Carlota Beltrame

Works
Biography
Vision of art
Contact

Mentioned by

Mentioned

Mariana Ferrari
Pablo Guiot
Mónica Herrera
Grupo Paralelo 26
Sandro Pereira
Sebastián Rosso
Guillermo Stefani
Los Pasteles Rojos
Grupo Menos Nosotras Dos
Guillermo Rodríguez

Untitled (Versión 2005 de una pieza realiz)

Punching ball made out of rawhide leather.

INVISIBLE INSCRIPTIONS (2007)

Memories (2006)

Site Specific. White-cut plotter on a white wall, reproducing a joyful youth demonstration. It is accompanied by a sound installation that reproduce the voice of Tucumanian poet Juan José Hernández, reciting his “Versos de la provincia”. It is a speech regarding different moments within the history of Tucumán, long gone. The plotter image can be hardly distinguished, and the poet’s voice is nothing but a distant murmur.

Past Perfect (2006)

Site Specific. Translucent and colourless-cut plotter on glass, reproducing fragments of the homonym novel by Tucumanian writer Hugo Foguet. It is a speech on memory. On this installation, texts can be read depending on the impact that the sunlight has on the windows. Sometimes these would be clear, sometimes not so sharp, and sometimes invisible… but they’ll always be there.

Eight boxes placed on the floor and containing little skin balls that you can’t see. (2006)

Floor installation.

Three pieces of skin at the same height as that of the animals they have belonged to. (2006)

Wall Installation.

Five different modules ordered randomly at the same height as that of someone I love. (2005 / 2006)

Wall Installation

Diadem (2004)

Wall Installation. A garland light whose bulbs have the shape of the province of Tucumán. This piece refers to the collective memory of all Tucumanians in reference to the nocturnal landscape of the city of San Miguel as seen from the hill.

Light (2004)

Wall installation. 17 little light bulbs with the shape of the province of Tucumán.

Valores (2002)

Piecitas de randa* con el motivo del mapa de Tucumán.
* La randa es un tejido del tipo “encaje” que se realiza en el interior de Tucumán y que actualmente se halla en vías de extinción. Está considerado el único en su modalidad que se realiza en la Argentina. Su origen debe buscarse en España, pero allí ha desaparecido, conservándose únicamente en nuestra provincia.

Dos tiras de 0,40 m x 0,04 m

Volume (2002)

Installation on a big white wall. A small salt piece with the shape of the province of Tucumán. The special characteristic of this work is that, in very humid days, it oozes tiny drops of water that, little by little, corrode the work itself.

Point (2002)

Installation on a big white wall. A very small hand-woven piece, with the Randa (*) technique which has the shape of the Capital Department of the province of Tucumán.

(*) Randa is a type of lace knitting that is mainly made in some zone deep inside the province of Tucumán and that is now on the verge of extinction. It’s considered unique of its kind in Argentina. Its origin is probably Spanish, yet it has already dissapeared in Spain and can be found only in the province of Tucumán, Argentina.

Plane (2002)

Floor-tiled cement sidewalk with the map of the province of Tucumán.

Wakefulness (1997)

Little onyx military cap, with inner light. MACRO Collection

Untitled (1994)

Torsioned wire structure, covered with unshaved cowhide.

Polizeipistole (.)

Rhodochrosite gun. Scale 1:1 (Bruzzone collection).

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 think that "Plane" is a work that represents me well. It deals a sidewalk of I don't know how many floor tiles that, when put on the floor, form a perfect square. These are regular city tiles, but in the center they have a fretwork of Tucumán's outline. Somehow, such a 'local' piece, if you want, dialogues with Carl André's cinc and aluminum floor tiles and ironically talks about its discoursive neutrality and the internationalism of the minimal movement back in the 1970s, while it evokes the hot summer afternoons of my City.

2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?

