Mariano Brizzola

The first, "En attendant Godot" [TN: originally in French] in the eponymous series. The model was Leah, a very special person to me. We made a series of photos downtown in mid-2007, a few weeks before she returned to her country. It was an afternoon with a strange sense of farewell, but also of eternity. Gray day, a bit cold, we walked a lot. I was carrying a 36-photos roll, the camera and nothing else. The result is the memory, the recall, something small, something quiet but disturbing. In the photo one starts to discover that there is something implicitly and we realize that it’s us. I do not know what to say in addition, I think this image has the strange ability to say everything without saying anything.

From right to left and from the bottom up, through the golden sections, without moving your head, just with the eyes. I recommend also to zoom in and out to appreciate the textures, not the "texture" of representation in photography, but the real and palpable textures of varnish on the very photographic paper. Two more suggestions: Come close, because they are small compared to the gigantic photos in advertising or in the National Hall. Miss, do not put the glasses on. Do not be afraid, you don’t have astigmatism or myopia, the photos are like this.

I think I have a noticeable influence of painting, I'm sorry, I do not think I will earn the affection of many photographers with this, but it is so. I recognize myself in many traditions, unlike some artists who deny this because of their insecurity and to reaffirm their "originality" with the vulgar and famously expression "I do not like labels". Anyway, it is not bad, it's a way of conceiving things. I think I didn’t invent anything new, it is visible, I lift up a stone and I see that there are people doing things similar to mine, and some made them more than a century ago. I do not care, at least it is not what the majority makes, that gives me an empty feeling of peace and nevertheless I think I find a new vision and try to see what is not visible; it is very beautiful but also very pretentious to display a reflection of time and the mystery of things through the drawings of light developed in a digital or printed media. I like of certain painters of the Renaissance, Impressionism, Post Impressionism, Futurism, Fauvism, Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Neo Expressionism, Bad Painting, Transvanguards, Pop & Minimal Art, and so on, as well as the new national figures and some classics of these "isms" in Latin America. In Photography I wander through everywhere, from family albums and forensic files to wonderful satellite or purely amateur photos. Daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, handmade emulsions, Stenotype and many experiments ranging from physical and chemical processes to those that take up digital resources, though the latter not so much yet. I forgot to mention the architecture: I have a great romance with Art Déco.

I’ll appoint some more or less recent exhibitions. Yuyo Noé at the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires. A retrospective of hundreds of square meters of work. Ernesto Deira with his huge drawings in the National Museum of Fine Arts. Also at the same Museum, The First Moderns [Los primeros modernos], with Giudici, Sívori, Schiaffino, De la Cárcova, etc. Excellent, the great ones. It would surely have made more impression if I had mentioned an exhibition by a cult artist in some exotic place, or something with multimedia technology, dressed up with conceptualism, but I didn’t. It’s all right anyway, ha, ha!

To some extent the decadence and mediocrity are the vanguards of the past 30 years. The top creators are now some gallery owners, critics, curators, collectors and juries. Some of them at a given time have created the "artists", they have invented them overnight and rested the seventh day, this is great... "They created the Creator," sublime. Beyond the irony, very good and positive things have happened in all these areas, whether they be gallery owners, curators, collectors, and so on. They have helped to continue to turn the wheel as well. Unfortunately the level of Argentinian art is not in a great moment, but I hope that we are aware of the attempt to raise it again. There are many people with talent in this country. We will see that the passage of this decade to the next is going to settle all this and, quoting Francis Bacon –the painter, not his namesake Philosopher. I mean, I'm a hopeless optimist, that's also what I feel about the Great Argentinian Art, cheers.