Manuel Chacon shows five Argentinean painters
By Gail Lusby, Sept 1, 2006

Friday, September 1, 6pm Galería Manuel Chacon, Fábrica La Aurora, Calzada de la Aurora

Galería Manuel Chacon will show for the first time five Argentinean painters in one of the largest exhibits ever in Mexico of emerging painters from Argentina.

A year ago, I wrote an article in Atención San Miguel on the vibrant art scene in Argentina and more specifically on the fact that a new generation of artists was vigorously carrying the torch of the great tradition of Argentinean painting. The fact that Argentinean art is so little known abroad is a mystery, given its quality.

The show at Galería Manuel Chacon is exceptional because the artists shown are not only from Buenos Aires but also from the great city of Córdoba, the birthplace of some of the best painters in Latin America, such as Antonio Segui and Carlos Alonso. Córdoba has had a long tradition of painting, and the three young artists in this exhibit show that this tradition is as lively as ever.

The eight works of José Benito take us gingerly into a perplexing world where we lose our bearings, where the uncertainties of our inner child resurface.

The slight feeling of anxiety is strangely pleasant and reminiscent of a feeling from childhood—the disconcerting feeling that comes from leafing through books full of pictures of dark forests populated by twisted trees and uncertain beings. And yet Benito manages to convey all that with highly legible canvases and well-delineated figures. His paintings are simultaneously representational, whimsical and, to use a fashionable word, conceptual.

Fabio Egea, also from Córdoba, could not be more different: His work is abstract and yet not abstract, and he explores space with elegance and a subtle certainty. Whether he paints a simple light over a table or a landscape, the viewer is given enough elements to know what the artist means. Yet the sheer sparseness of his work is an open-ended invitation to dream.

His work has a remarkably soothing quality, a poetic gentleness, a tranquility we forgot existed. Egea’s paintings illustrate with a gentle authority that elegance is the delicate art of the understatement.

The last artist from Córdoba, Alicia Lavaselli, follows a theme of her own: the Guardians. Her strange creatures hang (in an existential void?) together or alone and remind us of the precariousness and jocular absurdity of the human condition.

And yet there is nothing sinister about her work; on the contrary, there is a mischievous humor that emanates from it. Literally and figuratively we are reminded that there is not much else do to in life but hang in there to the best of our ability, alone or in company. The blue painting shown in this exhibit is the best–known of her “Guardian” series and graced the cover of the Spanish cultural monthly Lateral.

From Buenos Aires three large paintings from Fernando Goin illustrate the artist’s investigation into anamorphosis. Though the use of this process by artists is by no means new, Goin manages to give it a stunning immediacy and a very contemporary feel. His use of the unpainted canvases in two of the paintings is quite striking insofar as it gives the painting a feeling of inner space. Though the bodies of the models are by definition deformed, the easy draftsmanship of the artist is palpable.

Four canvases by Alberto Bali are also included in the show. The most senior painter in the show, he currently lives in Paris but is originally from Buenos Aires. The artist’s training as an architect is very obvious is the works. Geometric and monumental, the dreamlike structures painted by Bali inhabit space with an air of quiet authority. The burnished glow that illuminates them seems to emanate from an agonizing sun. The shadows become part of the form, and the form creates the light.

Gail Lusby was a dealer of modern art in Paris and New York City until she came back to San Miguel in January 2002. Since then, she has been a collector of emerging Latin American artists, as well as the curator of several South American collections.