TECHNIQUE, CRAFT AND ICONOGRAPHY - SEBASTIÁN GORDÍN AT SICARDI
Sicardi Gallery presented Sebastián Gordín: two of us, the Argentine artist’s exhibition, curated by Fernando Castro R.
Curatorial text by Fernando Castro R.
Some album covers are more iconic than cans of Campbell soup. Who can forget The Beatles 1969 album cover Abbey Road? Or the 1967 album The Velvet Underground & Nico, with a banana design by Andy Warhol —infamously quoted by Maurizio Cattelan in his 2019 Comedian? At your own peril, try to ignore Santana's intoxicating hymns of a generation in the 1970 album Abraxas. In fact, more than iconic, they are sonic because if you see one of these covers, you can remember music from the album and vice versa. In a convoluted sort of way, that is the idea behind Sebastián Gordín's new exhibition Two of Us, except his works do not allude to a pre-existing album cover. Instead, he has appropriated from actual songs the titles of some of his works, whose visual content often clash with them.
Sebastián Gordín (b. 1969) is an Argentine artist well-known for his whimsical boxes, cartoonish magazine covers, and intriguing miniature maquettes of things like The Museum of Zombie Art, the Odeón movie theaters, libraries, bar scenes, etc. For Two of Us he has crafted works the size of an album cover using marquetry; i.e., inlaid work made with thin wooden laminates cut and sliced with a laser cutter. Besides drawing, Gordín performs the acts of designing, fitting, and gluing that marquetry requires. Those skills separate him from many conceptual artists who either lack a craft or chose not to use it in order to focus on ideas. As a matter of fact, throughout his artistic career, Gordín has shown to be endowed with many crafts. Early in his career, he drew comic books and later developed skills for constructing incongruous objects, for assembling electrical gizmos, and most notably, for building scale models. The works in two of us resurrect a comic book style of depiction with a twist of Hopper, Goya, and Chris Ware.
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Sebastián Gordín, Two of us, Edition 2/2, 2023. Natural and dyed wood veneer on panel, 13 x 13 in. (33 x 33 cm.)
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Sebastián Gordín, Vos también estabas verde, Edition 2/2, 2024. Natural and dyed wood veneer on panel, 13 x 13 in. (33 x 33 cm.)
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Sebastián Gordín, Colección Costello, Edition 2/2, 2024. Natural and dyed wood veneer on panel 13 x 13 x 25/32 in. (33 x 33 x 2 cm.)
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Sebastián Gordín, La Balsa, Edition 2/2, 2024. Natural and dyed wood veneer on panel 13 x 13 in. (33 x 33 cm.)
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Sebastián Gordín, Me puedo programar, Edition 2/2, 2024. Natural and dyed wood veneer on panel 13 x 13 in. (33 x 33 cm.)
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Sebastián Gordín, My little blue window, Edition 2/2, 2024. Natural and dyed wood veneer on panel 13 x 13 in. (33 x 33 cm.)
Sebastián Gordín: two of us.
Until August 31, 2024.
Sicardi Gallery. 1506 W Alabama St. Houston, Texas 77006. United States.
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