Something is rotten in the State of Denmark. Shortly before midnight, Hamlet, Horatio and Marcellus talk between the protective battlements of the castle. While waiting in the dark, listening to the celebration of the palace men laughing and dancing drunk; the country is the laughing stock of Europe. The ghost of Hamlet’s father murdered by the current king, makes an appearance and Hamlet departs with him despite his friends advices. Marcellus, infuriated by the obvious moral and political corruption in his country, delivers one of the most famous lines in English literature: «Something is rotten in the State of Denmark.» Horatio prefers to rely on the divine that will save everything, but Marcellus -sage – knows it can not be.
Tensions between construction, durability and the false image are the basis of this group show with Nicolás Vasen and Luciana Rondolini. Working sculpture, drawing, photo and installation from very different sensibilities, Vasen and Rondolini ‘s works converge in their approach to the building of The Centro Cultural Recoleta as a fragile container of meanings. Vasen’s structures inhabit the space decorated by Rondolini in a counterpoint to works dealing with opposing concepts that are based on the architecture and construction, voltage and resistance, matrix and decoration, decadence and ostentation.
Appearance and reality. The uncomfortable truth is coated of appearance –with lights- all pleasant but that requires a closer look. The material is resistant to change but after all is malleable, revealing layers and inner mechanisms. The shapes echo the ideas and conversations that rumble by a former convent. The palace intrigues are not far away from the internal tensions of an art exhibition. We follow the ghost of Hamlet’s father into the darkness because we know that there is no divine will that change the state of the art.
Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, May, 2014.