Art Underground

There is no subway system in Montevideo, but in the center of the city, hidden below Plaza Fabini, there's an underground art gallery. Salon Municipal de Exposiciones known as SUBTE is a public venue with three exhibition spaces labelled according to size - XL, M and SX.  This place is one of the cultural hot spots in Montevideo, with an ongoing program of free art exhibitions, musical concerts,  lectures, drama and experimental performances.

 Descending the stairs that lead from the busy, sunlit plaza to a subterranean, cavernous space is like entering Alice in Wonderland's rabbit hole, a transition from reality to fantasy that's heightened by the make-believe world presented by artist Claudio Roncoli  in the exhibition "Black Life."  

Roncoli uses digital images printed on blackout fabric as the foundation for his works.  The photos are appropriated from corporate and institutional documents, advertising and vintage magazine covers.   The artist paints over the enlarged black and white photos, dripping vertical lines of bright colour which alter and screen the original.  Roncoli's intent is akin to a graffiti artist's; by applying a layer of paint he can disrupt an established order, while poking fun at it.  It's a naughty and daring approach.  See how a red dot turns a sensible schoolgirl into a silly clown? Look at the kid with the goofy crocodile mask!  Roncoli clearly enjoys mark-making as much as a youth with a spray can aimed at a blank wall.

"Sistemas" 2011, digital print, acrylic on blackout fabric, 200 x 400 cm

Detail, "Sistemas"

"No somos todos iguales", 2010, digital print, acrylic on blackout fabric, 200 x 300 cm

Detail, "No somos todos iguales"

"Algo Todo Nada" 2011, digital print, acrylic on blackout fabric, 200 x 300 cm

Detail "Algo Todo Nada"

Installation view at SUBTE

Education, consumerism, corporations, government and the media - all are subject to Roncoli's scrutiny and his wry, cutting sense of humour.  There are visual puns in the paintings that hint at an underlying clever irony: a pie in the face, (pie graphs replace portraits in "No somos todos iguales") eating your words (text fills the refrigerator in "Algo, Todo, Nada") seeing double (mirror images in "Sistemas".)

The fact that Claudio Roncoli grew up in a toy store seems perfectly fitting once you've become familiar with his aesthetic sensibility.  His parents owned a shop in Buenos Aires and took to the road with their children in a converted school bus to sell party souvenirs.  Play is an activity that the adult Roncoli hasn't outgrown, but that doesn't mean that his work is not taken seriously.    He is represented in Buenos Aires by Galeria Praxis , in San Francisco by Gallery 415 , in Miami by Zadok Gallery, and so on, around the globe. You can read more about the artist and his work here.

We leave SUBTE in a buoyant mood, join the crowd on Avenida 18 de Julio and walk down to Teatro Solis.  The Allegro Cafe is full of young children, parents and grandparents who have just emerged from a special winter holiday performance of the Comedie Nacional.  When our espresso and carrot cake arrive at the table, we are treated to some impromptu live entertainment.

Our conversation goes like this:
Clown 1: "You speak English!  Where are you from?"
Me: "I'm from Canada."
Clown 1: "We learned English at school."
Clown 2:  "The pencil is red."
Clown 1:  "The weather is cold."
Clown 2  "I like hamburgers!"
Me: "You'll do just fine when you visit my country.  That's all you need to know."

Sometimes art imitates life, sometimes life imitates art.  It's amazing when both combinations happen in the same day.

"Black Life" by Claudio Roncoli continues at SUBTE until the end of July.

Javier Bassi

The upstairs gallery at the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales is as spacious as a ballroom, and its high-gloss hardwood floor seems to extend an invitation to dance. It might be fun, but waltzing would be inappropriate here, as  I am reminded by both the presence of a surly security guard and the imposing series of paintings by Javier Bassi - sombre, large, black rectangles that march along the walls like a funeral procession.  At first glance this looks like an exhibition of  formal, minimalist abstract canvases (i.e. serious stuff.)

Installation view of "In/visibilidad" exhibition

The labels reveal that Bassi's work is not pure abstraction, but a combination of collage and painting.  The artist uses black toner (the same carbon chemical used in photocopiers and printer cartridges) applied over a layer of classified ads that have been pasted to the canvas.  The off-white streaks that read as brush marks are actually areas where the underlying newsprint is exposed.

