Alexis Brisa, 30.05-28.07.2012, first solo show at Peña Galeria, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Curated by Rosario Güiraldes and Geraldine Schwindt.
Texts by Bárbara Golubicki and Mercedes Villalba.

In the mezzanine of the gallery, De Manet a Nuestros Dias (From Manet to Our Days),
a solo show from Santiago Vilanueva, was running at the same time.

"Alexis Brisa", installation views.
Photo credits: Lucio Romano.

"Alexis Brisa", installation views.
Photo credits: Lucio Romano.

"Violeta". Pencil on paper. 100 x 150 cm. 2012.
Photo: Fabian Ramos.

"Untitled (previously called Dipy)". Pencil on paper. 100 x 150 cm. 2012.
Photo: Fabian Ramos.

"Untitled (Every Age is Made of Stone)". Pencil, beer and collage on paper. 100 x 150 cm. 2012.
Photo: Fabian Ramos.

"Untitled". Ink and ballpoint pen on paper. 110 x 150 cm. 2012.
Photo: Fabian Ramos.

"Untitled (Clock's Jokes)". Pencil on paper. 150 x 190 cm. 2012.
Photo: Fabian Ramos.

"Alexis Brisa". Ink on paper. 20 x 29 cm. 2012.

"Untitled". Watercolor and ballpoint pen on paper. 150 x 170 cm. 2012.
Photo: Fabian Ramos.

"Untitled (Now Relax for 60 Seconds)". Ballpoint pen on paper. 150 x 200 cm. 2012.
Photo: Fabian Ramos.

"Untitled". Pencil, ballpoint pen and ink on paper. 150 x 250 cm. 2012.
Photo: Fabian Ramos.

"Untitled". Pencil and ink on paper. 150 x 250 cm. 2012.
Photo: Fabian Ramos.

"Alexis Brisa", installation views.
Photo credits: Lucio Romano.

"Gallo (Rooster)". Pencil on paper. 170 x 150 cm. 2012.
Photo credit: Nicolás Sarmiento.

From Manet to Alexis Brisa.
By Bárbara Golubicki.

Let's talk only about drawing. No, better yet, let's talk about the history of universal art and its view from the perspective of Argentinean art history, about the construction of narratives of the institutions that were part of our artistic modernity. Or let's talk about both things at the same time, to see how from a young contemporary art gallery, from the work of two artists who are not yet 25 years old, a counterpoint is achieved. A counterpoint is the composition of musical lines that sound very different and are modulated independently of each other but are harmonious when played simultaneously. That happens in Peña. And it forces us to consider two proposals, of great names, boundless, unattainable, coexisting without interference, with names skimming, anonymous, unrecognizable.

ALEXIS BRISA, by Nicolás Sarmiento, brings together a series of large-format works, drawings, paintings, drawing-paintings, a collage. "Every age is of stone" reads on the arm, the only part clearly recognizable, of a biker who lost his bike in another drawing. More tattoos, drawn (a deformed face) and pasted (a red-haired person in a leather photo poses in a Canadian forest). Other drawings, more abstract perhaps, test, exercise on a field of prehensile forces: materials, pressures, lines. One, for example, presents itself almost as an imperceptible work: on the white of the battered paper, lines like rainbows draw the movement of the artist's hand spinning the tip to paint with all its colors. They are like the tiny hairs of banknotes, pasted to prove: this is not fake. Ballpoint pen, black pencil, colored pencil, India ink. Materials must be made to think, the artist seems to suggest. It is not about the exploration of a technique, but about an exploration in itself. Alexis, Brisa, Esteban, Romina... We're not going to distinguish anyone, but not because there is a lack of figuration, but simply because they compose uncertain characters, which are literal, a marked surface. That's why there is no regret, no correction, no alarm in the face of the accident. There is no delicacy, nor lightness, the support is anarchic because it lost respect: it stains it, pierces it, wrinkles it, breaks it. Its treatment is far from gentle: it has gravity. The strokes fall, with pressure, vertical; everything has its specific weight.

To acquire things, by signing them. Like the driver with his bus, which does not belong to him, but he appropriates it by inscribing the name of his own.

In FROM MANET TO OUR DAYS, by Santiago Villanueva, the journey is through the first impression, broad, pretentious, promising. Maximalist. However, this is a delayed effect; that of the momentum of Argentine artistic institutions. The title replicates that of an exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Arts, in the late 1940s.

The artist reconstructs it through a "poor" technique: a series of monochrome engravings (except one) of the image of the exhibited work along with the name and surname of the author, without epigraph. Does the reconstruction pretend to ridicule the vigor of still young Latin American national museums? To scrutinize the history of modern art that it tries to write? Is it the mimetic endeavor, or on the contrary, the curious selection made by an institution with a short budget, but high aspirations, that the artist points out? Is there not a veiled vindication of that exhibition, sometimes on the border? Is the history of the portrait of Rosas dressed as a gaucho more relevant than noting the chronological and pictorial debacle of exhibiting Monvoisin in series with Manet?

In any case, what matters is not in sight; but in the view. The artist reproduces a certain contemporary gaze that superimposes dissemination and study. On the one hand, in its circulation forms, the reproductions: by unfolding the engravings on the wall like the pages of a Sunday supplement, it offers the same quick pass through the great names of universal art history as the homonymous tomes. But it also reviews the type of education that makes an Argentine artist, in times without the internet. Like someone who only has access to shabby translations to read the classics.

And yet, neither inferiority complexes nor peripheral self-satisfaction. The artist installs in a large, unmanageable showcase, an open giant book that shows a series of his own paintings. The fold of the book eats part of the image, hides it. With the reversal of supports (framed book pages, bound paintings), it reuses institutional writing forms. It points in a double direction: it is his works, his gestures that are relevant to close in an augmented catalog book; and, at the same time, it is they who promote the situation of impossible contact, that relationship that one establishes, when studying art history, only with worthy works.

To make of puncture, a study. To make of study, a puncture. The two paths are those that traverse, without contradicting each other and in double hand, the works of Nicolás Sarmiento and Santiago Villanueva. On the one hand, to make the act of registering, pricking a surface, identifying oneself through the stroke and appropriating things by the mere action of marking them, an application, a general dedication. On the other hand, to take the history of universal art that filters into the history of acquisitions and exhibitions of the flagship national museum, as the field of attraction to ask about the conditions of the current gaze, to question what really interests: the art of "our days".