Online Guide — HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark

*Autobus 27 (Nicolás García Uriburu)*, 2024
Textile collage from the installation *Ofrenda*
Courtesy Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires
Photo: Guido Limardo

For this installation, Eceiza delved into an investigation of the Museo Moderno’s collection, focusing mainly on its paintings. She then reinterpreted these works in new pieces, using delicately interwoven textiles in resplendent collaged forms to showcase her own reading of Argentinian modern art history. She selected her favorite works and refashioned them into fan art posters, to share the artists and works she cherishes with the world. The entrance to the installation is a yellow sun-lit room that presents her own versions of renowned and lesser known images of modern art from Argentinian artists such as Alberto Heredia, Juan del Prete, Yente and Nicolás García Uriburu, to name but a few, whose influence has endured due to their oppositional politics and independent artistic productions. Sewn into the fabric-covered walls of the lower level of the museum space, the textile collages invoke Tarjeta de felicitación by Pompeyo Audivert, Sol, luna y sol by Melé Bruniard, Composición by Yente, Juana by Germaine Derbecq, Astromutación by Raquel Forner, La familia by Noemí Gerstein, Chito y Peca by Juan Grela, Casa o escultura by Alberto Heredia, Pint 934 Limoesjos by Lido Iacopetti, Línea Continua by Enio Iommi, Sin Título by Alfredo Londaibere, Energía apagada by Aldo Paparella, Cabeza de señora by Juan del Prete, and Autobus 27 by Nicolás García Uriburu. Inspired by these artists, by New Age, and by the tie-dye technique, Celina Eceiza freely adopts concepts and forms, thereby expanding not only the conventional notion of art but also that of the museum space itself. Eceiza quite deliberately appropriates the practices of these artists, especially when seeking to better understand their approach. At the same time, she anticipates that other artists may find inspiration in her work, adopt it, and make use of it. For her, it is important that the artist be seen less as a solitary genius and more as someone who works within a network and a context, and that art always be understood in relation to social movements — something particularly relevant in Argentina. She also regards art as a tool capable of being engaged in investigating, representing, and healing experiences of violence, and as a medium of care, attention, and protection.

The artistic positions mentioned earlier are particularly relevant because, in art-historical terms, Celina Eceiza’s practices can be contextualized within this conceptual framework. For Eceiza, the goal is to constitute the Kunsthalle, the museum, in short — the institution — as a space of experience. The artist’s approach draws on popular practices in Argentina and abroad since the 1960s, when art spaces began expanding robustly into social contexts. Early Argentinian environments such as Marta Minujín and Rubén Santantonín’s La Menesunda (1965) come to mind as a seminal work that pushed the boundaries of art to create something that can be experienced with all the senses. Minujín is also known for a completely different public work: the Parthenon of Books, which she inaugurated in Buenos Aires on December 19, 1983, after the return to democracy, and later recreated in 2017 for documenta 14 in Kassel. This work was realized with the active participation of members of the public, who contributed books that had been banned during the military dictatorship, making it a democratic project that directly involved civil society.

Although Eceiza’s selection is nonlinear and her interests include artists from very different generations, there is a common thread in terms of their engagement with the artistic – and often the political – counterculture. Eceiza also chose some works that might seem “minor,” as they are not necessarily the artists’ most renowned pieces. For instance, the Spanish-born Argentine artist Pompeyo Audivert (1900 – 1973) is best known for his copper engravings and his activities as a left-wing activist, yet Eceiza chose a postcard from the Museo Moderno’s collection. Germaine Derbecq (1899 – 1973) was a key figure in the development of the Neo-Avant-Garde of the 1960s, known for her expressionist paintings and later for her abstract-geometric style. Juan del Prete (1897 – 1987), a self-taught painter, photographer, draftsman, and sculptor, was a central figure in Argentine modern art. However, he never signed a manifesto and therefore belonged to no formal group. He was also the teacher — and later partner — of Eugenia Crenovich (1905 – 1990), better known as Yente, one of the first practicing female abstract painters and sculptors. While much of her work displays an abstract-geometric language, she too never joined a group. She also produced numerous collages, drawings, assemblages, and textiles, and remains a major source of inspiration for Eceiza, particularly as Yente had an ability to soften her geometry.

Juan Grela (1914 – 1990) and Melé Bruniard (1930 – 2020) are also essential to Eceiza. Grela’s almost surrealist paintings, combined with abstract-geometric and figurative forms, established him as a leading figure in Argentine art. He co-founded the Litoral Group in Rosario, Argentina’s third-largest city, and Melé Bruniard – his student and later partnerbecame one of Argentina’s most important artists in engraving and woodcut.

Ofrenda also features the Argentine sculptor and illustrator Noemí Gerstein (1910 – 1996). Gerstein is particularly noted for her abstract sculptures and her flat metal compositions, often resembling canvases. Enio Iommi (1926 – 2013) is likewise emblematic of Argentine sculpture. Early in his career, he created delicate sculptures composed solely of fine metal lines and curves; but from the 1990s onward, he produced monumental works incorporating found objects, such as toy cars. He was one of the founders of the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención, breaking with the academic paradigms of the time.

Nicolás García Uriburu (1937 – 2016) was an artist, landscape architect, and ecologist. His Land Art sought to raise awareness of pollution. During the 1968 Venice Biennale – even though he was not an official participant – he dyed the water of the Grand Canal with a non-toxic fluorescent green to draw attention to water pollution. However, Eceiza selected one of his early pop and hippie paintings from 1966, showing a typical Buenos Aires bus with its decoration, a style known as the fileteado porteño.

The Argentine painter Lido Iacopetti (1936 – 2024), with his colorful, abstract worlds resembling dreamscapes, is also indispensable to Eceiza’s visual universe and appears to strongly influence her spatial constructions. Alfredo Londaibere (1955 – 2017), one of the most important artists of the 1990s and an LGBTQ activist during the AIDS crisis, is also honored by Eceiza. His colorful paintings and collages reused items such as soda cans, while his precise drawings took on darker, surrealist tones. His paintings, in their vivid coloration, at times appear to form a foundation for Eceiza’s soft museum.

Ofrenda’s red room proposes something entirely different. It is filled with numerous gigantic chalk drawings on canvas and hand-dyed fabrics and carpets. The compositions are highly symbolic, depicting different beings and bodies undergoing transformations. Eceiza weaves these bodies into her large-scale work as a single body, which then incorporates the bodies of the visitors themselves, thus creating a small universe imbued with a touch of humor in its vitality and a sense of comfort — qualities that are often lacking both in the outside world and within institutions themselves. In this space, this painterly “skin” with its metaphorical wrinkles and folds feels organic; it is resilient and yet delicate. It is this fragility that lies at the crux of Eceiza’s work. She constructs a soft museum in which seeing is no longer the only or most important sense to be engaged. Vision may remain the basis of knowledge, but Eceiza brings touch and the haptic experience to the foreground. In these works of art that one can walk into and be completely enveloped, the artist refers to esoteric and spiritual ideas of an expanded universe that integrates energies, combining the physical and material with the immaterial and even transcendent forms of life, while also creating a museum space with lower thresholds of access.

The accessibility of Eceiza’s work — her unpretentious way of drawing upon various artistic positions and integrating them into her own work — both revisits Argentine art history and deliberately opposes the academicism that often renders art remote and inaccessible. Also worth mentioning here is Aldo Paparella (1920 – 1977), another Argentine artist of particular interest to Eceiza for his use of overlooked, nontraditional materials. A representative of Informalism, he created abstract sculptures from stone, wood, iron, and aluminum, working directly with the materials, particularly through engraving. There is also Alberto Heredia (1924 – 2000) — one of Argentina’s most signifi cant sculptors and a member of the Informalism movement — who, early on, collected everyday objects to make his sculptures. In doing so, he critically engaged with capitalism and consumer culture, while also exposing the censorship and narratives of Argentina’s military dictatorship. Informalism is also crucial for Eceiza, as suggested at the outset: textiles are everyday materials — often cheap, but also capable of being noble. It is precisely this everyday character and ambivalence that Eceiza seeks to capture in her overall body of work.

Solar Hall, 2024

Dyed fabric on wall

15 pieces, each 302 × 160 cm

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Astromutación (Raquel Forner)