During the show Art Basel Cities: Buenos Aires will present a series of large-scale sculptures by Argentine artists in Collins Park, Miami Beach. Based on the curatorial vision of Diana Wechsler and Florencia Battiti, the park hosts these days sculptural works that explore the concepts of context and site and its potential to interfere with everyday life. Participating artists include Matías Duville, Graciela Hasper, Marie Orensanz, Pablo Reinoso, Marcela Sinclair and Agustina Woodgate.
This partnership sought to bring Argentine artists of different generations, backgrounds and productions to an international platform such as Miami Beach during Art Basel – enabling new artistic discoveries, highlighting the strength, dynamism and vibrancy of the Argentine art scene. “Disruptions”, as the title suggests, focuses on the intervention in an urban landscape that allows the viewer to interact and engage with works outside the more traditional exhibition space. More than just an aesthetic proposition, the art in this space can become a tool to meet, interact and question a potentially too familiar environment. “While we appeal to the audience's curiosity, to their capacity for amazement, reflection, complicity and surprise,” Disruptions “necessarily also implies a commitment to the unknown, a break with the status quo,” explain curators Diana Wechsler and Florencia Battiti.
Marie Orensanz, known for its experimental forays into philosophy, mathematics and geometry is present with 'Invisible' (2018), a three-metre high keyhole-shaped iron structure where spectators can pass. It features the word “invisible” pierced into its upper arch – that only those directly below it can see it.
Grace Hasper presents work that has been defined by bold color and accented with powerful geometry
forms. Here in his installation 'Intemperie (Outdoors)' (2019), Hasper translates this aesthetic into a series of painted aluminum cubes that are simultaneously closed and
where the viewer able to walk through and inside each structure.
Physical interaction is instead, the key to Derrame (Spill) of Marcela Sinclair (2019), an installation that deconstructs and reinvents 'Miami Mountain' by Ugo Rondinone (2016) – one of Collins Park's now iconic permanent sculptures. Composed of thousands of colorful stones painted to match the hues of 'Miami Mountain' that will be scattered throughout the park, “Derrame (Spill)” invites the public to participate in the work, moving the stones and building their own individual sculptures.
In his work “The Source” (2019), Augustine Woodgate recognizes water as a fundamental building block of the human body and the earth, and considers when its purity is compromised by contamination, never-before-found responses to natural disasters, and the impact it can have. This fountain sits within a coral rock face and features an exposed system of pipes that connect, like a jigsaw puzzle, to four sections containing multiple fountains.
Using the materials of the work itself as a focus, Matias Duville è experiences a work where landscapes present tortured representations of organic elements that expose uncomfortable facts of geography, evolution and industry. In 'Big Bang America' (2019) a rock crushes a pipe, pinning it to the ground and sending both ends skyward challenging viewers to consider the impact of the industry on the planet and what happens when nature is subverted and altered by a artificial force.
Pablo Reinoso, is an uprooted tree inside a protective iron sculpture. This metal skeleton
it functions as a shield for the dead tree trunk and emulates the protective conditions of 'Still Tree' (2019) which it encloses with medieval armor offered to soldiers' bodies. As a reaction to the abuse of nature, 'Still Tree' takes on new and poignant dimensions when placed in a state facing environmental threats, including endangered ecosystems such as the Everglades.
