with doubts about art, its nobleness, materials and «big topics»; there are no cheap shots, no excesses… there is also no evidence of its outrage, but the weird taste that remains in the mouth, and the memories of being children (and why not, of being artists) are clouded with shadows of misunderstandings, rubbed with the mud of the presupposed. He does not exercise his critical capacity from fake intellectualisms; he does not burden himself battling heroic battles: he simply proposes a garden, a giant man made of cardboard emerging from the dark, landscape where incoherence is allowed, and where faux moralities and nobilities are demolished.
The ideal of nobility in fine arts id evaluated according to the ability of a work of art to stay
alive in time and to preserve itself, enduring the mishaps of existing along generations through the untouched outlook of the artist. Curutchet (firmly standing in contemporaneity) evaluates nobility from different parameters: cardboard, which is one of the materials that characterize his work production is noble: it faces the hunger and the cold, its sense of permanence is present and it needs be sorted from one day to the next. His work shortens the distances between the concerns of “art” and the daily concerns, revealing the profile of an artist that detaches himself from modern parameters that locked him in his ivory tower to sacrifice himself in the name of eternity. Curutchet describes what we understand as an “artist- slash”: He is the constructor of an art that at a given time uses sculpture and management, curatorship and photography, installations and edition, or whatever is needed at a specific time to make a work of art happen.
The staging of his characters: robots, toads, skulls, bats, elephants made of cardboard, cloth or inflatable plastic take part in a series of absurd situations that humanize the context; we manage to see ourselves reflected in the toad being cut by a handsaw, and we shorten the distance; the elephant and its four telephones are no longer absurd, and we barely recognize the bloody bath. The nobility, the absurd and its transparency.
