Viviana Zargón
b. 1958 in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Viviana Zargón
b. 1958 in Buenos Aires, Argentina
About Kirsten.
Andrés Sobrino, Carola Zech, Julián León Camargo, Kirsten Mosel, Lena Szankay, Lorena Fernández, Lorena Marchetti, Lux Lindner, Sebastián Camacho
Curator: Andres Waissman
13.2.19 - 15.3.19
Often, when Kirsten talked about her work, she would stand in front of them and while explaining the production process she would imitate their shape with her body; she shrugged her shoulders, extended her arms, brought her legs together, bowed her head, bent her knees, and contorted her body according to the scraps of material cut behind her. There is a direct relationship between the organic forms of his works and his own body, a body crossed by different experiences in his Argentine years. Affections, pains, joys and disease of course. An attentive, affectionate eye will not miss these features in his work.
There was a paradoxical relationship between the obvious industrial result and the artisan manufacturing process in Kirsten's work. I always admired his insistence on continuing to cut his vinyl and synthetic canvas by hand despite being able to do so with the help of a cutting machine. "I'm a cutout artist," she said with the scalpel in her hand. That splendid obstinacy generated a tension in his work, visible especially at the edge, in the "finish" of his organic forms. You could see her hand, the break in her wrist, the vibration of her pulse, the doubt. Then those pieces became closer to you, more human. A counterweight & its apparent coldness that suggested, inevitably but very slightly, the presence of someone on the other side of a work that at first glance seemed uninhabited.
The news of Kirsten's death caught me with a novel by Romina Paula in my hands that has as its epigraph this quote by Jonas Mekas "Measurable reality ends at our fingertips: beyond is the abyss." I wonder if art is not made a little to fill that void. Barthes once said that he wrote to be loved: "I write so that they love me." Maybe that's true, maybe at the end of the day, we make art to meet others in the abyss. Perhaps, complementing Mekas's phrase, we can say that beyond the tips of our fingers are the fingers of others and art is a way of building a kind of bridge between our own fingers and those of others.
About Kirsten brings together the work of nine artists, the common point that groups these works is Kirsten Mosel. Each of the works that make up the exhibition is an individual response by his closest colleagues and friends to his recent departure, a way of remembering him in his absence. A kind of posthumous tribute to an artist who in her 10 years in Buenos Aires impacted the local context in various ways, but, above all, the lives of those who were lucky enough to meet her.
Perhaps, more than a tribute, this show is about an elegy; a poem written with nine hands; a set of words, images, objects, gestures that occur to occupy the empty space that it leaves. Behind each work here is a story, an anecdote, a connection, an excuse to remember Kirsten, her work and her thinking as an artist. My advice, my hope even, is that you, dear viewer, take this opportunity as an excuse to meet her, to join this shared memory. ...
Julian Leon Camargo
***
(1) Kirsten left last December 30, I was in the United States at that time and on the different stations that were heard on the
city ​​a Scottish hymn was heard that they usually sing there when they strike 12 on the clock to celebrate the new year;
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld fang syne? "
For auld fang syne, my dear, for auld fang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld fang syne.