Xil Buffone

THE RAIN NEVER BORES. Curtains of green glass. Fragmented bottles. Fragment of a Visit (Fragmento de visita) at Open Studio (Estudio Abierto), November 2004. (…) I choose the glass because of its transparency. I have been drawing veins and circulatory apparatuses on top of objects (basically with those I live, I know and I break) (…). The first one that broke accidentally was a cup. It exploded. All the pieces fitted into a small CD bag. How come this whole cup fits in here! To check that there were no missing parts I remade it… and all of them were there. I noticed that, when something breaks, the pieces are immediately picked up and thrown away. You do not want to see them. I stop there: I place them on the table and I see, what shall I do with the pieces of glass? Then I stuck them together, like a puzzle. Why? Because I realised that things do not break in any way. The breakage ramifies and circulates in an irreversible logic. This is how the series of the RECONSTRUCTED OBJECTS (Objetos reconstruídos) was born. You see? Here the bottle… well!, plus the impact, plus the pathetic reconstruction: almost the same. But once I have the pieces I do not necessarily have to make the same original shape… And the following step was the UNFOLDED OBJECTS (Objetos desplegados): some objects were for the floor, others for the table, others for the wall… Bulbs, glasses, jars with puddles of glass. The shape was taken to the flat plane. THE NATURE OF THE GLASS IS TO SHINE AND TO BREAK. And after that?, to break more and more until it becomes sand again… Then I carry on breaking it. The crushed matter starts to function as crystal, as raw matter… something else. I did the series of CRUSHED OBJECTS (Objetos molidos): crushed coffee pot, lenses, salt and pepper. Other big pieces I submerged into water … …NOW I TIE THEM UP: I have unfolded a bottle vertically on a fishing line. Work: \\\a pure soul never passes around here\\\. Fishing line, glass, super glue, light. 70 modules for an installation. Work in progress 2002/2005. Presented at the CCEBA, November 2004. In this work, the first image I got was a curtain of sharp bits. A flat plane of beauty and dangerous green. Therefore, after breaking 70 bottles, washing them, cleaning them, classifying them, tying them up and sticking them, you end up relaxed for dinner … ha, ha, ha! I wash them, wrap them into paper, then into a bag, a cloth… and then you start to learn how to bite them, it depends if you want to break them a lot or if you prefer bigger pieces to remain, or more straight ones… you bite with a hammer underneath them, or at the side, or above… reinforcing or mitigating the impact… we should say that there is always a degree of chance. They are all green, but within the same trademark (green Toro Viejo ¾ wine bottle) variants of greens appear. Every line I make is one complete bottle. Later on, I have systematised them even more, and it goes in descending order from the tip to the base… because of the thickness of the glass you then get used to recognising them… the bottle is thicker at the tip and the base, and according to the curve of the small piece you know, you can reconstruct its location. With what elements do you work the glass? With the hands, 0,5 fishing line and transparent superglue. I had to develop a method to hurt myself less. At the beginning I used to have three plasters in my fingers, all the time... then I had two and finally I stopped using the plasters. It implied to organise a working method… I would tell myself: \\\”the glass does not stick into the flesh, it is the flesh that gets incrusted in the glass\\\”. If you then control your fine movements, that is to say, the pressure on the sharp glass… there is no problem. It is a material to feel calmly, with a constant breathing and a lot of concentration. This thing about glass is something you do in very small parts, like this, sitting down… (the typical thing has been to tie glass and suddenly the riiiing of the phone and then, when you come back the cutting is assured). In painting you work with your whole body, nearby, far away; this time I preferred to tie glasses and to draw with ink. It is cool to choose glasses to break them up, to go to the bazaar and to choose them for what they will look like later.

“It shone as a diamond in bad times, it was almost a nothing. We will need to look at it as a painting and to think of it as something conceptual”, the perfect observer said (Di Paola on the unfolded focus (el foco desplegado)). Attentive gaze. Distance and silence. That confronts a deaf sharpened plane. Beautiful and dangerous. They are transitory, crushed, unstable things. I like disturbing and uncertain works, uncomfortable in certain ways. Projection in time. The capacity to listen to matter, almost a detective. In the piece of glass the crash shines. The lightening and the thunder, (there was light and noise but the other way round). A spasm. Seventy bottles I broke, washed, tied up and beat in all their uncountable parts. The thing is time. Moving in continuum. To sense… the system disintegrating and reintegrating in front of our breathing. They are things in transit. It is only an observation in a chain. An unnecessary pursuit with a precise method.

