Graciela Hasper

Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires

By Victoria Verlichak | October 19, 2010

Graciela Hasper’s (Buenos Aires, 1966) interest in addressing the problems of painting has been evident since she began to show her work in 1989. At that time Hasper adopted some traditions of North American minimalism, of the constructive avant garde movements, and of Argentine concrete art, and she gave birth to other possibilities of meaning. As of 2000, the artist has been inventing compositions that she perceives in nature, in the street, in shops, anonymous designs which reappear, unrecognizable and in a nonrandom way, in paintings and photographs. Occasionally, she abandons the canvas and does not only paint on images of architectures but she also creates designs on floors and floor tiles, walls and glazed tiles.

Nudo de autopista, 2007-2010. Photograph, 12.2 x 21.6 in. Fotografía, 31 x 55 cm.

The present exhibition focuses on the hypnotic video titled “Nudo de autopista” (“Freeway Junction”), which repeats in black and white the flow of traffic around the confluence of several branches of the highway in the deteriorated area of Constitución Station. A series of video stills (featuring little traffic and an absence of people) show columns that support the highway; they have undergone an artistic intervention through the application of color paint, an action that is repeated in the gallery columns. Some of the suggestive paintings exhibited feature a continuation of the winding movement of the asphalt ribbon which can be seen in the video rendered in lighter colors than the ones she worked with previously, as attested to by a work dating from 1996. The exhibition includes watercolors, and the readymade, the object Libro pinta bien, featuring serigraphed colored pages.