Sebastián Gordín
21 Jun - 31 Jul 2007
SEBASTIÁN GORDÍN
"las criaturas que duermen a nuestro lado"
Galería Distrito Cu4tro is presenting works by Sebastián Gordín (Buenos Aires 1969), one of the outstanding Argentinian artists of the nineties. Fourteen years ago Gordín began his career with a spontaneous show in the doorway of the Institute for Iberoamerican Co-operation. One year later, on account of all the success and flurry created by this artistic picket, he was formally invited by the same institution to mount a two man show (with Fabio Kacero), which established them both as artists. Fourteen years later both artists have shown their work together in Distrito Cu4tro (Lo Material No Cuenta, December ‘06). In 1994 the French Government awarded Gordin the Braque prize which took him to the Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs in Paris.
Sebastián Gordín opens his show, LAS CRIATURAS QUE DUERMEN A NUESTRO LADO (THE CRIATURES WHO SLEEP BESIDE US), with a series of laquered wooden pieces which he has made to look like the covers of old story books and magazines of terror and fantasy. Gordin has chosen as his instrument for exploring the disturbing imaginary scenario of his creations the visual repertory of pioneering American pulp magazines from the forties, (a subcategory of noir fiction) transforming the stylistic elements of this fantasy genre, bringing together presences as anachronistic as they are anomalous, unclassifiable.
Lighting plays a central role, the room is in shadow, with faint lights which place in focus one by one the white sculptures or illuminate the models and glass boxes from the inside, mysteriously and theatrically.
Each of the cold landscapes which Gordín shuts within a glass box suggests a micro world, Utopian forests of bare metal trees on a small scale. Rain slides down, -thanks to a pump concealed in the base- as sluggish as snow, while tiny reflectors rotate dramatically, showing each small scene in combinations outside time, deriving from different eras of mass culture.
The work of Gordin is said to transform the extraordinary into the infraordinary; that in his work the spectacular, passionate, historical, enigmatic, even epic is compressed and miniaturised.
"las criaturas que duermen a nuestro lado"
Galería Distrito Cu4tro is presenting works by Sebastián Gordín (Buenos Aires 1969), one of the outstanding Argentinian artists of the nineties. Fourteen years ago Gordín began his career with a spontaneous show in the doorway of the Institute for Iberoamerican Co-operation. One year later, on account of all the success and flurry created by this artistic picket, he was formally invited by the same institution to mount a two man show (with Fabio Kacero), which established them both as artists. Fourteen years later both artists have shown their work together in Distrito Cu4tro (Lo Material No Cuenta, December ‘06). In 1994 the French Government awarded Gordin the Braque prize which took him to the Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs in Paris.
Sebastián Gordín opens his show, LAS CRIATURAS QUE DUERMEN A NUESTRO LADO (THE CRIATURES WHO SLEEP BESIDE US), with a series of laquered wooden pieces which he has made to look like the covers of old story books and magazines of terror and fantasy. Gordin has chosen as his instrument for exploring the disturbing imaginary scenario of his creations the visual repertory of pioneering American pulp magazines from the forties, (a subcategory of noir fiction) transforming the stylistic elements of this fantasy genre, bringing together presences as anachronistic as they are anomalous, unclassifiable.
Lighting plays a central role, the room is in shadow, with faint lights which place in focus one by one the white sculptures or illuminate the models and glass boxes from the inside, mysteriously and theatrically.
Each of the cold landscapes which Gordín shuts within a glass box suggests a micro world, Utopian forests of bare metal trees on a small scale. Rain slides down, -thanks to a pump concealed in the base- as sluggish as snow, while tiny reflectors rotate dramatically, showing each small scene in combinations outside time, deriving from different eras of mass culture.
The work of Gordin is said to transform the extraordinary into the infraordinary; that in his work the spectacular, passionate, historical, enigmatic, even epic is compressed and miniaturised.