Because of my education and fascination I recognise myself in a pictorial tradition that later started to derive to the intervention of objects, installations and more conceptual operations. Besides the University of Rosario, my formation was achieved throughout groups and artists´ workshops: Emilio Torti, Juan Pablo Renzi, readings of art works with Noé, Stupía, Gumier Maier, Zabala. Making a brutal synthesis: Xul Solar and Lucio Fontana are my sun and my moon. Then the Three Maries: tender Figaris, Schiavonis and the skies of Cándido López. The silences of Aizenberg, Diomede, Lacámera, Cúnsolo, Maldonado. Pasty: Berni, Quinquela, Forner. The constellation of Le Parc, Kosice, De la Vega, Noé, Kemble, the realism and humours of Renzi, of Suárez, Jacoby... Little by little I started to flow towards Greco, Masotta, Santantonín, Renart, Carreira, Heredia, Iommi, Grippo, Peralta Ramos, Klemm, Bony, Yung, Schirilo, mysterious Ahriman, Maresca. Porter, Costa, Burton, Paksa, Cambre, Kuitca, Prior, Ferrari, Gumier, Zabala ... I find the work of all of them, and of so many others, invaluable. Together with Gordín, Brodie, Macchi, Siquier, Pombo, Schvartz, Aisenberg, Tessi, Zanella, Romano, Bairon, Laren, Ostera, Cachimba, Lindner, Rothschild, Piffer... I follow them, I believe them, I like them, I wait for their next works... (I cannot name them all now)... there are many that in time are very, very good. They are all divine, thank you.

A show on abstract art in the MNBA (the National Museum of Fine Art in Buenos Aires) where I once saw a Mondrian. Soto at the MNBA (a red sphere of floating fishing lines, an op needle) Suárez in the Retiro gallery vs. The Schnitzel (La milanesa), the pearly bun - the sleeping dog, the shed. The last of the rat men’s drawings... Klee invites Xul Solar - MNBA, October of 1999. Berni, Retrospective. MNBA. 2000: Argentinean XX Century (Panoramic of 100 years) Recoleta Cultural Centre. The magazine ramona. The Venus currency (a project of Jacoby and Co.). Le Parc in MNBA. (The silver tapes, the little plastics with light, the platforms to step on). Lucio Fontana in Proa and in Cultural Centre Borges. Divine sculptures. Pasty pink with holes, red quanta, tissues, bucos... everything. National and International Pop (Pop Nacional e Internacional) - in Klemm - (Warhol chairs, Rauschemberg). de Chirico in the Borges Cultural Centre. (Ulysses in the room, the arches with their shadow, the attics). German Contemporary Design (Diseño alemán contemporáneo) - Proa (armchairs of big serving dishes and folding table). 2001: Russian Avant-Garde (Vanguardias rusas), Cultural Centre Recoleta. The whole show. All of it. Everything. Holzer in Proa (Wall of electronic texts, projections in façade). Images of the Unconscious. Psychiatrics of Brazil (Imágenes del inconsciente. Psiquiátricos do brasil) - Proa. (Arthur Bispo do Rosario. The mantle, the nailed jars... the mummified and numbered utensils). 2002: Art and Politics in the Sixties (Arte y política en los sesenta)- Palais of Glace (Palais de Glace). 2003: Light Rose Luxemburg Rose (Rosa light rosa Luxemburgo)– Malba (Buenos Aires Museum of Latin American Art) auditory. Book of Argentinean Manifestos (Manifiestos argentinos). Kuitca´s Retrospective - Malba. Hands in the Dough (Manos en la masa) (painting 80s.) Recoleta Cultural Centre. The Espigas Archive (Archivo Espigas) in the Malba. 2004: Argentinean Abstract Art. 30-40-50. (Arte abstracto argentino. 30-40-50) In Proa (Maldonado - Kosice - Lozza). Dada and Surrealism (Dadá y surrealismo) - Malba (Duchamp, Man Ray, manifestos, videos). De la Vega / Grippo RETROSPECTIVES - In Malba. BOETTI (Maps, drawings of grids, zigzag, cubes) in Proa. Ferrari´s retrospective in the Cultural Centre Recoleta (Braille photos, airplane, boxes, video of worms). 2005: Ramón Gómez de la Serna. Historical Museum J. Marc (Museo Histórico J. Marc) - Rosario. Note: almost all the exhibitions were in the Capital city. Buenos Aires. The country… well, thank you.

Read ramona.