Biography
He studied drawing and painting in prívate ateliers and atended Art History and Aesthetic studies in several institutions, among them the National University Institute for the Arts (IUNA) in the Visual Arts career.
Took part and selected for different exhibitions - Banco Ciudad Award, National Museum of Fine Arts (2002); Open Studio [Estudio Abierto], Barolo Palace (2004); Today’s Abstract Art: Fragility and Recilience [Arte Abstracto hoy: Fragilidad + Resiliencia], Spanish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires( 2005); Open Studio [Estudio Abierto], Palacio de Correos (2006);Duchamp in Bs As [Duchamp en Bs. As.] National Art Fund (2007/2008 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 2007/2008 end_of_the_skype_highlighting);among others- and workshops -Telefónica Foundation next to Fernando Llanos and at the Museum of Latinamerican Art in Buenos Aires next to Pablo Vargas Lugo)
Teacher at the Ricardo Rojas Cultural Center (Buenos Aires, Argentina) in charge of the course Modern and Contemporary Art.
He collaborates with different publications and graphic media related to visual arts. He’s written chronicles for newspapers such as Clarín and Ámbito Financiero, articles for ramona, magazine of visual arts and currently, essays for El Niño Stanton, magazine of art objects and literature.
As an investigator his formation was basically working next to Mario H. Gradowczyk, Argentina’s deepest investigator Xul Solar and Joaquín Torres García’s production as well as national and international abstract art.
Lecturer at the exhibition Fluxus in Germant 1962-1994 [Fluxus en Alemania 1962-1994] Museum of Latinamerican Art in Buenos Aires-Malba- (2006) and The use of contemporary art archives [El uso de Archivos en el Arte Contemporáneo ](2007)and Duchamp Presence [Presencia de Duchamp](2008)at the Documentation, Publication and Investigation Center –CEDIP- (Recoleta Cultural Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina).
At the beginning of 2007, he finds an unknown Marcel Duchamp art work in Argentina (Hermenegildo Sábat Collection) never exhibited or documentated in any publication, and bécame part of his first Project as a curator at the exhibition Duchamp in Bs. As, in which on top of that, three generations of argentine artists created Works specially for that show (Xill Buffone, Eduardo Costa, Max Gómez Canle, Guillermo Gregorio, IMaDuBA, David Lamelas, Emiliano López, Emiliano Miliyo, Esteban Pastorino, Gastón Pérsico, Provisorio Permanente, Nicolás Radano and Axel Strachnoy)
More information at: http://www.duchampenbsas.com.ar
Amateur exhibition video: http://www.youtube.com/duchampenbsas
Director of By Appointment Gallery, with no specific place that joins both marchand activitty with the education of new art collectors; selected project by arteBA ’08 presented in the fair’s Youung Area.
Project site: http://www.byappointment.com.ar
His artistic production has been published in the books Abstract Art, crossing lines from the south [Arte Abstracto, cruzando líneas desde el sur], by Mario H. Gradowczyk, EDUNTREF 2006 and in eA- Open Studio, experiences in contemporary art and culture in Buenos Aires 2000-2006[eA-Estudio Abierto Experiencias de Arte y Cultura Contemporánea en Buenos Aires 2000-2006], 2007.
His works are part of the following collections: Bulgheroni, Naón, Galarza de la Cárcova, Ugalde y Cancina, and others.
He lives and works in Buenos Aires.
Vision of art
1. Choose a work that represents you, describe it in relation to its format and materiality, its relation with time and space, its style and theme; detail its production process.
I’m choosing “Art Delivery”, a blue, 11x17cm flyer created in 2004, but printed in June, 2005 in a 4000 copies edition, from which ten have been numbered and signed. This is a ‘low tech’ piece of art, created to ‘feed the spirit’; it consists in 5 promotions, each one belongs to one art avant-grad magazine: The Blind Man, Dadá, De Stijl, Der Dadá y Merz, which scanned directly from originals, it’s sent with no cost by e-mail in Word format. This art work can be consulted at:
http://marcelogutman.blogspot.com/. They were shown for the first time in August, 2005, with ramona magazine Nº 53 for the subscribed readers; in 2006 it was one of the selected works to take part of Downtown Open Studio [Estudio Abierto Centro]. Ever since, I’ve received hundreds of e-mails asking for one or the five promotions all together, even when in the flyer is very clearly written that only one promotion will be sent by e-mail, there’s been some, who repeating a bad joke had asked it with “one bottle of beer”, and even some who thought I must had an enormous digital bookshelf asked me for the moment’s best seller book in a.pdf version (¿?). What’s funny about this particular work is that ever since it’s edition I haven’t had the opportunity to get a computer again. I received more orders from people who has no link to visual arts, this surprised me in the beginning, taking into account that the presentations were in the visual arts environment. Even today, they still ask for “promotions”, but for the time being, I’m not interested in turning this in a work in progress. It sounds utopist to me the idea of selling this kind of art in Argentina, well, there is no educated collector to understand a piece like this, or works based in documents. I guess they need to be informed, why not, that contemporary collections, just as Herbert’s started with this type or manifestations. To round up, it is interesting the reception this work had in different levels, in such a way that in one of the latest Beauty and Happiness [Belleza y Felicidad], Leandro Tartaglia and Pablo Accinelli, in their own personal style, recreated “Art Delivery”.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
Basically, I wouldn’t suggest any kind of Reading, but I am interested in the look, in the widest sense of this concept, the look of the ones who get to see the investigation behind every single work I produce, a look further the simply visual.
