Miguel Mitlag: visión del arte
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.
“Brown monument” is a C-print photograph. It's a work that I did back in 2003, at a moment in which I was thinking on how to develop a mental idea on a 3D dimension. First, thought as a real monument, a cynical monument, empty of all content, very acid. I added elements that I found particularly interesting or suggestive, such as, for example, a guitar, a flute or some cookies. I was interested for it to be a container space of a certain situation -in this case, some cushions that, to me, represented time suspended, inactivity. It was also the first time for me to totally build something up, obstructing any previous surface.
One of the objectives was to show that, within that apparent naturalness everything is already built and viceversa, that in such artificiality there are vices and models that may seem accidental; highlighting some special aspects. As I was saying before, I covered it all. There isn't anything within that picture that was there before. It's a complete fake. That's when I started thinking about the falsification of spaces. Some Germans objected that a monument usually has a pinnacle on its center. To me, it was interesting to turn it upside down.
First of all, it seems to me that a work of art, an oeuvre, needs to be read carefully, looking for connection points with previous works, with other artists with things outside the world of art, with philosophical ways of thinking, with science, cities and urban mythology. Without all that background, art becomes a little bit like fast food. No matter what, it's always been like that, no one comes from the jungle, looks a painting and says 'This is great'; there's always a cultural background. Second of all, it seems that in my work there's something of a tone that's very subtle, and that one can grab or otherwise it vanishes very easily. It's a thin red line. Again, I think that this aspect is present in every form of art, maybe in different degrees.
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?
Tradition is a problematic concept that doesn't attract me whatsoever. Generally, people that interests me lives and produces from reality, from what they see on the streets, from the news, from what they have in their heads today. There are many people doing quality art in Argentina, risking themselves as they can, with enormous economic difficulties, because here the art market is a joke. Generally, I'm interested in artists that I know, and therefore, can understand what their projects are and even admire them. Both myself and such people are interested in rock, electronic music, parties and books. I name a few: Valentina Liernur, Debora Pruden, Rui Krygier, Gary Pimiento, Leo Estol, Carla Bertone, Mariano Grassi, Fabian Burgos, Roberto Jacoby, Gumier Maier, Magdalena Jitrik, Eduardo Navarro, Nicanor Araoz, Galindo. Raving Mad Carlos, Fred, Rosana Schoijett, Luciana Lamothe.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
Some works by Fabián Burgos seem very interesting to me in order to think the connection between aesthetics and what's more physical or mental. It's a very deep and committed work. Víctor Grippo managed to group all of that together and connect it to a social aspect in Argentina. Marcelo Pombo: his last exhibition in Benzacar was very powerful, with humor, sensibility, very compact, perfectly resolved, a closed world, almost educational, didactic in relation to its elements (characters, situations, psychedelic abstractions). Alberto Goldenstein's photographic acurateness, RMC's shows, those nobody goes to and so vanish in the ether. Gastón Pérsico's heavy mental: a pastiche of concepts, thoughts, music, creative processes, institutional environments and an urban tribe in Buenos Aires.
