He MAR Museum in Mar del Plata is an unavoidable season on the summer cultural agenda because, although it is open all year round, it is during the holiday season when it receives the most visits. A circumstance that the institution takes advantage of to inaugurate its best exhibitions at this time, most of them dedicated to Argentine artists.
Eduardo Basualdo, one of the most outstanding creators of our countrywill be the main attraction this season with an exhibition called “What Part of Whom.” It is a “site specific” exhibition where all the objects and events in a room participate in a concept that strongly involves the public that visits it.
Besides, The museum is (as in other years) the headquarters of BIENALSUR, the global exhibition carried out by the University of Tres de Febreroin 76 cities in 34 countries around the world. An exhibition titled “Fragmenting obsolescence. Silent Spring” is part of this great event and can also be seen in the rooms of the MAR.
Finally, it is displayed a retrospective of the German artist Guillermo Düvelmeyerwho died in 1957 in Tres Arroyos. The exhibition is made up of a large body of paintings rescued by curator Gabriela Francone.
light and shadow
It is impossible to approach the work of Eduardo Basualdo without being affected by the questions his work raises: one’s place in the world and the nature of the things that art expresses. Basualdo “addresses the category of the sublime in a dark key where the viewer is captive of an imposing image while waiting for an outcome that never arrives. Danger and curiosity debate in contradiction,” explains the text that describes it in Ruth Benzacar, the gallery that represents him, to point out the shock that his works provoke. That shock is present in “What part of who”, with its device that alternates lights and shadows, with the absolute darkness that its composition summons linked to philosophical concepts such as emptiness and the limit.
The work is displayed in a large room where the only light source is in the center and is hidden at intervals by a large black metal bell. The game that this mechanic provokes is that of the interruption of light or darkness. A drawing that occupies the entire surface on a nearby wall is a necessary counterpoint to this coming and going of lighting. The large image was created from folds that combine the natural white of the material with the black that is applied to the folded surface.
“If in previous projects Basualdo’s work proposed an introspective look into the body, in this exhibition attention is once again directed outwards, to the environment in which the bodies move. However, that look now appears bumpy: it is interrupted in its continuity as if the space was folded and unfolded between lights and shadows,” the curatorial text proposes.
In recent years, Basualdo has worked on large exhibitions such as “Pupil” at the Museum of Modern Artwhich brought together the main lines of work of his work. This experience was later turned into “Escape Essay”, a book that brought together reflections and images and represented a fusion of all facets of his art. Around the same time, he worked on “Obra del Demonio,” a collaboration with choreographer Diana Szeinblum. This year, Ruth Benzacar presented “In Medias Res”, her latest exhibition; which included drawings, sculptures and a site-specific installation.
The Hirshhorn Museum in the United States, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal and the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires, among other institutions, have works by Basualdo in their collections. The artist has also participated in the Venice (2015), Gwangju (2014), Lyon (2011) and Mercosur (2009) biennials.
Kilometer 383
This is the spatial coordinate of the MAR Museum on the BIENALSUR world mapthe great art event that covers countless cities on various continents, and in each venue tells a story linked to the main problems and interests of this time: environment, memory, migrations, human rights, Artificial Intelligence and possible futures, among others.
In Mar del Plata, the exhibition opened in July, but will continue to be exhibited until February 2026. The title is “Fragmenting obsolescence. Silent spring” and is made up of mostly Argentine artists: Jesu Antuña, Max de Esteban (Spain), Mariana De Matteis, Fernando do Campo, Iván González, Sandra Guascone, André Komatsu, Florencia Levy, Juan Reos and Márcio Vilela (Brazil).
The exhibition takes as inspiration the book “Silent spring” where the scientist Rachel Carson, in 1962, warned about the impact of pesticides on nature. One of his predictions was the disappearance of birds. The artists that make up the exhibition started from this image of a world with empty skies to think about all the obsolescence that we cause, from abandoned technologies to irreversibly damaged ecosystems.
“The works not only evoke the figure of birds, but also make the lost song an access route to questions: is there a relationship between extinction and obsolescence? From the ecological ruins of the present, what technologies are left behind with the disappearance of certain forms of life?” defines the curator Clarisa Appendino.
a rescue
Although William Düvelmeyer was born in Herringhausen, Germany, in 1893.; He developed all his work in Argentina where he died, in the city of Tres Arroyos, in 1957. The curious thing about his life is that he trained in Berlin and Hannover and even participated in group exhibitions with artists of the stature of Vasili Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Marc Chagall and Kurt Schwittersuntil he emigrated to the south to create his paintings.
To make a living, he painted walls and was also part of the pigeon fancier society of Tres Ríos because he loved birds. At the same time he produced abstract and colorful work, in which echoes of other artists of the time can be perceived.
Gabriela Francone, curator of the exhibition at the MAR Museum, says that she learned about his production because she found three of his paintings in the storage room of the Tres Arroyos Museum of Fine Arts. Six years later he had collected 70 works by Düvelmeyer. Now he is making a documentary about his life.
The exhibition is called “In der Pampa” which is equivalent to saying, according to the curator, “in the middle of nowhere.” “Without heirs, without a tomb in the Danish cemetery and due to lack of payment at the ossuary, the brief but surprising artistic career of Guillermo Düvelmeyer was erased in the Pampa,” Francone concludes. Now, rediscovered, it can be seen in its entirety in Mar del Plata.
With free admission, from Tuesday to Sunday, the three exhibitions will be exhibited throughout the summer at the MAR Museum.
Image gallery
