Central AFFAIR: a move that energizes the art market

In the midst of one of the most complex periods in Argentine history and the changes imposed by the global scene, a paradox is evident: a immense energy sustains artists. Malba Puertos inaugurated its immense headquarters in Escobar, 45 kilometers from the Buenos Aires museum with 1,000 special guests. But no one expected the more than 1,600 visitors it has received every weekend since then.

Days ago, hundreds of guests, mostly artists, arrived at the Larreta Galleries. Strategically located on Florida Street, in front of Plaza San Martín and around the corner from the renovated Federico Klemm Foundationwas closed like a tomb for years. But it reopened its doors populated by contemporary art spaces.

The dazzling building built in 1957 by Aslan and Ezcurra It was a mandatory topic of conversation. It was enough to see the beauty of the modernist lines, the marbles, the bronzes and, above all, the formidable abstract mural of Luis Seoane Also made in marble, to understand the greatness of another era. However, the art movement is foreign to the melancholic spirit and is called AFFAIR Central. There are the galleries with their boutique spaces, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, all ready to wage a battle to activate the ailing art market.

The diversity of the exhibitions is representative of the variety of trends that cross the production of Argentine art. AFFAIR It came up a few months ago an alternative and parallel project to ArteBA. Since then, “encouraged by the possibility of working in a new, collaborative and generous way”, the galleries, in addition to managing their own agenda, share joint activities. This enhances the presence and circulation of the public.

Of course, for the galleries in the interior, the cost of landing in the heart of Buenos Aires is made easier by sharing the effort with their peers. In this way, in the Larreta Galleries the Buenos Aires public can meet and establish dialogue with gallery owners and artists from the provinces.

Store arrived from San Nicolás, province of Buenos Aires, just like Time from San Isidro, also from Buenos Aires. From Rosario, they arrived Raw and Contemporary Gabelichwhile sasha and Land They arrived from the City of Córdoba. The porteños are the majority with the advance of Casa Equis which has a branch in Mexico City; then there are Acephalusan old acquaintance from the Barrio Joven, AntnA (Sound project), FAN, TokonOMa, Wunsch and URRA-HIP HiP.

In this last gallery a selection of paintings by Santiago Iturralde (1975), an artist belonging to the generation before the one seduced by the omnipresent networks, speaks a lingua franca. The last sample of Iturralde It featured images, almost exclusively, the story of his first trip to the museums of Europe and what that experience meant in his life.

Upon returning, he presented the exhibition at the Modern Museum “Naked painting”. An extremely landscape painting, it reproduced a typical room of a nineteenth-century museum that resembled the assembly model of its own exhibition. There was the brilliant exhibition that few were able to see when the Coronavirus pandemic arrived.

At the bustling inauguration that episode was remembered. The curator of the exhibition and gallerist, Melina Berkenwldtells in the presentation text the story of the small landscapes that the artist painted during the confinement.

“Santiago Iturralde’s paintings deepen and expand the reality that surrounds us, be it the intimacy of a room, the climate of a workshop or the ontological variables of the world of painting. They also relive sunrises in small paintings painted using the photos (secretly) that a close friend uploaded to the networks from the river bank every day. Instantaneous captures thus connected the artist with the awakening of the day, with the gaze of the other, with the changing outside of those months of confinement. Windows of horizons that expand, that grow in their details, that offer us mysterious, existential and intimate realities.”.

In a larger space and with greater display, the painter Guadalupe Fernandez introduces herself. The paintings show off their freshness and spontaneity, they reproduce nature without the heavy burden of environmental messages.

The criticism Eva Grinstein describes the sample and points out: “Guadalupe matches, democratizes access. Look at Nature and decide that anything goes. When choosing what to paint, the counterpart is the spontaneous street plant, the majestic grove and the rare flower with obvious magical powers. They all have a chance to arrive and they all arrive. An old eucalyptus is not worth more than the kalanchoe multiplied into a thousand offspring that fall and plant themselves anywhere. Where the eye is enthralled, a painting is born.” It’s that simple. There are artists like the brilliant filmmaker Orson Wells who feel that their thing is to make, without thinking too much about it.