Buenos Aires, 2019- Praxis, art gallery with offices in New York and Buenos Aires, presents Art and Sustainability Edition VI Welcome to our World

In this sixth edition of the Art and Sustainability cycle, five artists and a designer reflect on the natural knowledge of the world and reconnect us with it.

Lulu Gueron

Air / Golden Silence

Byung Chul Han, contemporary philosopher, analyzes the way in which the digital revolution, the internet and social networks have transformed the very essence of society. A digital swarm has formed, a mass of isolated individuals, without soul, without collective action, without meaning and without expression. Digital hypercommunication destroys silence and only perceives incoherent, mind-numbing noise. The search for that silence that reconnects with the natural world, with the collective and with the soul is materialized in an improvisation dance that Gueron offers to the mountain as a sacred offering. For some years Gueron has lived, part of the time, in the mountains in Mendoza, literally in a habitat specially designed by her with care and respect. There he develops and investigates, through expressions such as dance performance, sculpture and architecture, the connection with the natural world.

In the words of the artist “the most valuable silence happens when that internal rumination is turned off and the pure present is turned on.”

Vera Somlo

Fire / The fire

Fire ~ Its strength is associated with destruction and also creation. Death and rebirth, passion and purifying mystical power. It unites earth and sky, matter and spirit, vice and virtue. Its regenerative power is also linked to the power of the feminine. Fire blood heat germ power.

Weaving ~ weaving symbolizes the union of the mortal and the immortal. Of heaven and earth. Weft and warp. Eternity and temporality. It represents in phenomenal mystical perception what is hidden from the vision of what is true and profound.

Embroider ~ Go inward. Inside our black land in silence. Give light to a form. Forge Temper a strength stitch by stitch. Search for what was hidden in matter, in oneself.

A red thread in intimate convergence gathering inside and outside, up and down. Creative force, destructive force. Penetrate, open, cut, sew. Fire and spirit, the feminine and the masculine. Time and non-time.

The essential connection.

Romina Orazi

Water/Flood 1894

Flood 1984 It is part of a series of historical Argentine paintings from the 19th century in which the artist works in collaboration with her master copyist Gabriela Pulopulo.

In 2017 the fields of Argentina have been flooded as represented in the rest of the series. The M7red duo would say that while the generation of 1880 identified with land ownership, it was the floods of 1980 that allowed the formation of the Grobocopatel model. I don’t think the painting needs an explanation, for me it is important that the flood does not come as an unexpected catastrophe but is something as “natural” as the landscape.

We discussed the Anthropocene as the transformation of humanity into a geological force capable of affecting and destroying what we knew as the world. Distinguishing the nature of humanity silently continues to be the name of progress against backwardness. We need a recalibration of the senses, to understand and then mitigate and qualify our desires and needs, to be able to conceive other modes of production, another set of social relations, another relationship between us and the earth.

But water also speaks. Let’s listen to the whispers of an eccentric planet.

Pompi Caputo

Land/Forest

Finite, without limits. Times and Spaces. Series “In every moment an encounter”

In the forest, daily I approach, connect, I try to be in each moment. Although I did not propose something routine, the forest calls me and every day I discover, feel, see something new. Moments.

Get closer, establish contact. From afar I see illusions, I guess realities, I play with dreams. As I approach one with the other, I am the other.

Microcosm full of times and spaces. The rock, the lichens, the trees, the leaves. The decomposing matter. The impermanence or ephemerality of fungi and all this green mantle that embraces the landscape and embraces me.

Is the fungus ephemeral? Or is it matter and energy? This is how each of us is, encounters in the void. Non-linear, circular empty spaces, with folds, traveling through them means discovering other space-times.

Borges says: “Shipwrecked from the river of cycles. In our deep sleep we are the universe. To light a fire is to make it visible, it exists before, it disappears later, but it is not destroyed. “It is, it is not visible.”

The shape, the color, the taste doesn’t matter, what matters is what is invisible there, invisible to our eyes. That is held in the void, in the interstices, pure, clean, without toxicity. Depending on space-time it takes different shapes, colors, flavors… But it still is. Encounters.

The mushroom in the forest and all its beings teach me how each one is a whole, there are no individualities, there is a forest. There I feel like a tree woman connected to the deepest depths of the earth and the cosmos. I hugged the rock, I became it and then a tree and the earth. I danced, I was born, I was part of everything. I was that place, I didn’t need to see them, just feel them.

The energy was transformed into a word and the word into a powerful feminine energy. Root that was nourished by the earth, awakened, expanded and dismantled the physical body until it floated and swirled with a powerful force.

I leave the forest, a day between two worlds, interstice, I hope, I want and I will walk this present. There is no time, there is no space. There are time-spaces that manifest themselves in encounters. This is our meeting.

Marisa Dominguez

The natural in flow

This set of modeled pieces has an immediate reference to organic forms. Buds, shoots, stems, succulent leaves, bulbs, plants that make up a variegated and prolific constellation that strives to grow and come to the surface. It is an enlightenment; that moment of the life cycle that is reborn. To underline this episode, a story of storms and disasters is imagined. The flooded ground, the cracks that are drawn on the surface that show the catastrophe. However, there is a drive for life. Which is intensified with the use of mirrors. Those that reflect infinity and accentuate reproduction.

Everything seems to flow without beginning or end. We still don’t know what it is about.

Isabel Englebert / Paloma Teppa

Plant the Future

“Plants” is a series of pieces made in collaboration by artists Paloma Teppa and Isabel Englebert. Paloma Teppa, an artist specializing in Biophilia, is the creator and alma mater of “Plant The Future”, a nature-inspired design studio, plant boutique and botanical art gallery. Isabel Englebert, artist and jeweler, gives the pieces in this collection characteristic elements of her design: pure geometries, simple lines, ruled surfaces. The line as a geometric element emerges to provide a perfect balance to each design, giving it its own personality. On this occasion the pieces incorporate living moss, creating a particular alloy that expresses the artists’ strong commitment to nature and sustainability. The rigidity and coldness of metal combine and contrast with the warmth and softness of moss. The first – strong, passionate – meets the second – nutritious, alive – to give birth to a hybrid that is born from the interaction of both materials. This mixture, this clash, represents life itself. At the same time, the enormous encounter outlines a double meaning. On the one hand, it proposes the action of framing a piece of nature, giving it the character of a work of art. It exalts her, it honors her in an unconventional way. On the other hand, it seeks to protect and care for the source of life, expressing strong respect and commitment.