Detail, with classified ads barely visible under the toner

In some of the paintings Bassi allows his technique to be deciphered, revealing fragments of the printed page, while in other works, the toner completely covers  the ads.  The viewer has to question the presence and function of the submerged, invisible content.  What significance does a totally obscured image have?

Classified ads are published to meet the needs of those who wish to buy, sell, trade or hire.  "Want ads" they are called, and indeed the classified section manages to address just about every human desire: transportation, clothing, shelter, furniture, food, tools, collectibles, pets, education, employment, even personal relationships are offered.   The ads form an enticing grid of possibilities for gratification.

"Mi linea como trampa" 200 x 480 cm

I am a fan of haiku, and enjoy the sense of surprise and simple insights that these succinct verses offer.   I read the following haiku in The Heron's Nest magazine and said "Aha!" as the Bassi series came to mind.

migrating geese-

the things we thought we needed

darken the garage

- Chad Lee Robinson

"Ice Cream Memory" 100 x 130 cm

Bassi's paintings, like the dark, overloaded garage, represent weighty accumulations rather than voids. All the things listed in the ads are stored under layered shadows that effectively cancel any initial attraction.   Both visual artist and haiku poet are making statements that mock materialism and the human weakness for possessions.

   

Instead of being encumbered with a lot of things, wouldn't it be nice to be airborne, like the migrating birds?  And wouldn't it be nice to just go ahead and dance, when you have the urge?

"In/visibilidad" by Javier Bassi continues at the MNAV until July 10, 2011.  The exhibition catalogue, with images, artist's biography and curatorial essays, is available online.  

Saez and Sprezzatura

Carlos Federico Saez, "Retrato de Juan Carlos Munoz" 1899, oil on canvas

 The portrait shows a male figure seated in an armchair, relaxed, leaning back, totally at ease with himself and the world, but nevertheless alert, exuding the quiet confidence of a refined gentleman.  When I saw this painting the word "sprezzatura" came to mind.  It's an Italian term that I learned while studying Renaissance art history at university, one word in the argot of academics that I hadn't thought about for a long time.   First used by Baldassare Castiglione in the "Book of the Courtier" published in 1528, sprezzatura is defined by the author as "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought."

Detail of the subject

The studied carelessness of the sitter is matched by the artist's style in this work.  At close range, the brushwork is loose and uneven, and in some places, patches of canvas have been left blank. The back of the chair tends to dissolve into the scumbled background, while the two carved finials act as bold parentheses for the subject's head.  The off-centre composition allows blank space to surround the figure, an openness that breathes and glows, creating an aura of afternoon repose. The way the man's right hand has been merely suggested, rather than defined, demonstrates the bravura of an artist who is leaning towards abstraction.  A casual squiggly line along the armrest is enough; we can see a foreshortened hand that's moving ever so slightly.

Detail of the right hand

The portrait  was painted by Carlos Federico Saez, and is part of an exhibition celebrating the Bicentennial of Uruguay at Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales near Parque Rodo.   I had never seen work by Saez before, but the row of seven paintings on display at the gallery reveals a virtuoso; an artist capable of capturing character with graceful drawing and economical, painterly means. His approach to portraiture recalls canvases of the same era by John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, and Edgar Degas.

Carlos Federico Saez

The biography of Saez is as sketchy and loosely rendered as the artist's own drawings.  He was born in 1878 in Mercedes, Uruguay.  At the age of 14 he earned a scholarship to study art in Italy, under the direction of Daniel Munoz, a writer and politician employed as Uruguayan ambassador in Rome.  Saez stayed in Europe for seven years and worked with the Macchaioli painters, a group who practised plein air painting in the Tuscan countryside.   The end of his artistic career came too soon - in 1900 Saez became ill and returned to Uruguay.  He died in Montevideo in 1901, age 22,  with an oeuvre of 100 drawings and 70 canvases as his legacy.

To see more works by Carlos Federico Saez, visit this site.  

Installation,  Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales