AGAINST THE CLOCK (Gallery text)

This exhibition is an exercise in montage. It does not aim to create a closed narrative by linking together works with similar themes, forms, or materialities. Instead, it promotes the construction of meaning through the juxtaposition of related differences. Its guiding principle is anachronism, the ability of these works to pierce the present with images from other temporalities that materialize today as ghosts, dreams, nightmares, fantasies, and prophecies. Far from the postmodern pastiche that nostalgically reassembles fragments of the past in the face of the inability to produce new forms, these works stand out for their ability to update motifs and relationships with the image. They operate as symptoms of the present collapse, expressing contemporary desires and anxieties through imaginations predating industrial development or visions of a post-human world. They appeal to the mystical charge of images, elaborate bestiaries, recover systems of historical narration predating writing, or project the material remnants of our runaway civilization.

Illuminated by one of the brief but intense fires of self-management, the exhibition emerges as a reflection on the atypical nature of a project like Intemperie, which does not adhere to the prevailing currents in the Buenos Aires art scene. Its artists do not respond to the trend that promotes intuition and self-referentiality and has faux naïf painting as its flagship form. Nor do they adhere to a more institutional trend that acts in line with the current agenda, promoting a programmatic and well-intentioned practice that favors interaction with the public through immersive installations. Within this dynamic, Intemperie stands out for an extemporaneous quality that also defines other artists of an intermediate generation, some of whom have joined this collective exhibition. Bringing them together creates space for the emergence of unexpected affinities and alternative conceptual paths, among which the possibility of questioning the present from the kaleidoscopic power of art to divert time in multiple directions stands out.

Leandro Martínez Depietri