Raúl D'Amelio

Here I take the liberty of choosing two works and quoting a text written a long time ago by Ana Gabrieloni: 1- Courbet and I: Black and white photography, turned to red. 100x150cm in the original. 2-Plane Earth: Black and white photography, turned to different colours. 6 pieces of 0.45x0.75cm each, total 0.45.450cm. Raul D'Amelio refers to the founder of pictorial realism. In 1866, Gustave Courbet painted a canvas with which he inaugurated a new way of looking: the cold and concentrated gaze, staring -without blinking-, at something considered unacceptable at the time. A woman's wide open legs, uncovering a hairy pubis. "L'origine du monde" was not exhibited until the end of the last century. But this censorship was not only official. During the XX century, it remained hidden behing another painting -that worked as a sort of sliding door, allowing just a few to see it- by André Masson. It was a similar composition than that of Courbet's, but with such eliptic traces as to suggest a landscape instead of a female body. The idea was from the owner of Courbet's painting, Jacques Lacan. D'Amelio's work installs the indescribable, and provokes it to be said. Courbet and I, Plane Earth: bodies and landscapes are no longer docile to yuxtaposition, but only accept that one that projects on the intertextual plane the visual and significant elements of the images. D'Amelio's look is a photographic expression of what Martínez Estrada used to call the "inexpressive void" of the plains, the "unlimitedness of the plane Earth", the extension that -though deserted- is inhabited by death. Ana Lía Gabrieloni, 2000 (from the "Carne de primera" exhibition catalogue) August 25th to September 17th, 2000 Museo Castagnino, Rosario, Argentina.

I've always had a wide concept not only in relation to the way my works are produced but also in relation to how they're supposed to be read, or analyzed. From my point of view, the division into categories (portrait, landscape, nudes, etc) is something not particularly interesting. I see it only as a way to organize interpretation. On the contrary, I tend to look more for the combination of different elements that form a dissonant and simple harmony, as if it were a big symphonic chord mixed with a screech. It gives images a certain richness and, moreover, it points the gaze towards other, further interpretations.

There are very good artists in Argentina, but they are very different from one another and any classification would turn out to be arbitrary and erroneous. There are, however, some very thin aesthetic lines that have come all the way from the XX century to us under the form of different expressions. I think that a way to establish a position is to identify a temporal sucession of artists -being, as it is, nothing but a individualization of aesthetical affinities-. Although partial, this could be formulated (almost as if it were a team) this way: Sívori, De la Cárcova, Schiaffino, Berni, Schiavoni, Musto, Gambartes, Renzi, Suárez and Benedit; I should add here others from the local Pop generation such as Deira, de la Vega and Alberto Greco. These artists have based their art on situations that were very connected to describing social and/or cultural events of their own country or personal background, trying to define a ‘local art’. This does not say anything about the quality of their works, but somehow is a guide to the context of Argentine art. I find it more difficult to name younger artists, but if we are talking about my preferences, those mentioned in my profile are the ones. Internationally, the generation of young british artists from the last decade have had a strong influence in me (artists like Hume, Hirst, Mueck, Saville, Billingham, Banksy, among others).