Exhibitions in Buenos Aires...

3:33 p.m.

May kicks off the Art Season in Buenos Aires because, apart from ArteBA (an art fair of galleries from here and abroad), there's many other marvellous exhibitions to visit. For example, the MALBA has opened an Adriana Varejao exhibition. Varejao is a contemporary artist born in Río de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1964. Her works mix the colonial past with the artistic expressions of the travelling artists of the 19th century (they painted America to the European people), but she also incorporates a bit of academic art, love for maps and travels and, finally, the geometry of architectonic spaces. It's here when she encounters Argentine artist Lucio Fontana and pays him a tribute.

Pared con Incisiones a la Fontana II, by Adriana Varejao (2000)

Materials: canvas, aluminium and polyurethane

Many artists turn to the great masters for inspiration. Others, as Varejao, take their works and associate them with their own creations. She does paintings of tile walls, which has become her personal signature. Much of her work is related to Portuguese tiles, which Brazil received directly through colonisation. So, she uses her tile wall and then makes cuts on the canvas, identifying them with artist Lucio Fontana.

In the 50s Lucio Fontana (1899 - 1968) painted the canvas in color to finally slice it with a clean cut. He chose to destroy the canvas to show the ambiguity of the double space: in and out of the painting. The canvas represents the foundation of a painting, the stage where everything happens, so tearing it apart in those years was bold and even insolent.

Concepto Espacial. by Lucio Fontana

Technique: cut canvas / Measures: 65 x 73 cm

MNBA

Varejao, as Fontana, makes energetic and experimental works. In Fontana's case, his cuts were key to break with a settled tradition in painting. In Varejao's case, she takes Fontana's cut to represent the native suffering caused by colonisation, the open wound of slavery and the disdain for a race different to that of Europe.

Lucio Fomtana was born in Rosario but lived in Italy for a long time. His works can be found in the most important museums of the world and in private collections, as that of designer Miuccia Prada.

To visit... "Adriana Varejao. Historias en los márgenes," at the MALBA. It can be visited till June 10th. Av. Figueroa Alcorta 3415, Capital Federal.