Contemporary 3 also comes with surprises. Jorge Gumier Maier, the curator, reunites two of the young emerging Argentine artists, who produce different reactions among the visitors. The artists are unlike, too. Personally, Gumier Maier describes Nahuel Vecino as much more talkative, slim and pale. In contrast, Sandro Pereira doesn’t talk too much, he’s fat and dark-skinned. Vecino paints fragmented people, destroyed by the ambience, or the war, or some distant reason that, although strange to us, seems somewhat familiar. His romantic style turns reddish like blood and it collapses against the other side of the exhibit.

Nahuel Vecino

As a matter of fact, Pereira chose two resin sculptures: a just married groom and a giant duck that works as a lifeguard. The dimensions of these characters make the museum look smaller, and the people and the meaning of everything seem small too. A lonely TV shows the adventures of the giant duck inside a lake at a park in the city of San Miguel de Tucuman. The funniest part is, surely, the line of real little ducks that follow the fake one, disoriented or maybe happy just to have a radiant and yellow partner to follow.

Sandro Pereira, Salvavidas, 2001

By chance, I hear the comments of an old man who tells his wife “Have you seen the little duck? How nice, eh!” While the man walks away as fast as he can, I can still recall the fear in his voice. In the TV, the ducky is still swimming. He lets himself be carried away by the flow. Everyone expects something else. But they know that the best has already passed. I wonder what contemporary people want from us. I know the answers are at the end of the labyrinth.

Maybe a rebirth of coexistence. Coexistence among a duck who saves and a man who dies. Coexistence of a charming Japanese girl with velvet hair and a warning sign about the next step to follow. Coexistence of a groom who’s soaked with rice and a pair of sad eyes asking for a way out. A moldy tank that some people can’t look at and a TV where many of them get caught by their own image, relieved to see it again, just before drinking the champagne they were looking for.

The answer might just be an open question. And the possibility of public appreciation of a group of artists that may simply want to keep asking.

Contemporary and Modern
Date: November 21st, 2002 – April 7th, 2003
Place: Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires
Address: 3415 Avda. Figueroa Alcorta, Buenos Aires
Tel: +54 11 4808 6500
info@malba.org.ar
https://www.malba.org.ar