Structures of Air
July 24–November 16, 2015
MALBA
Avda. Figueroa Alcorta 3415
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Hours: Thursday–Monday noon–8pm,
Wednesday noon–9pm
T +54 11 4808 6500
prensa [at] malba.org.ar
Curators: Miguel A. López / Agustín Pérez Rubio
Structures of Air is the first presentation of the experimental work of artist Teresa Burga (Iquitos, Peru, 1935), one of the most well-respected figures in contemporary art from Peru, to take place in Argentina. The exhibition consists of two emblematic installations, both of which Burga first conceived in 1970: Estructuras de aire (Structures of Air), which forms part of the MALBA collection, and Obra que desaparece cuando el espectador trata de acercarse (Work that Disappears when the Spectator Tries to Approach It). The show also features a series of works on paper that Burga made in Chicago, Hamburg, and Lima in the ’60s and ’70s, mostly diagrams and instructions for installations and performances (some of them musical in nature) and for works built using serial systems, structures and models. Curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio (Artistic Director of MALBA) and Miguel A. López (chief curator of TEOR/éTica and Lado V, San José, Costa Rica), the exhibition focuses on the “immaterial” nature of projects to which questions of time and architecture are key.
The project emerged in Buenos Aires, one of the few Latin American cities where Burga exhibited her work in the ’60s. (Specifically, she showed a series of prints at Galería Siglo XX in 1966 and participated in a show of the Grupo Arte Nuevo at Galería Lirolay in 1967.) “Shows of this sort are important to creating a genealogy and a relationship between the various players active throughout the region’s art scenes,” states Pérez Rubio.
Catalogue
In conjunction with the exhibition, MALBA is publishing a 250-page catalogue—the most comprehensive publication on Burga’s work to date. It includes the curatorial essays “Teresa Burga: Of Forgetting and Chance” by Agustín Pérez Rubio and “Chronodissidences in the work of Teresa Burga” by Miguel A. López, as well as the critical text “Generative words and subjugated bodies in Teresa Burga’s 1969–71 proposals,” by art historian Dorota Biczel.
The catalogue will also feature the text “Open Work or Structure Report” by Teresa Burga (ca. 1970–80) and “As Near as Possible to Chance,” an interview with the artist by Miguel A. López, conducted at the Lima Art Museum in 2011. In addition to the works in the exhibition, the book includes reproductions of Burga’s entire corpus of conceptual works on paper (diagrams, structures, reports) fromin the mid-’60s on, as well as a number of previously unpublished drawings.
