By María Eugenia Maurello
“My agenda was the performative structure,” says Gaspar Libedinsky. And in that reference, he not only retraces his beginnings as a juggler at the Buenos Aires traffic lights, but also shows the genesis of his interpellation to the urban territory, an operation that blurs the limits between the disciplines in his works Trained at the Architectural Association (AA) in London, although he worked in two of the most prominent studios in the world—Rem Koolhaas/OMA in Rotterdam and Diller Scofidio + Renfro in New York—Libedinsky only recently gained legitimacy in the art field when he obtained the Kuitca UTDT 2010-2011 scholarship. And he attracted attention with his productions characterized by observing the private and the public. This is demonstrated by the Monumento al hombre común built with recovered costumes of the Salvation Army, and the memorable Míster Trapo, where he deciphered the debated practice of the Buenos Aires “trapitos,” and from that he designed twelve classic garments made with mesh rags, floor rags, and dish towels.
Now, in the window of the Praxis gallery you can see Arrecife para vestir, an exhibition composed of textile developments that arise from the transposition to photographs that the author made of El origen de las especies – the installation made with multicolored brooms in 2018 – and which he then transmuted into graphic images of double symmetry, similar to those of the Rorschach test, and which, finally, he expressed by sublimation on five pieces of silk. The series includes a pajama—co-authored with Mamitek Vibradios and Elia Gasparolo—exposed on Arenales Street. “The important thing is the idea of a work to dress the space, which can suddenly be torn off to dress the body; you strip the wall, you get dirty and vice versa,” he suggests in dialogue with Ñ.
