AFFAIR #4: COLLABORATIVE PROPOSALS TO EXPLORE

With its characteristic vibrant and collaborative spirit, AFFAIR returns for a new edition at Galerías Larreta, bringing together ideas, sensibilities, projects, people, and artworks. Since last year, AFFAIR has followed a “residents + guests” model, in which each gallery invites another to share its space.

Acéfala with Intemperie – Sofía Goldemberg, Lucía Eugenia López, Julieta Barderi, and Julián Astelarra

With painting as its dominant medium, Acéfala invites the itinerant gallery Intemperie to take part in this edition, creating a dreamlike space. Sofía Goldemberg’s work—which was recently acquired by the Museo Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires—feature birds, feathers, stems, beaks, eggs, and much more, composing her own surreal glossary with references to masters such as Escher and Goya. The presentation also includes a charcoal drawing, which, alongside Julieta Barderi’s hybrid work, stands out as an exception to the predominantly painterly format. The selection also features Lucía Eugenia López’s meticulous compositions and Julián Astelarra’s portraits.

Espacio FAN – Mariela Scafati.

The space directed by Sol Echevarría, which brings together artistic and editorial practices, presents the work of Argentine artist Mariela Scafati. Pruebas de color (Color Tests) is an oracle, a combination, a reading of shades of red. It is a form of “synesthesia” between word and color, a glimpse behind the scenes, from which the monochrome canvas displayed in the space hangs. The curatorial text reads: “Thinking with the hand, shifting a color, returning to a shape, making mistakes, persisting. Showing these operations allows us to imagine the world in the same way: not as something given once and for all, organized according to rigid and immovable relationships, but as a structure open to plasticity.”

The White Lodge with TIEMPO Galería – Featuring works by Sandro Pereira, Richard de Itatí, Lucas Vera, María Bressanello, and Sandro Pereira.

Tucumán-based artist Sandro Pereira presents a combination of paintings in various formats and floating ceramic pieces, harmonized through shades of blue and green. These bold, colorful works resonate with those of Lucas Vera, displayed on the adjacent wall: painted wood carvings evoking religious figures, alongside photographs of religious-popular-figure Gauchito Gil. Both galleries’ proposals seek to establish a dialogue through landscapes, local traditions, and “contemporary forms of creation.” Richard de Itatí’s work reclaims clay to create sculptures that “establish soft boundaries between art, craftsmanship, devotional objects, and popular practices,” while María Bressanello’s paintings place the rivers of Argentina’s coastal region and the act of navigating them within a setting of mystery and drift.

Casa Equis with MUDA – Featuring works by Dante Zaballa, Roberta Di Paolo, Christian Riffel, Sebastián Báez, Robin Baena, Delfina Tesoro, and Mariela Paz Izurieta.

Drawings, paintings, ceramics, embroidery, and sculptural works fill the walls shared by Casa Equis—which also has a gallery space in Mexico City—and MUDA, from Corrientes. Delfina Tesoro’s frames, made from fabric scraps that surround faces, appear alongside Robin Baena’s “modeled textiles.” Dante Zaballa’s frenetic paintings also stand in opposition to the black-and-white drawings by Roberta Di Paolo. The result is a coexistence of contrasts, unexpected associations, and different approaches to image and material.