I went to see the shows at Macba and Mamba this week- and liked them.
The Macba show is Eduardo MacEntyre, an argentine artist who was entranced with geometry. Very psychedelic. Its up until March. He just died a few years ago, in his mid 80s, and was making trippy stuff til the very end.
There were two shows at Mamba I enjoyed- the Sergio Avella show, which is up thru March, was interesting- his art ranges from small geometric paintings to huge light installations, with lots of leather flags along with videos, posters, and textiles. He was an important figure in Porteno art for two decades, and was the installation designer at Proa for years. A lot of interesting history, even a picture of him cutting Charly Garcia's hair, when he was doing hair and makeup for a Mosquera movie.
Then, there is the Tomas Saraceno show- a darkened room, full of dramatically lit spider webs. Saraceno is pretty well known worldwide, with installations at places like the Met in NYC. In this piece, he built environments for the spiders to build within, directing them subtly. Its otherworldly, and transfixing. Should be open another month or so. The spiders are not there, only their work. They were allowed to build, without visitors, for a few months, then they were evicted. No word as to whether they were peacefully relocated or not, but no creepy spiders, just beautiful webs.
I also went recently to the current Mexican art show at Malba. Mexico Moderno. There are a lot of great pieces in it, but the curation is a bit mysterious to me- I dont understand the reason for the division into four seemingly overlapping groups. Many of the pieces could have been dropped into three or more of the groups, and still it would have made as much sense. Too much intellectualization of the history, too many curators with thesis' to prove, when the work will stand on its own just fine.
