Pablo Lehmann

It is a little difficult for me to choose THE work to represent me, but I can describe "Quaestio 1" to at least get closer to what I mean. All these previous years I have worked on pieces which are constitute by texts, made of paper and plastic draft. In both cases I previously design the general concept. In the paper technique I first write the text and then cut out the words at its edges. As for the plastic, I use letters that melt so that they are blasted and then put together a structure where the hit eventually forms a text. "Quaestio 1" is made of paper, and my idea was to present a question mark consisting entirely of text. The figure of this sign is materialized by words, which have been deployed at the edges, so that in the interstices of the letters is the emptiness of what has been cut. With its curved and a bit messy lines, the text suggests the shape of a question mark and surrounds - in the space within the sign - the word Sinnlosigkeit (German: absurdity). The language revolves around this emptiness with pierced words, and the resulting detour gives a question mark shape. I choose this work because somehow it frames my research process and my relationship with my “aesthetic task”. That is, all my work spins around finding ways to surround, build and encircle an empty center pushing the words towards that edge. My pleasure consists of bringing the meaning (of texts) to the plane of nonsense, to a misleading space. Thus, every job I undertake seeks to overshadow the meanings and preponderance to the signifier, the material of the text. They look to elliptically bring the language closer to a nebulous of meaning, and perhaps that is why none of my works are presented as a response, but, at best, as a new question that I have been able to formulate.

To relate it better with my aesthetic production I would cut up this question until here: "What would be the way to read?". This question is still a mystery to me yet an obsession. Read etymologically means "to put one thing beside another, to collect, to gather”. My works occupy a space, and it only becomes legible when a reader approaches it, gives it credence to the artifice he has before, and embarks on a physical and intellectual work to try to interpret, to derive meaning, causing knots between this “reading” act and his personal history. There are no ways of reading, no paths for interpretation, I only attempt to provide signs or signals (always laying within each particular work) so that each reader, through his intuition and his will, found traces of ownership and takes that bet, between decoys and shadows, to make visible what each work suggests. My works are texts and every text is a puff of citations, a tangle of significant ties. The words that seem intelligent are dumb if one interrogates them and that's why reading is a question, something that invites questioning. The problem is not here only, since we never go down the same river, nor do we read the same twice. In every act of reading something has changed. To read (the work) should be a labyrinthine act of permanent reconstruction and collection. What gathers, what organizes and what everyone reads does not concern me. I try the works to speak "with the mouth closed" and that readers read - as one famous writer said - to ask questions.

I do not recognize myself into any tendency and I think it's healthier not to correspond at all with any of the ponds, so arbitrary and taxonomic sometimes proposed. As for influences, has impacted heavily on me the whole work of Arthur Bispo from Rosario, his embroidered writings, his utensils caught in threads, I think with him I discovered the true meaning of the word meaning. I should also mention the methods of production and generation of forms of geometric art, Baroque art in general and a painter like Rembrandt who I obsessively admire by the skin tones he achieved. On the other hand, writers like Borges, Cortazar, Pizarnik, Mujica and theorists such as Eco, Barthes, Baudrillard and Lacan never cease to be the culprits of weaving (disorderly) the ideas that I then try to materialize in my works. In the contemporary context I am interested in the work of Gego, Günther Uecker, Louise Bourgeois and Jenny Holzer.

My pilgrimage to exhibitions is erratic and inconsistent, but I can remember and have been affected by exhibitions such as: Images of the unconscious (Bow), Günther Uecker and his work with nails (Mamba), León Ferrari and his writings (Ruth Benzacar) Artist's books (1 / 1 Caja de Arte), Horacio Zabala and prisons (Alon Foundation), Gego and his structures (Malba). Some exhibitions that were flawless to me in terms of curator ship, editing and global reading: Surrealism and Dada at the Malba, Anxiety and Devotion at Proa.

I notice in recent years a higher appreciation of photography and the new media. But beyond this, and from a broader perspective, I think there is a prevailing eclecticism. The "great mirror" that used to reflect us reality has been broken into pieces and now each piece shows a different direction, perhaps less comprehensive, but also less pretentious. Each artist walks weaving a particular poetry and retraces the path of several techniques, which can range from the traditional to the latest technological advances. There are fewer prejudices and labels are becoming more transient in this time where it seems like "everything solid melts into air."