Marta Minujín: Laberinto Minujinda, 1985
Between July 4 and August 8, 11x7 Galería will exhibit “Marta Minujín: Laberinto Minujinda”. This is part of the installation the artist exhibited in 1985 in Centro Cultural Recoleta. The original piece consisted of 21 halls that the viewer had to go through with situations created by technology. At the door, 3 people dressed in white showed the entrance to the audience who had to decide between “the road of intelligence” and “the road of beauty”. Action started as people entered through silhouettes cut out in acrylic. People would walk in groups of 30 and had to take off their shoes. They went through halls with computers, projections, sounds, smells, a space where viewers had their faces made up, a hall where photographs were taken, a place for reflection inside a Minotaur made in a metal mesh, a bed that they had to roll through to the way out.
As so many other installations by Minujín, this is a piece of action art, like works as La Menesunda and El Batacazo (1965). From the original “Laberinto Minujinda”, 12 painted panels recovered from her workshop are now exhibited. These are the only elements that survived the original installation. They form part of the psychedelic hall that invites the viewer to look at pictures from the abstract components that make up a painting: colors, stripes, dots, triangles, circles and spirals, surrounding the audience with a color environment.
Laura Batkis writes in the prologue to the exhibition that “Minujín was a pioneer in action art and situationism, both in her Environments, Happenings and Media Art. It is noteworthy that all those ephemeral expressions are now part of the contemporary art avant-garde which, known as “relational aesthetics”, conceives the viewers as an active part of the piece, with which they have an experiential relationship. In “Laberinto Minujinda” (1985) she broadens the trajectory to an architectural scale in Centro Cultural Recoleta. Once again, art triggers unexpected experiences, but in this case it deepens its activity with the mass media (“Simultaneidad en Simultaneidad” (Simultaneity in Simultaneity), 1966) to develop a trajectory with situations created by technology.?Nowadays, enthusiasm for technological hyperconnectivity ends up being a trap we are all caught in, exhausted by the information overload of empty messages. Once again, Marta Minujín imagined a prophecy that now gains a new meaning. As Borges’ Minotaur in “The House of Asterion”, we are the inhabitants of a labyrinth, lost in the everlasting loneliness of human condition.”
Marta Minujín was born in Buenos Aires in 1941. She studied at the national fine arts schools Manuel Belgrano and Prilidiano Pueyrredón. In 1961 she exhibited in Galería Lirolay and travelled to Paris with a French Embassy scholarship. She participated in the “30 argentinos de la nueva generación. Pinturas, esculturas, objetos” (Thirty Argentines of the New Generation. Paintings, sculptures, objects) exhibit (Galerie Creuze, 1961). Back in Buenos Aires, in 1962 she participated in the “el hombre antes del hombre” exhibit in Galería Florida, and had a solo exhibition in Galería Lirolay. In 1963 she was awarded another scholarship and went back to Paris. In June 1963 she had her first happening, “La Destrucción” (Destruction), where she burned the pieces she had made so far after they were intervened by her artist friends in Paris. Back in Buenos Aires, in 1964 she earned the Di Tella Award. In 1966 she earned the Guggenheim Fellowship with which she travelled to the United States to show her “Minuphone” (1967). From then on, she earned more than 17 grants which allowed her to exhibit throughout the world. She is currently the most internationally renowned Argentine artist in action art and happenings. Tate Modern in London has just started its Latin American Art collection with “El Partenón de Libros” (Parthenon of Books), 1983. This piece created in the intersection of 9 de Julio and Santa Fe avenues in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a monument to democracy and to education and is made up of a metal structure, a replica of the Greek Parthenon, covered by books that were banned during the military dictatorship. This piece was purchased in arteBA 2013 from 11x7 Galería and Henrique Faria Fine Art booth by curator José Roca.
This exhibition will be open until August 8.
Opening: July 4 at 7 pm
Libertad 1628
Buenos Aires
Mondays through Fridays from 12 pm to 8 pm
Saturdays with a previous appointment.