THE STATURE OF LIBERTY: Galeria Luisa Strina
Like a short stories book, The Stature of Liberty – Jorge Macchi’s sixth solo show at Luisa Strina gallery – brings together a diverse group of works, suggesting a non-monolithic understanding of the whole. The exhibition is a journey through some of the artist’s obsessions: memory, the ephemeral, transparency, ghosts, echoes, the representation of sound, the idea of replica, the subversion of logic, the disintegration of images. In Macchi’s words, “My intention is to evoke the idea of an underground river that passes through all the objects displayed, even though I cannot name that river.” *
The work La estrategia de la ameba [The Amoeba Strategy, 2022] is a grotesque reference to that unifying element: a self-moving suitcase on wheels that travels across the room; upon colliding with an obstacle (wall, object, plinth, visitor) it stops, turns 180 degrees and continues its journey until a new obstacle appears. The amoeba, lacking a nervous system, interacts with its surrounding environment through its cell membrane: when faced with a noxious, irritating or nutritional stimulus, it reacts in a primary way by approaching or moving away from it. The suitcase, in addition to being a stubborn and voracious visitor to the exhibition, constantly establishes new relationships between the works.
Acorde [Chord, 2020] is a glazed ceramic work composed of 88 black and white pieces that reproduce a piano keyboard in 1: 1 scale. The eight keys that make up a G minor chord seem pressed. In this sculpture, the moment of execution of this chord is frozen and the sound may have already faded or it may have remained suspended and thus inaudible.
Confesión [Confession, 2021] is a cardboard box of a 50-inch smart TV whose sides are decorated with cut out cross patterns that refer to the perforated metal of church confessionals. The box no longer holds any objects; it has been transformed by the action of the openwork into a visual instrument that allows a fragmented view of its interior and of what is behind it.
In Debajo de la mesa [Under the Table, 2022], 6 identical wooden tables typically found in the bars of Buenos Aires are connected through the end of their legs leaving an empty central space in the shape of an invisible cube.
Short story, Avión, Septiembre 2020, Google Map y Relief [Short Story, Plane, September 2020, Google map and Relief, 2020-21] are small works made with piano string that hang precariously from the walls – and reduce scale schemes, calendar diagrams and folded papers almost to the point of their disappearance. The same occurs with the Presente series: three structures made of steel rod that reproduce the folds of a paper that once wrapped a box.
Drift bottle 7 (Testigo de deriva) [Drift Bottle 7 (Drift Witness), 2020], is a plastic mineral water bottle containing the scale reproduction of a sailing ship. The title refers to the bottles that are thrown into the sea with information on the date and coordinates in order to track the movement of surface currents. This work is, at the same time, a message in a bottle, a world enclosed in a plastic bubble, and a distant reference to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest accumulation of plastic floating and moving in the Pacific Ocean.
Todas las palabras del mundo [All the Words in the World, 2021] is a wall whose bricks have disappeared and only the cement that held them together remains. The structure reproduces a computer keyboard to scale. As in Confesión [Confession], the wall is a viewing device – in this case, where one looks through the void left by the letters.
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* The multiplicity of media has to do with the specific relationship I attempt to establish between images and materials. In general, the thing that’s most important about a piece should move behind the surface, and, in this sense, the variety of media I use matters very little. In general, when I show my work, I try to allow works that are materially very different from one another to coexist.
Jorge Macchi, Edgardo Rudnitzky interview for Bomb magazine, New York, USA 2009.
