JUAN PABLO RENZI. Momento reflexivo (Reflective moment)
If primary structures appeared as a way to reflect on the minimum conditions of art –with art turning back to itself in order to question its own status–, Juan Pablo Renzi’s minimal arguments have also appeared in a reflective and exploratory moment, directed at the concept and interested in questioning the artistic praxis.
His minimalist pieces were made in a period of experimental work with the Grupo de Arte de Vanguardia de Rosario (Avant-Garde Art Group of Rosario), which gathered young people from various places (especially from Juan Grela’s group and the University School of Fine Arts), who were not only interested in breaking up with traditional forms of art but also looking for new tactics and ways of doing. Therefore, from his work’s perspective, primary structures marked the passage from the pictorial tradition to political radicalization, that is to say, they belong to the period that followed his expressionist paintings and preceded the critical ending of Tucumán Arde (Tucumán is Burning). This was also a key moment for the Argentine cultural scene, since the period served as a prelude to the artistic and political demonstrations of 1968.
Among these minimalistic works he made the series “Representaciones sólidas del agua y otros fluidos” (Solid representations of Water and Other Fluids), with pieces such as Cubo de hielo y charco de agua (Ice Cube and Pool of Water) and Representación de la forma y el volumen en proporción del contenido en agua del lago del Parque Independencia (Representation of the Shape and Volume of the Water Content of Parque Independencia lake), which, already by mid-1966, pushed the concept of representation to the limit. Rethinking the tension between what is real and what is represented has been a central theme that, since the allegory of the cave, gave rise to new questions about the real, the apparent, the truth or the illusion; these questions are also made tense as they face the illusory reality of a piece of ice represented by a metal cube, the idea of a pool solidified in aluminum, or even the frictions created when a same shape represents a cloud, a pool or a lake.
Since Renzi was interested in questioning the thinking used to straighten reality, he intended to take the viewer used to contemplation to apparently paradoxical situations. In 1967 he started a series of reflections on the empty space perception, with works such as Grados de libertad de un espacio real (Degrees of Freedom of a Real Space), El ángulo recto (The Right Angle) and Prisma de aire (Materialización de las coordenadas espaciales de un prisma de aire) (Prism of Air [Materialization of the Spatial Coordinates of a Prism of Air]). In this last work he built a huge structure that emphasizes the spatial dimension of a prism and the real space it occupies, though it delimits its own vacuity, or more accurately, it holds the air mentioned in the title of the work. Pointing out what is missing sharpens the senses and boosts a dialectic game between the visual shape and the logical proposition expressed by the idea.
These spatial dimensions, in turn, led him to deal with volume from the point of view of capacity, which meant starting from a given, quantified content. This series he called “Proyectos con Agua” (Water Projects) includes Agua de todas partes del mundo (Waters from All Parts of the World), which consists of forty-nine water bottles labeled with their place of origin. Renzi told Sol LeWitt about this project while LeWitt was in Buenos Aires, and LeWitt committed himself to sending Renzi (and in fact he did) a card certifying that the water from New York was genuine.
In this line he also made 1000 litros de agua y 1000 litros de aire, intercambiables (1,000 Liters of Water and 1,000 Liters of Air, Interchangeable), in which he tried to stress the possibility of obtaining equivalent capacities by confronting two different realities, such as a 1,000-liter tank and 100 10-liter buckets. The fact that both realities get close makes the gap between the sensitive experience and the reasoning obvious. However, a key aspect of this work is found in the “interchangeable” nature, because this possibility of exchanging content brings the viewer into the scene. The viewer is called to be a protagonist, since he is not only invited to perform an analytical work of that reality, but he is also offered the possibility of directly acting on it. The viewer is free to act but is motivated, he is a very important partner to the completion of the work and is also essential to the political activism Renzi was committed to.
In the “Paisajes” (Landscapes) Series, 1968, he developed the concept starting from a basic geometry but with the intervention of figurative images. In Paisaje de la mancha (Stain Landscape) and Paisaje (Landscape) –for which he was awarded the Ver y Estimar Honor Prize– he started from a given number of bricks or floor tiles to show the limits of a minimal, focused landscape, with an angle of vision that challenges all our expectations before the panoramic view that characterized the landscape genre throughout art history. In the first case, the stain was represented by a liter of spilled paint, whereas in the second, he put six flowerpots with their plants over the floor tiles and a pipe going from the ceiling to the floor; in both works stillness and the permanence of memory are emphasized.
Renzi presented these productions in the most important exhibitions that included the primary structures of the time, from those exhibited in Rosario, Córdoba, Santa Fe and Montevideo to those organized in Buenos Aires by Instituto Torcuato Di Tella or by Georges Braque and Ver y Estimar Prizes. His minimalistic proposals and his theoretical production of the period left a stamp of an artist prone to explore every idea from every possible angle and take his searches to the very limit.
Even though the Avant-Garde Art Group of Rosario were confident that art was a real factor of change, they started to question its effectiveness by mid-1968. The same reflective attitude that drove Renzi to make his first minimalistic works in 1966 led him to take the decision to play an active role in order to start a new stage in the construction of the alternative culture they intended to build. Even though those objectives failed, the ideals, works and actions from that period left a stamp that prevails in the history of Latin American culture.
Cristina Rossi