3. In reference to your work and your position in the national and international art fields, what tradition do you recognize yourself in? Who are your contemporary referents? What artists of previous generations are of interest to you?
I find it hard to recognize me in one specific tradition, since my production, divided in series, is completely different one from the other. For example, the appropriations I made for the Abstract Art (today)=fragility and resilience [Arte Abstracto (hoy)= fragilidad + resiliencia] (Spanish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires – CCEBA-, 2005) show, revise my passion for the abstract historical art avant-grads: Russian constructivism, MADI art, specialism, between others. On one hand, “Art Delivery” carries the inheritance of conceptual art. In general, I could place myself in the researcher-artist tradition. In relation to the contemporary referent, I find it important to set a serious problem, that this specific field should be aware of: my current production, without forgetting the previous mentioned series, moves around visual and musical elements; I realize ‘compositions’ using as a material the pentagram lines and the Braille system for music writing. Popular ‘critic’, the one published in massive media, would ‘face’ this with Jorge Macchi’s production, and though his work interested me much more then than now, I follow his path, I don’t think he is my contemporary referent, though we have topics in common, this type of ‘critic’ would directly link me to him. Specialized critic, in the Kant way (and not necessarily historical to the last detail) would research Dick Higgins, Emmet Williams, Gerhard Ruhm, Milan Knizak or Jim Hodges works, just to name some, and they would see that the point of view I propose is absolutely original. May be that’s the reason, general critic is usually so simplest and ordinary. The artists I’m interested in are many and diverse, to name some: László Moholy-Nagy (the complete artist), Ilia Chasnik, Marcel Duchamp, Alberto Greco, Víctor Grippo, Yves Klein, Félix González-Torres, Rhod Rothfuss, Gyula Kosice (for his never research enaugh Hydrospacial City), Maurizio Cattelan, Yoko Ono, Marta Minujín (specially for herwork in the 60’s), Eduardo Costa (for his soundworks such as the Tape Poemsand the brilliantness of his volumetric paintings), Liliana Porter, Julio le Parc, Esteban Pastorino...
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
There are two exhibitions I remember to this day as the most interesting of my days of “ideal spectator”, that means the one with no previous information; both at the National Museum of Fine Arts – MNBA-, one in 1991, Kosice’s retrospective, and the following year, Alberto Greco’s; ten years later I bought the catalogues, now out of stock, and every time I see them again, they take me to that museum which walls were still glass and not durlock. Years after, in those same halls, Julio Le Parc’s retrospective took place. Nearer in time, in at the Museum of Latin-American Art in Buenos Aires- Malba- I enjoyed excellent exhibitions together with amazing catalogues: : Geo-metrics, Dada and Surrealism, Grippo, Fluxus, among others... Abstract Argentinean Art [Arte Abstracto Argentino] at PROA Foundation in 2003, let me approach for the first time to pieces I had been studying for the last 15 years. Specially the work by Rhod Rothfuss which fascinates and obsesses me from the very first time I saw a reproduction in the book Kosice’s MADI Art, MADI Composition (with structure frame) in 1946 [Arte MADI de Kosice, Composición MADI (con marco estructurado) de 1946] work I celebrate in one of my appropriations, and will keep doing under other points of view. At the Recoleta Cultural Center, Liliana Porter’s exhibition was really interesting. And if I remember the ones seen in galleries, almost every one, the list would never end.
5. What tendencies or groupings from common elements do you see in argentine art of the last ten or fifteen years?
An obvious trend, one to be worried of, is the increasing pollution of the ‘art world’ in art… Female curators who base their selection on the artists they slept with… gallertists who talk about respect and contemporary artists support to end up beating personal and economically, is their politic responsible for their behavior?... or is it that gallerists, overflow with legal letters, would rather owe their artists that their current dealer… ‘Art critics’ that for $1.99 publish artists and exhibitions in the massive media…Collectors competing to see who paid the least for the work of a recognized artist, bought outside the commercial circuit… ‘new collectors’ from Northern Buenos Aires, whose collections have doubtful history, they use their wives as grants and their family belongs to the drug mafia… `Lobby artists’… the artists who steal ideas, expose them, and then ‘forget’ to recognize their ‘influences’… artists ‘making’ artists… artists with no art… friends and eternal arrangements in pageants and awards… the almost forgotten Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires – MAMAba- library, which hasn’t been researchable for a really long time as it should, which could the director’s excuse be to keep it this way when the museum has been closed for over an year? Or could she possibly forget that she is running a public institution, and is our taxes that pay her salary as well? ...whatever… May be the worse is the insecurity of those who wrongly depend on this circuit, because what I’ve written here is something we all know. But off course, not everyone has the possibility of saying it.
