10.18.2013 — 03.16.2014
A new edition of the Contemporáneo program, dedicated to current, local, and regional art. On this occasion, a project specially conceived by artist Elba Bairón (La Paz, Bolivia, 1947) for this museum space is on display: a set of eight human-scale figures—made of papier-mâché—form a landscape undefined in time, complemented by small rationalist architectural constructions made of plaster.
This sculptural installation continues the line of Bairon's most recent work (winner of the Grand Prize at the National Salon for New Media and Installation and the Federico Jorge Klemm Prize for Visual Arts 2012), which is characterized by poetic subtlety, mystery, and ambiguity.
"It seems as if everything rests in a dream. As if everyone has fallen asleep or frozen so that we can contemplate them in peace. Statues of salt, who, like Lot's wife, have been left staring eternally backward. But in a strange reversal of the plot, that backward is now ours,“ writes critic Teo Wainfred in the essay accompanying the exhibition catalog. ”It is Bairon who always leads us to these territories. Every gesture in his work imprints a sketch of what our eyes might see, our brains might draw, our experience might archive for the future," he adds.
Elba Bairon's work is a parade of cryptic figures, through which the artist attempts to lead us down the path of experience. "In this world of ours, so sure of itself, these still figures arrive to point out with the tips of their methodical instruments that everything can be according to the beholder. (...) Elba is the only one who knows the background of these images. What has brought them here? But it is up to us to give them the breath of life. The command. The ‘get up and walk’," reflects Wainfred.
Elba Bairon
She was born in 1947 in La Paz, Bolivia. She studied at the School of Fine Arts in Montevideo and Chinese painting at the National Library in the same city. In 1967, she settled in Buenos Aires. Between 1980 and 1986, she studied engraving and lithography. In 1984 and 1987, she won the National Engraving Salon Prize for foreigners. In 1998, she received a grant from the National Arts Fund, and in 2001, she won the Acquisition Prize at the Bahía Blanca Contemporary Art Biennial. Since then, she has devoted himself to his papier-mâché objects and installations.
She has held solo and group exhibitions at the Rojas Cultural Center, Recoleta Cultural Center, Borges Cultural Center, Tigre Art Museum, Bahía Blanca Museum of Contemporary Art, Parque España Cultural Center (Rosario), Diana Lowensteien Gallery, Luisa Pedrouzo Gallery, Braga Menéndez Gallery, Zavaleta Lab Gallery, Schlifka Molina Gallery, Gallery 713, Latin American Institute of Rome, Arco (Madrid, Spain), Art Basel (Basel, Switzerland), Art Frankfurt (Germany), among many others. She lives and works in Buenos Aires.
Catalogue
Along with the exhibition, Malba published a 48-page bilingual Spanish-English catalog featuring Teo Wainfred's essay “Una cifra escondida en una piedra”, as well as a photographic record of the sculptures and color reproductions of the watercolors that served as sketches for the installation.
