Bright new edition of the Meet The Artists exhibition

Carminne Dodero and Dario Campidoglio presented the new edition of Meet The Artists. This time with works by the artists Vicente Grondona, Nahuel Vecino, Juan Becu and Seba Baez arranged on the upper floor of the brand new GMC Valores building, in the WO Leaf Building corporate complex bordering Villa 31.

Vicente Grondona’s paintings (1977) gained momentum at the beginning of this new century. His very lively style distinguished him. His paintings made with chlorine, inks and pigments, boast novel qualities, in a field where novelty no longer exists.

The luminous halos generated by chlorine and aniline create a powerfully magical image. The expanding waves of colour provoke a psychedelic dizziness, and it goes without saying that the viewer must let himself be carried away by these sensations to enter the painting. In the current paintings, the tides of colour break with the static condition of painting, a peculiarity that comes from the past. In the works from almost a decade ago, Grondona’s hallucinatory visions, his nocturnal scenes of the forests, were inspired by the stories of his hippie relatives. Flower power had its effect: it set the imagination in motion.

When the use of new technological supports predominated in international circuits, in addition to cold conceptual rigor, Grondona He chose to assert himself in aesthetics through craft and solid manual labor. The 2001 crisis in Argentina made digital media inaccessible for years, and even more so, the fabulous installations that flooded an alien world, the one where Damien Hirst He immersed a shark almost five metres long in formaldehyde.

When our country’s economy began to grow, in 2006 the career of Grondona She took a leap. Her studio was in the most sleazy neighborhood of La Boca, but she had already found a comfortable place in Belleza y Felicidad. And Fernanda Laguna presented her paintings at the Malba. “Everything has to do with everything”was the best exhibition of the Contemporary Space. The great approach of Laguna was joined by the talent of the artists and the powerful work of Grondona which, with its return to nature, fascinated nostalgic spectators, eager for emotions.

Today, the agitated and somewhat exasperated lines, born of delirium, pulsate in the series of “nervous” landscapes and recall those of Van GoghHis views, as the artist says, “revolve around a rusty nut called Impressionism.”

Grondona He evokes without prejudice and with the force of an intuitive a movement so successful that it exhausted itself. There were so many followers of this school that no artist who considers himself contemporary would dare to look for elements of Impressionism in that box of surprises that is the history of art, or at least not with the ease with which one explores the Baroque or Surrealism.

The charm of today’s landscapes comes from this journey into the Impressionist past. There is a dramatic contrast between the rapid impulse and energy that the artist expends in painting the leaves of the trees and the dreamlike vision that opens up in the centre of the work like a mirage. And the contrast is reiterated: the artist depicts the forest as it is seen, but there is also that forest that we do not see: the intimate landscape of its inner reality.

Nahuel Vecino (1977) He is a painter whose work stands out for the very special identity of his characters. Perhaps during his stay in the city of Rosario he came to know the works of Raúl Díaz, “the painter of the islands”, whose immense murals are found in the River Station. Vecino’s paintings are related to those of Raul Diazthe characters of both belong to the same family, they have the marked features of the natives.

“Nahuel’s work is a work of reflection, of questioning, where one can stand in front of his faces and ask oneself: What happened to this character? What are some of his decapitated heads looking at? Or his soldiers? They are humans, objects or landscapes of innocent appearance, although some are in a context of violence.“, they question in the text that presents the exhibition.

For its part, the exalted paintings of Juan Becu (1980) are notable for the reminiscences of romanticism. There are some images that tend to become abstract, such as the pink winged angel that seems to emerge from a fountain. Then, birds are a recurring theme and occupy a privileged place. From a very early age, Becú maintained the agility and rhythm of his brushstrokes that, today, have gained remarkable expressiveness.

The missionary Seba Baez (1977) arrived in Buenos Aires as a genuine precursor of the marvelous, from Candelariahis village, located on the banks of the Paraná. The charm of the red earth survives in his works and reveals its beauty in the ceramics that represent the vegetation and flowers of the jungle. “Ceramics are reminiscent of childhood, when you made pieces of ñaú clay (Missionary clay). I reinvent the jungle, colorful, exuberant and at the same time dark.”observes.

Seba Baez manages to surprise with the delicate qualities of her embroidery. Right there, on some handkerchiefs, the poetic phrases reveal an intense sensitivity. “What if tears were flowers?””The artist himself explains his art: “I use old textile materials that were generally made by other hands, that were loved by other hands. There are some with well-known stories, and others that I invent. I work with household materials, embroidered trousseaus, napkins, tablecloths and old ñanduti. I print woodcuts or etching and then I intervene with my own embroidery and ñanduti. I am interested in the circularity of the materials and the record left by time.”.

With editions already held at the Pons Foundation in Madrid, the Cervantes Center in Paris and the SG Art Gallery at the St. George Lycabettus Hotel in Athens, Dodero and Campidoglio They aspire to position their artists on a global scale.