Fragments of what will be the 3D animation video installation by the artist Mónica Heller that will represent Argentina at the 59th Venice Biennale, was presented this Tuesday to the press and the public will be able to visit from tomorrow, with free admission and prior reservation, at the San Martín Palace, as a preview of what will be the shipment curated by Alejo Ponce de León and entitled “The origin of the substance matter the importance of the origin”.
“It is the first time that we do something of this nature, the previous presentation of what the artist is doing, with the impulse of Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero, who gives great importance to the development of cultural industries.in this case what will be seen in the National Pavilion in Venice that we obtained in 2011 on loan for 22 years”, he said at the beginning of the tour of the exhibition Paula Vázquez, director of Cultural Affairs of the Argentine Foreign Ministrywho has already announced that she will not be able to travel to Italy due to her pregnancy.
They are three biennial pieces that can be seen from this Wednesday in the Hall of Frescoes of the Palacio San Martín (Arenales 761) -with prior reservation through the Chancery page– and that in just over a month it has to be set up in the city of canals, in the permanent pavilion of Argentina, with a privileged location in the Arsenals building, a historic 16th century construction.
The cornea of an immense eye, which moves constantly, is one of the pieces that can be seen in this room, along with two screens: in one of them a woman breastfeeds herself, while in another different figures modeled in 3D they move or make sounds, like ants on some fruit, pieces of a body, a woman with no hair, sort of a robotic entity, a polyphony of characters, all appropriate images from the internet.
“This is an introduction, a preview, so that you can see here a little of what will be seen there,” explained the artist Mónica Heller, along with three of her installations that will make up the shipment, of a larger size, in the mother of all the biennials, the oldest in the world and which -he advanced- will be seen in 2023 at the MAR museum in Mar del Plata, so in Argentina it will be possible to see the complete exhibition just like in Italy.
Heller, who will travel to Venice next Tuesday and will remain there until the beginning of May, said that he had to work with digital models to adapt your project to the old shipyard where Argentina has its pavilion: an immense rectangular space, 500 square meters, with very high ceilings, with two long rows of columns. There the screens will be 4 meters by 3specific.
About the video installation
The biennial submission is made up of fifteen audiovisual modules made up of projection screens and LED displays of different sizes and formats. The Old World exhibit will also feature a surround sound system, ambient blue lighting and music. A different environment. Distributed throughout the pavilion, the screens and projections will host different characters inhabiting a swinging twilight world: beings that build, deconstruct, and rebuild themselves in brief but endless loops, referring to the cyclical nature of literature and other narrative devices.
“All the pieces interact with each other, like vignettes; as if you were in a temporary comic; everything is a wink but not like a visual narration in space”says Heller and explains that several of the videos are repeated in a loop, except for one that is longer and has to do with a talking dove: “a soliloquy created online with artificial intelligence. The result is crazy and humorous” He pointed to Telam.
Each screen contains an animated portrait of these characters and in each one, through the absurd humor, harsh lyricism and metaphysical mood of 3D landscapes, a series of events unfolds, in which these restless metabolisms are constantly rearranged. in a wide range of extraordinary possibilities.
“I work from internet resources”admits the artist as a statement. “And the title is a loop, bringing back the origin as something that is dragged and imported. It has several meanings; it’s a play on words”reflects Heller when asked about the title of the work.
The artist had previously said, when it was announced that her project had been selected: “They are beings that come from a fantastic world and from my imagination. They exist in a space and time that are their own, but that somehow I hope they manage to spread to the time and space of the Argentine pavilion in Venice”.
For its part, the curator of the shipment Alejo Ponce de León He referred to this year’s motto of the biennial inspired by a story by the surrealist Leonora Carrington, “The milk of dreams”: “Heller’s work is part of what is called sur-realism, from the south, austral. Mónica has ways of avoiding the material distances that separate us from the ways of producing art in the 21st century. It seems to me that biennials are changing and the art is also changing”he added.
The tour for the press was followed by an act of presentation with the artist, which was attended by personalities from the world of culture, such as the Nation’s Minister of Culture, Tristán Bauer; his peer from the city, Enrique Avogadro; the president of the National Monuments Commission, Teresa Anchorena; the director of the National Endowment for the Arts, Diana Saiegh; the executive president of the Argentine Investment and International Trade Agency, Juan Usandivaras; the Secretary of Cultural Heritage, Valeria González; the director of the National Museum of Fine Arts, Mariana Marchesi and personalities such as María Teresa Constantín, Fernando Farina, Aníbal Jozami, Florencia Battiti and others. Replacing Foreign Minister Cafiero, who was delayed in another official act, was the Secretary for International Economic Relations of the Foreign Ministry, Ambassador Cecilia Todesca, who highlighted “the importance of cultural industries, which represent 2.6 percent of GDP and 245,000 direct jobs,” he told Télam.
The work “The origin of the substance will matter the importance of the origin” was selected by a jury made up of Matilde Marín, Paula Vázquez, Valeria González, Mariana Tellería, Andrés Duprat, Juan Usandivaras, Teresa Anchorena, Virginia Agote and Analía Solomonoff.
In its ruling, the jury highlighted that Heller’s project addresses contemporary issues from critical humor, fantasy and the surreal. Likewise, he remarked that the great technical solvency placed at the service of her poetic universe manages to endow digital languages with vital carnality.
The director of Cultural Affairs added that “Argentina’s presence in the exhibition translates into a valuable State policy that is consolidated through each Argentine shipment and that ensures the dissemination of our cultural production at the highest international level.” The Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition has been held since 1895 and this year it will take place from April 23 to November 27.
