Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires,
Jun 25, 2004 - Sep 06, 2004
Buenos Aires , Argentina
Víctor Grippo (1936-2002
by Viviana Usubiaga
His series of boxes from Equilibrios and Cercando la luz introduce a silent whiteness which is increasingly austere and impersonal until his Anónimos (1998-2001) is reached, a series of figures in glazed plaster, anthropomorphous in some ways and phallic in others, grouped in uneven numbers under glass domes. "We look absorbed at our landscape/populated by beings almost without form/intrepid presences with no soul,/sustained neither by roots or earth/clones of nothingness itself (...) the angels unaware will pass-by without seeing them nor will they feel their passing" . A fragment of a beautiful and seldom skeptical poem by Grippo which accompanies these uniformed, classified pieces which dilute appearances between the subject and the object in the present era of dramatic inhumanismo.
The bilingual catalogue specially produced for the exhibition includes an exhaustive biographical chronology, an anthology of the artist’s writings which, among other things, brings together manuscript texts from his personal files, together with others by national and international artists produced for the occasion (Ana Longoni and Adriana Lauría, Argentine researchers of the history of art; Lilian Llanes, Cuban art historian and former director of the Havana Biennial; Guy Brett, a curator who lives and works in London; Angeline Scherf, contemporary art curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de París; and Justo Pastor Mellado, Chilean critic and curator). This edition uncovers the different perspectives and points of view on Grippo’s production, while at the same time exposing the conflicts involved in constructing historiographic discourse and the theoretical meaning of his work, and of art called "Latin American". In this context, Grippo’s production has been linked to dynamics of 'international’ art such as Arte Povera, Fluxus and the Nuevo Realismo. In his essay, J.P. Mellado unseats this concept which he defines as a "dependent analogy syndrome" speculated on by Anglo Saxon critics, international curators and fed also by the "lack of self-esteem of local historiographers". In his corrosive reconstruction of these narratives - perhaps arguably linked to other South American artists - he formally denounces that "the work of Victor Grippo was belatedly recognized as a singular reference which should be received as a curious case of progress. That is what the initial operation consists of: to recognize the delay of anticipation. This is followed by the next operation: to convert it into a subtle hero of the condition of delayed recognition. But always, as an illustration of the good will to make amends."
As the curator of the exhibition stated, "the itineraries of an exhibition always have a sundry of frictions" and it is good that this is so and is manifested in their work. In this case they are precisely in consonance with the multiple meanings within Grippo’s work, meanings that are far from calming the soul.
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