Saga candado, 24.10-19.12.2015, solo show at Movil, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Los trabajos sobre papel de Nicolás Sarmiento –casi como una colección de anotaciones llevadas al lenguaje y la escala de la pintura– se presentan en un juego de opuestos que oscila entre la acumulación y la expansión, la representación de la meditación y la del tedio, el hermetismo y la revelación. Logrados con la paciencia de quien deja a los materiales trabajar por sí solos pero también orientándolos, dejando que una palabra o una línea aparentemente insignificante y de humor seco se mezcle con imágenes de cierto aire místico, los papeles representan en su abstracción un mundo de formas que son tanto creación primaria como imagen residual, huellas de objetos, de materiales, de figuras, de ideas e incluso de otros dibujos que fueron contagiándose y manchándose entre ellos.

Su destreza como pintor es movilizada por una pulsión gráfica que lo hace trabajar sobre los papeles metódicamente provocando transparencias, sobre-impresiones y combinaciones de texto e imagen hasta que se descubra en ellos este universo formal generado con agua, pigmentos, anilinas, marcadores, birome, grafito, acuarela, cinta adhesiva e incluso la intemperie. Y que combina la sensibilidad de una abstracción fuertemente sugerente con la desfachatez de elementos y datos de la cultura popular e industrial que aporta una carga anti-estética y utilitaria. Capturados en grandes sobres colgantes que obturan por momentos su propia belleza y amenazan con una leve sensación de vacío, o dispersos por el viejo edificio industrial que habitamos y disponibles en el scroll infinito de una página web, los papeles se vuelven ilusión de sí mismos. Se ofrecen a inagotables diálogos con lo que los rodea para ser percibidos y consumidos como una porción más de realidad pero también como interrupciones en ella, recortes visuales que profundizan en sus datos y detalles y aparecen como zonas de reflexión y tregua.

Alejandra Aguado & Solana Molina Viamonte.

Nicolás Sarmiento's works on paper -almost like a collection of annotations taken to the language and scale of painting- are presented in a game of opposites that oscillates between accumulation and expansion, the representation of meditation and that of tedium, hermeticism and revelation. Achieved with the patience of one who lets the materials work by themselves but also by guiding them, letting a word or an apparently insignificant line of dry humor mingle with images of a certain mystical air, the papers represent in their abstraction a world of forms that are both primary creation and residual image, traces of objects, materials, figures, ideas and even of other drawings that were contagious and staining each other.

His skill as a painter is mobilized by a graphic drive that makes him work methodically on the papers, provoking transparencies, overprints and combinations of text and image until he discovers in them this formal universe generated with water, pigments, anilines, markers, biro, graphite, watercolor, adhesive tape and even the environment. And that combines the sensitivity of a strongly suggestive abstraction with the impudence of elements and data from popular and industrial culture that brings an anti-aesthetic and utilitarian charge. Captured in large hanging envelopes that at times obscure their own beauty and threaten with a slight sensation of emptiness, or scattered throughout the old industrial building we inhabit and available in the infinite scroll of a web page, the papers become an illusion of themselves. They offer themselves to inexhaustible dialogues with what surrounds them to be perceived and consumed as another portion of reality but also as interruptions in it, visual clippings that deepen their data and details and appear as zones of reflection and respite.

Alejandra Aguado & Solana Molina Viamonte.

"Saga Candado", installation view.

"Pentagram".
Ink and marker pen on paper.
21 x 29 cm.
2015.

"Gambit".
Ink, dye and marker pen on paper.
21 x 24 cm.
2015.

"Saga Candado", installation view.

"Briseño" ("Of the breeze").
Photocopy, marker pen on paper and dye on paper.
21 x 29 cm.
2015.

"Quite torpe" ("Clumsy remove").
Ballpoint pen, dye and pigment on paper.
21 x 29 cm.
2015.

"Saga Candado", installation view.

"Mas bacterial que mamífero" ("More bacterial than mammal").
Ballpoint on paper.
21 x 29 cm.
2015.

"Gelatina sin fondo" ("Botomless gelatin").
Ink, dye and marker pen on paper.
21 x 29 cm.
2015.

"Saga Candado", installation view.

"Seisame" ("Sixam").
Ballpoint pen, ink, dye and sticker/post-it on paper.
100 x 150 cm.
2015.

"Saga Candado", installation view.

"Saga Candado", press article by Claudio Iglesias in Radar, in the Pagina 12 newspaper.