Well... I tend to argue a great deal with my friends about my skepticism regarding universal discourses. I firmly believe that they are more related to the pressures that the system exerts on a contemporary provincial artist in order for him or her to match the expectations of an artist living in a capital city or a major city (the old antinomy city/outskirts) rather than to what might be referred to as "universalism” (a concept that I never fully understood). I'm not interested in the 'is-ought' problem, that I find very judgemental; I tend to believe more in the complicity between two people sharing a 'minority tongue'. That's why I always blink an eye on the Tucumanians, that is to say, I incorporate unmistakable elements of `tucumanitness' that only a Tucumanian would fully understand. On the other hand I have this obsession about memory, that thing one doesn't know whether it's constructed or remembered, forgotten or made up. That is why my most recent works deal with writers such as Juan José Hernández or Hugo Fuguet, whose texts are useful to me when it comes to raise the issues I've mentioned before. Lately, I've been giving away musical moments in Tucumanian neighbourhoods or take forgotten artists' works as if they were mine, in order to exhibit. But I'd rather leave the conceptualization of such actions (maybe transitional works) for a later time.

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've definetely taken over conceptual and minimal art. It wasn't something I planned. It just happened. I adore Bruce Nauman's works, Eva Hesse's, Lawrence Weiner’s, recent works by Félix González-Torres and Tom Friedman. Of all of them, I'm captivated by their language games, their use of objects and/or chosen materials, and the combinations among these. I'm dazzled by such a clever Wittgensteinian logic underneath each work. However, those national artist that I like the most don't generally fit within such tradition. They are completely different: Pablo Suárez, Marcelo Pombo, Sandro Pereira… All of them artist that incorporate illustration, self-ironym sarcasm, humour in a very political way... I also like Ramón Gómez Cornet and Nahuel Vecino, following the portrait tradition and the intimately physical pleasure of painting, or Alfredo Gramajo Gutiérrez and Guillermo Rodríguez, who add popular elements to their works, questioning the limits between art and craftwork. What interests me is that vague frontier that puts the work of art beyond (or closer to) what is strictly conceptual, that critical point when you suspect something different is arousing, though it's not possible yet to define it. Maybe, those Argentine female artists closer to this linguistic-conceptual logic (if such an association is possible) and whose work I like are Claudia Fontes (at least what I can remember of hers), Mariana Ferrari (what I remember of hers) and Mónica Herrera.

4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why

Ah! That´s a typical ‘portenian’ question! Like saying that no matter I`m a provincial artist, I'd mention common reference points. Despite the trap, I'll do my best. In my opinion, "90-60-90", curated by Patricia Rizzo was very important, since it confronted modernity and postmodernity (if such a cliché is possible) In relation to our art, not only from their ideological differences, but taken into consideration their formal similarities. Works like "The 60s are not the 90s" (Was that the name?) by Rosana Fuertes, clearly took that intention into consideration. It was during that exhibition that I met Squiliro and it was fascinating. I come from an Art Academy where we still practiced with plaster casts and molds, and so seeing this "new sculpture" made out of washbowls and bad assemblied plastic chandeliers was revealing. Already settled back in Tucumán, I curated, this year, an exhibition I called "Inscripciones invisibles" (Invisible Inscriptions) about local artists from the 1980s, most of them dissapeared, exiled or dead. As I was doing the research (the process took about two years), I noticed that it was really a lost generation I was dealing with, and that was why the following generations were orphans, though in this one I was able to find all the founding gestures and attitudes of those tendencies that were to be dominant later on during the 90s (performance, camp, self-referentiality). I managed to gather works from different parts of the country, I interviewed exiled artists, digged up old local memories and the exhibition turned out to be a success. A necessary exhibition, I was told. And I'm proud of having had such an intuition; I believe that Invisible Inscriptions turned out to be a valuable contribution to my community.

5. What tendencies or groupings from common elements do you see in argentine art of the last ten or fifteen years?

I'll risk myself a bit trying to come up with important moments in recent Argentine art. After the success of our concrete artists in Paris (those who would later on be persecuted by the Peronism), after the Di Tella and its scandalous rupture in the art scene back in the 60s (whose split made "Tucumán arde" possible), after the CAyC and its thirteen conceptual artists, whose influence lately arrived to the provinces -specially Córdoba-, after all that, there was then, to me, the Group of the Centro Cultural Rojas, led by Gumier Maier. He and his people introduced aesthetic considerations that were opposed to the critical realism that had dominated the Dictatorship years and whose influence was immediately felt in Rosario and Tucumán.