Press Release
Taking place across three neighborhoods of the city, 'Hopscotch (Rayuela)', curated by Cecilia Alemani,has been conceived as a journey through the city of Buenos Aires, occupying grand plazas and striking parks, abandoned buildings and museums of curiosities, derelict architectural structures and industrial relics that are not typically devoted to contemporary art. The below artists were invited to create artworks in close dialogue with each of the venues, shaping a multilayered experience that connects visual arts, urban spaces and the city’s histories in unexpected ways. The participating artists comprise of Eduardo Basualdo, Pia Camil, Maurizio Cattelan, Gabriel Chaile, Alex Da Corte, Santiago de Paoli, Narcisa Hirsch, David Horvitz, Leandro Katz, Barbara Kruger, Luciana Lamothe, Ad Minoliti, Eduardo Navarro, Alexandra Pirici,Mika Rottenberg, Mariela Scafati, Vivian Suter and Stan VanDerBeek.
The artworks of Maurizio Cattelan, Eduardo Navarro, Leandro Katz, Ad Minoliti, Stan VanDerBeek and Luciana Lamothe will be amongst the cafés, parks and shops for which the neighborhoods of Palermo and Recoleta are known for.
In Palermo Park Maurizio Cattelan presents 'Eternity' (2018), a temporary cemetery for the living, made possible by the participation of local artists, who were invited to contribute through an open call. Nearby at the Botanical Gardens, Eduardo Navarro’s 'Polenphonia' (2018)will present seven flutists wandering through the idyllic landscape improvising a symphony in response to its surroundings. Leandro Katz has created a new version of his 1978 work 'Alfabeto lunar' (2018), originally a series of photographs documenting the 27 phases of the lunar cycle, each paired with a letter of the alphabet, presented at the Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno.
At the Casa Victoria Ocampo, Ad Minoliti will install a new body of paintings and sculptures along with organizing 'Simposio sobre pintura expandida y ficción especulativa' (2018), a day-long symposium challenging a male-dominated history of culture, by hosting a critical dialogue for contemporary feminist thinkers. Visitors to the Planetarium Galileo Galilei, will discover Stan VanDerBeek’s 'Cine Dreams: Future Cinema of the Mind' (1972), an overnight event originally performed for three nights in 1972 in Rochester, New York which includes 25 simultaneous projections. While Luciana Lamothe, whose interactive installations blur the line between architecture and sculpture, will construct, 'Starting Zone'(2018), an open-air tower in the Plaza República Oriental del Uruguay. Her work references the design of tension bridges, walkways, porches, and other constructed, in-between spaces.
Downtown, the Puerto Madero and Costanera Sur neighborhoods, that have undergone large-scale regeneration in recent years, will be host to works by Santiago de Paoli, Mariela Scafati, Narcisa Hirsch, Pia Camil, Vivian Suter, Barbara Kruger, Eduardo Basualdo and David Horvitz.
The Museo de la Cáracova will host works by Santiago de Paoli, Mariela Scafati and Narcisa Hirsh. De Paoli has created a new series of paintings, 'Free Time' (2018), generating a dialogue between the works of the Museum’s collection (which includes more than 700 casts and reproductions of Egyptian, Assyrian, Greco-Roman, Gothic and Renaissance sculptures) and his own. For 'Niebla' (2018), a site-specific installation by Mariela Scafati, the artist has created a suite of paintings and arranged them into groupings that resemble the human figure; while Narcisa Hirsch will present a selection of her seminal early films from the 1960s and '70s, revealing a key historical chapter in Argentine experimental film.
At Ex Cervecería Munich, an old German brewery, Pia Camil will present 'Gaby’s T-Shirt' (2016), an interactive artwork made out of second hand T-shirts produced in different countries across Latin America, which have then been exported to the United States and later discarded and resold in flea markets in Mexico. At the same location, Vivian Suter has created a suite of new paintings which will be hung in the hall’s terrace.
On the Silos de la Antigua Junta Nacional de Granos, Barbara Kruger will create 'Untitled (No puedes vivir sin nosotras / You Can't Live Without Us)' (2018), a large-scale mural covering an abandoned grain silo in Puerto Madero. Meanwhile, Eduardo Basualdo will take over an 800-meter stretch of fishing pier on the Río de la Plata at the Asociación Argentina de Pesca, installing sculptural and performative installations inside the huts and along the pier. While David Horvitz will create 'Señalamiento del cielo (Signaling the Sky)' (2018), a series of performances that encourage public participation with the release of two hundred helium balloons. The performances will be activated on three separate occasions in front of the Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno, on the waterfront in La Boca and in front of the Ex Cervecería Munich in Costanera Sur.
The neighborhood of La Boca will play host to the work of Gabriel Chaile, Alex Da Corte, Mika Rottenberg and Alexandra Pirici.
Close to the Transbordador Bridge, the public will find a large-scale, biomorphic sculpture by Gabriel Chaile, which will double as a giant clay oven that can be used to cook and as a fireplace. The work of Alex Da Corte and Alexandra Pirici will be exhibited in the nearby Arenas Studios. Da Corte will present 'Kermit the Frog, Even'(2018) a replica of a damaged Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon, installed among the steel beams of the abandoned cathedral of industry. In the same building Pirici will present a new iteration of 'Aggregate' (2017/2018), originally produced for the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in 2017. Over a span of four hours and seven days, 60 performers drift through the space as a swarm, threading around the viewer. Finally, at the headquarters of the Volunteer Firemen in La Boca, Argentine artist Mika Rottenberg will show her video installation 'Cosmic Generator (BA variant)' (2017).