"Saga Candado", press article by Claudio Iglesias in Radar, in the Pagina 12 newspaper:

"EVERYTHING STAYS ON THE PAPER

The new exhibition by Nicolás Sarmiento, Saga candado, is a monologue of enormous dripping pages, colored for no apparent reason. Loose pages of an abandoned atlas, praise of “zoning out”; Sarmiento was, a few years ago, one of the managers of Rayo Lazer, a space for exhibitions and parties set up in a ruined and big house on Avenida Lacroze that was an intense school of public relations and organization of shows.

By Claudio Iglesias

Green is blue and yellow: a cheap blue from a ballpoint-pen or industrial pigment, an aniline yellow. A dirty green is what results. The “zoning out” with the pen, the dirt of the workshop, a cup that overturns, a footstep: everything remains on paper. Nicolás Sarmiento (Necochea, 1986) had warned that he could turn his little misery as a draftsman into a parade of paper flags with his first individual exhibition in Buenos Aires, in 2012. Later he returned to silence and poorly paid work as a technician and artist’s assistant. In his new show, Saga candado, he returns to his monologue with large, dripping pages. This time the papers alternate hanging in canvas envelopes the size of a cyclops that has to send transparent letters, illiterate letters that have no addressee or order, but that convey the silly happiness of a misused painkiller. The drawings seem to want nothing, they invade the space in spite of themselves. They are disintegrative fictions, loose pages from an abandoned atlas, wet and broken into pieces on a wide avenue in the suburbs of of the city.

The size of Sarmiento's ambition has nothing to do with that of the papers: his seem like invisible ambitions. The scale of the images, on the other hand, seems to generate anesthesia or calm. This painting with a deficit in social skills, that stammers and drools, a painting submerged in delay, it blocks it, the attention that disperses, starting on one side of the page and continuing anywhere else, leave a circle in the middle of its conclusion, stay with a stupor while watching how a wet piece of paper adhered to another slowly transmitting its pigment, are some of the forms that have a particular history in Buenos Aires.

It was Nicanor Aráoz who discovered them, around 2010: some youngsters who wandered through the exhibitions and made bizarre sculptures and drawings. They made a base in a ruined house on Avenida Lacroze that became a site for exhibitions and parties in an “aguantadero” format: it was called Rayo Lazer. The motto of the place was: “you can stay to sleep”. In addition to overnight stays, occasionally there were talks, asados, and futbol matches. But the space did not leave behind its founding premise and one of those who stayed the night more and more often was a very young Nicolás Sarmiento who came every day from Marcos Paz. Over time, the place came under the direction of a triumvirate: Sarmiento, Lucio Romano, and Mario Scorzelli painted in their respective workshops, planned parties, and did the shopping together. For a while, Rayo Lazer became a jet setter for the poor: the motto of the house was added to the condiments of a shabby cultural center, with screwed-up walls and many beer bottles on the floor. Although everything was done with a certain disorder and finally each one went their way. The project did not last more than a few years, but it was an intense school of public relations and set up of exhibitions: many artists such as Franco Vico, Gala Berger, Tomás Maglione (who had his first solo show in the house) and Ailín Grad passed through there, then a member of the Mainumby music label.

Sarmiento at the same time presented his big papers in a solo show at the Peña gallery in 2012. His name was Alexis Brisa. Valentina Liernur summoned him the following year for an exhibition with Karl Holmqvist: a very famous international artist and already mature, a kind of Swedish godfather of the artist from San Isidro. Reluctant to give an individual show to her idol (invited by the Torcuato Di Tella University by her idea), Liernur gave Holmqvist three minions: one of them was Pablo Accinelli, another was Victor Grippo. The third, Sarmiento.

Saga Candado continues with the theme of large papers, colored with no apparent project, with marker blows and various accidents (dropped tea, more beer, shoe prints) and adds the plastic envelope and the remora of an obsolete industrialism . The recluse adolescent, the hikikomori, in Sarmiento is reunited with the figure of the procrastinator from Buenos Aires. His works have the negligence of someone who leaves some engine parts or fiberglass boards lying around in the backyard, so as not to face the effort of putting them in order. His thing is to continue daydreaming, enhance its record, turn it into a logbook of climatic calamities like the recent disaster in Minas Gerais, the stain of toxic mud that could come from a giant pen that stays still on a blotting paper. In some of Sarmiento's images, nature can be glimpsed as a substrate of toxins and heavy metals, a green whose green is covered by the sulfurous nuances of the catastrophe. The image of the drug, something that clouds and colors the mind, is equated with that of the industry, something that ruins nature, confuses it in tones ranging from yellow to violet. Sarmiento's pigments generate some of these visions: giant clay pens, landscapes surrendered before the spill of an innocent and brutal poison.

Saga candado can be seen until December 19 at Móvil, Iguazú 451, Parque Patricios. On Fridays and Saturdays from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m."

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