Arthausin collaboration with the National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA), delivered the Arthaus Visual Arts Awards 2024. In this second edition, the winners in the “object” category are: Carlota Beltrame (Tucumán), Juan Rey (Buenos Aires) and Santiago Avenue (Córdoba).
The works They will be exhibited in room 33 on the first floor of the museum at Av. Del Libertador 1473 so that the public can enjoy them free until September 8.
The winning artists were honored in March of this year for a jury of notables composed of Maria Teresa Constantin (artistic director of Arthaus); Rodrigo Alonso (curator specialized in contemporary art and new media); Carola Zech (visual artist and teacher) Andrés Duprat y Mariana Marchesi, executive director and artistic director of the Fine Arts, respectively.
As a result of the synergy between public-private sectors and its relationship with the visual arts, works They will not be acquired by the MNBA but the most important museum in Argentina offers its space for its exhibition. Meanwhile, Arthaus Foundation financed the winning works so that each artist could specify their work and then be able to make them visible.
“We are very happy because it is the second edition with this collaboration with the Bellas Artes. It seems to me a virtuous cycle where as a production space what we do is promote the creation of works that are exhibited in the Fine Arts and are not for acquisition. They remain for the artists“, said Andres Buhargeneral director of Arthaus, in dialogue with Viva.
“It is a production award: stimulates doingit is not a prize for the finished work. The artists present projects, the jury selects and Arthaus finances and monitors so that the works exist,” he said. Andrés Dupratdirector of the Fine Arts, when presenting the selected works.
The first edition of the Arthaus Awards for the Visual Arts took place in 2021, during the pandemicand consisted of a prize for the electronic arts. In 2022, the winning works were also exhibited, also at the Bellas Artes.
In this second edition, More than 100 projects from artists from all over the country applied to participate in this federal contest, with the object as the great excuse.
“The works dialogue with each other. There is a certain concern with nature and the environment. Each one has its own personality. It is very good and at the same time it has a coherence: it was not thought that way but, nevertheless, it works very well,” Buhar acknowledges.
The three winners and their works
Carlota Beltrame He took first place for his work “Resistance”, a work that expresses the tension of materialities and worldviews: those that shaped the era of capital and those that are sustained by artisanal and community practices.
The winning work consists of a black iron plate and handmade sheep wool blankets Hand-spun and dyed on a fibrofacil and LED structure. It measures 150 centimeters long by 150 centimeters wide and 40 centimeters high.
“My job is a metaphor about the places of resistance to the capitalist system that there are in the small towns where crafts are generated, have great historical and manual value but in this case the system fails to suffocate,” Beltrame noted.
And he continued: “Artisans and craftswomen produce a domestic and self-subsistence economy in which the strength of the capitalist system is not that it does not arrive, but that it arrives moderated. These people do not have the desire carved by capitalism that makes them consumerists or consumers. par excellence. They do not conceive their own production as a mere commodity because it has a high symbolic value, both personal and community. “They are places of true resistance right now.”
Beltrame used a 225 kilo metal plate (one of the symbols of capitalism from the “Industrial Era”) on top of some handmade fabrics. “My idea is May that terrible weight not manage to crush that sensitivity. that can be found in pockets of places in the world where there are still productions that generate hope for those of us who look from the outside.”
Regarding the contest, the winning artist revealed: “for me, it is very important to participate. Since she had previously exhibited other works at the Bellas Artes, for me, Arthaus was a place where I wanted to have access in some way. It is the first time she participated in this contest. “I was very lucky.”
Instead, Juan Rey and Santiago Viale were awarded second place of the contest for the series “A forest in ruin” and for “Bandada ambulante”, respectively.
The work of Rey, a Buenos Aires artist based in Villa Venta (province of Buenos Aires), addresses the effects of the passage of time on human constructions. To do this, it reproduces architectural elements to scale using centuries-old trees.
“My intention to participate had to do with Fine Arts. Although entering into a relationship with Arthaus is something that interested me since It is a space that is growing and gives room to artists.“But, for me, it is a very particular situation to be able to show my work in this place. This is the first time I’ve done it here: I am the grandson of a carpenter who only made it to fourth grade. I feel linked in those stories”he explained.
His work presents a door, symbolizes a portal made of wooda transformation in the materiality of the object added to a setting that results in a devotional, religious object and its relationship with institutional spaces.
In this case, his work consists of a scale model of an electric power plant that had been dismantled after the ’90s in the port of Bahía Blanca. Despite its state of destruction and abandonment, it is a building of very high heritage value. Rey’s work brings together a multiplicity of symbolisms for the act of going through a door:
“I feel like I’m going through a portal, being able to continue entering this place and being able to feel a little more like my own. “I am meters away from my superheroes: Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Henry Moore,” he revealed.
For its part, Viale, a young artist born in the province of Córdobaevokes visual and sound memories of his childhood. To do this, use the power of your memory as a trigger by creating a unique mobile device which expresses the paradox between the machine and nature.
“Walking flock” is a car made of wood, aluminum, iron, leather, rubber and nickel silver which moves through a crank and through bellows generates sounds that refer to the song of a flock of birds. “It is designed to circulate on public roads, also through the museum. There is a video on the wall that shows it,” explains the artist.
“A contemporary, sonorous work, in movement next to a Rodin or a painting by Cándido López. When I made it, I thought about that coexistence of two completely different types of works,” adds Viale.
Arthaus Prize for Visual Arts. National Museum of Fine Arts. Av. Del Libertador 1473 (CABA). Room 33 (first floor), Tuesday to Friday, from 11:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. (last admission) and Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Free admission until September 8.