RAYUELA. EL ORDEN FALSO
Curated by Octavio Zaya, the exhibition Rayuela. El orden falso pays tribute, on its 60th anniversary, to the novel by the Argentinian genius.
Rayuela. El orden falso is a group exhibition that brings together Latin American artists Alexander Apóstol, Fernando Bryce, Luis Camnitzer, Tania Candiani, Leda Catunda, Marilá Dardot + Fabio Morais, Guillermo Kuitca, Rafael Ortega, Amalia Pica, Sandra Ramos, Valeska Soares, Rivane Neuschwander + Mariana Lacerda and Antonio Vega Macotela, taking place at the Marlborough Gallery Madrid, from September 14 to November 18.
The Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar presented, in 1963, with Rayuela a phenomenon never seen before. He himself will call it a counter-novel, because it is a work that breaks with previous canons and gives the reader total freedom to move through its pages as they wish, thus making them the protagonist and producer of the plot itself.
In this exhibition, 15 Latin American artists come together whose productions are explicitly based or inspired by the acclaimed work of Cortázar, some conceived for this exhibition and others (those of Kuitca, Marilá Dardot or Fabio Morais) previously produced.
As for the themes these artists cover, we find, as it could not be otherwise, politics, literature, autobiographical references, love… but also a piece of an ancient labyrinth, a girl who represents many others, drawings that seem to multiply before you, a compass that leads to knowledge, a narrative created from hackers or a firmament of vessels, the inner world that sometimes we do not discern from the real one, calendars with new conceptions or the creation of a space to focus on a single character (and maybe answer questions).
Courtesy of Galería Marlborough. Photo: Roberto Ruiz
Marlborough Gallery Madrid, an essential stop on the cultural route of the Spanish capital, has an almost sacred aura inside, possibly due to the zenithal lighting and being a space that resembles a church with a Latin cross plan.
The first three works we encounter upon entering are those by Sandra Ramos, Fabio Morais + Marilá Dardot and Fernando Bryce.
Courtesy of Galería Marlborough. Photo: Roberto Ruiz
Sandra Ramos presents an immersive installation that brings together paintings of different formats that we can (with the use of gloves that are next to the works) move them around, combining them with each other, and thus creating a new narrative, just as we do with Cortázar's work. Ramos parallelly aligns her own experience as a migrant with those of Horacio Oliverira and La Maga and, through the symbolic presence of a character: the girl (recurrent in her work).
Courtesy of Galería Marlborough. Photo: Roberto Ruiz
Fabio Morais + Marilá Dardot, with the work Lá em casa (Rayuela) they created in 2010 as part of the installation they took to the 29th São Paulo Biennial, a carpet that represents the famous game of hopscotch (rayuela).
Fernando Bryce brings a body work that is full of symbols and references from Rayuela, along with the counterculture of the sixties, Paris, a bewitching portray of Cortázar, or the presence of the artist himself in one of the pieces.
In Log Score, Tania Candiani uses Rayuelas’s logbook that Cortázar used to write down all the aspects that would make up the novel, the proposals, the plot, quotes... The Mexican artist eliminates the words, but keeps everything else, leaving us with a map to follow, with a score that sets a rhythm. Candiani's sound sculpture, Talk and Response, which is directly related to Log Score, surrounds a part of the gallery space with excerpts from jazz pieces (important for the artist and very present in the literary work), creating a unique atmosphere in which it immerses the viewer, also transforming the way we appreciate the adjacent works.
Courtesy of Galería Marlborough. Photo: Roberto Ruiz
Leda Catunda's textile work, in which she represents a brain, tells us about how two parallel realities coexist, what happens in the world and what happens in our inner world, which is non-transferable and unique to each individual.
Amalia Pica, with Study for rearranging the conference table, reinterprets the furniture that we find in office meeting rooms, giving it sinuous shapes and vibrant colors and hanging it on the wall.
The works of Luis Camnitzer and Antonio Vega Macotela coexist in the same room. Camnitzer deals with exile, forced displacement, which in turn is something that has occurred throughout history and the cardinal points, none favored over the other. Vega Macotela presents a work that combines the gíglico, Aragonese hackers, the periodicity of the stars, a reinterpretation of ceramics from the Huelva museum and, in some way, makes everything make sense.
Las preguntas de la Maga by Marilá Dardot brings us closer to one of the main characters, la Maga, and does so by giving absolute prominence to her, who had so much impact on the women of the time. A woman who, although she lives in a men’s world, challenge the rules and embraces the chaos.
Courtesy of Galería Marlborough. Photo: Roberto Ruiz
Guillermo Kuitca has two works in the exhibition, Philosophy for Princes II, which follows the common line of his work: elements of architecture, cartography, theater... and Untitled, a more relaxed approach, with some jazz inspiration, that appears in a kind of organic way on the canvas.
Within her series Broken Year, Valeska Soares brings to the exhibition the months of October and November, pages torn from books, a way of referring to the passage of time, to the leaves that fall when seasons change, to the endings and the beginnings.
In the same space, the medium-length film by Rivane Neuenschwander and Mariana Lacerda called I am a macaw coexists, where they document the protest of a group of people in São Paulo against deforestation and the destruction of indigenous populations, and the work by Alexander Apóstol, simplified representations of flags of Venezuelan political parties that no longer exist today.
Courtesy of Galería Marlborough. Photo: Roberto Ruiz
Rayuela. El orden falso shows that it is in chaos, in the combination of different elements, where we can really find a more complete understanding, creating a narrative that complements the already existing story and that perhaps makes us seek new paths. Something that Cortázar would surely have applauded.
