The vigor of the tour in the sample “From heaven to home. Connections and intermittencies in Argentine culture” featured in malbasixty years after the first design sample in Argentina (CIDI, 1963) and coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the return of democracy in the country, it is the proof of an extensive counterpoint rich in dialogues. The sample can be visited until June 12 and consists of about 600 pieces including some works of art, a profusion of design and fashion objectsfrom creativity applied to resonant inventions, among some unforgettable corporate identities and advertising campaigns, and much more to discover.
Covering three large areas: the identity of the territory, the design outside the canons and the political, social and economic vicissitudes of our country, the tour is articulated with groups of various diversities, associated without chronology or hierarchies, without distinction of disciplines trying to transgressing the limits of use and blurring the boundaries between art and design. Loaded with things we once saw or usedgive an account of a temporality that highlights certain turning points in our social and institutional life, which is why the number of conversations that it triggers in the audience is unique.
Route
It is advisable to go through it slowly and in company, since the multidisciplinary curatorial team opted to offer an ethnographic look without a timeline nor absolute thematic specificities, which is why the winks proposed by Adamo Faiden, Leandro Chiappa, Gustavo Eandi, Carolina Muzi, Verónica Rossi, Juan Ruades, Martín Wolfson and Paula Zuccotti multiply. The setting in the room is configured by some partitions and dry-stacked bricks to raise bases that can support both a model 60 car and an old YPF gasoline dispenser. The blocks are an innovation made in the province of Tucumán and frame a series of thematic constellations.
Without a start suggestion “Argentum” seems to open a journey that evokes the founding unfulfilled promise of the metal that the conquerors sought down the river. Nearby, “Cuerpo” is a segment where it is interpreted from a scientific and avant-garde notion, with activities and functions. There, the figure of Gerardo Clusellas (1929-1973) stands out, an innovator considered the first ergonomist who granted design the scope of ‘things for life’.
In “Campo” the multiplicity of climates and landscapes that our territory has are developed: the fertile pampas, the Andean region, the Mesopotamian region and Antarctica itself, which is closer to us than anyone else. While in “Home” the ideas about social ascent and the promise of a comfortable life enjoying one’s own home, which protects the memories of family life, multiply. For “Advanced” some broadening of horizons that ingenuity, tenacity and craft have given our country are proposed, from the irreplaceable pen to the Drago siphon. In “Veraneo” the passion for incorporating the concept of starting the new year as a new life is associated, which includes the getaway to the spasremarkable attraction from the 50’s.
The objects
The idea of the museum was to call to think about our history in one of the most valuable anniversaries that we can hold as a people, which are the 40 years that have elapsed since the democratic recovery. For this reason it is interesting to see the collaboration between the artists Pablo Ungaro and Florencia Thompson, associated with Human Rights organizations of La Plata, who created urban markers of the people murdered or kidnapped in different parts of the city, between the years 1976 to 1983. A highlight is added to the typical tiles, a glossy white enameled square where near the highlighted photo, each surviving family chooses an accompanying text. It is recognized in the tour that ‘these signs draw a cartography of the historical tragedy on the surface of the city’.
In “Argentum” you have to linger because of the symbolic value and the curiousness of the groupings that range from a giant-scale model of a stent, an innovation developed in August 1988 by the Argentine doctor Julio Palmaz, which is used all over the planet to keep the coronary arteries open, after uncovering them; to an album by the rapper Wos released last year‘Dark Ecstasy’, with chairs made of tubes, plus a car grill and handmade metal mates.
Artifacts that have permeated childhoods such as the pistol-shaped Magiclik or the ‘Siete Mares’ short and long wave radio models that made it possible to track stations in the world that broadcast other news, a sought-after space in the midst of the Malvinas War. An unmissable highlight to Lucrecia Moyano with a photo from 1934, where she is seen in full action maneuvering with asbestos gloves in front of the master glassmakers at the Rigolleau Factory, where she worked for 30 years as artistic director.
It is worth noting that Lucrecia exhibited at the MET in NY in 1959 and was internationally awarded for her craft in glass molding. The searches of Bonet, Juan Kurchan and Ferrari Hardoy to think about the BKF chair in the plans and its communication in specialized magazines. The Charcot Chair (2022) by Vicente Grondona made with stainless steel tubes and a body made of white quebracho charcoalwhich is associated with Antarctica, a continent with a mineral subsoil covered by ice and snow most of the time, along with state-of-the-art clothing made in the country with which you can withstand the climate.
The graphic design of the 60s was associated with the Di Tella Institute and its Graphic Design Department, created in 1963, to give visual identity to institutional communications and design the graphic pieces that served to disseminate the activities of the other centers. Juan Carlos Distéfano – plastic artist and graphic designer – was in charge of this Department incorporating swiss design ideas and the advertising of the New York School and it was the first Argentine space in which graphic design was developed professionally and from which names such as Rubén Fontana, Juan Andralis, Norberto Coppola, Carlos Soler and Juan Carlos Indart emerged.
The Octopus ball was an idea developed by Pirelli technician Gerildo Lanfranconi, a specialist in molds and dies who was looking for a cheap alternative to a recreational ball that was not made of leather, but was resistant. Originally they were a single color, later the characteristic white bands were added. The artist Daniel Joglar worked his magic with a number of them in different sizes that he placed as mobiles in the corner of the second floor, a space full of transparencies where external light makes it look like a dynamic pattern.
by Pilar Altilio
Image gallery
