BUENOS AIRES – THE AMALIA LACROZE DE FORTABAT ART COLLECTION PRESENTS MATIAS DUVILLE: HOTEL PALMERA
Curated by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro and Lara Marmor, the show radically exhibits new installations and drawings from different series made throughout Duville's career. "We invite the public to immerse themselves and perceive the strangeness generated by the timeless landscapes made by the artist, graphic representations of the earth created from reconstructions, some made by memory and others invented", state the curators. It is also complemented by a story written by César Aira in relation to the exhibition.
The exhibition proposes a path through different moments filled with the material which Duville, always tireless, uses to create his imaginary worlds. The aim is to make visitors feel lost and disoriented: that awkward, yet desired, state of disorientation that invades us when we are foreigners. It is in this direction where the eye will draw the attention away from the technical skills found in the artworks and be deprived from mental attachments to reason.
Hotel Palmera (Palmtree Hotel) consists of four large stages, organized by two vectors that cross the exhibition and Duville´s entire production: surface-depth and interior-exterior relationships. Under this conception, the curators have decided along with the artist to conceive the architectural museum space not as a container but as a space related to and with the artwork. The pieces are interconnected; Images bounce off each other, echoing and playing along, being immersive, all-embracing and magnetic as a whole.
The starting point of the exhibition is a room constructed by large acrylic paintings with hammered incisions on fiberboard. These traces shape the landscape and at the same time delve into the objective reality (wood) to surpass the surface and enter into the world of fiction. Shape and substance are part of an irreducible relationship because atmospheres in Duville´s landscapes are deeply related to the nature of the material and its work.
Music by Centolla Society – the band created by Matías and his brother Pablo- is also part of Hotel Palmera. According to the artist, music is part of his artistic statement. He considers sound to be the best way to travel from place to place. An ambient music and a psychedelic composition will be heard throughout the place, from the inside out all the way through ancient pasts, unknown futures or in the imagined present time created by Matías Duville.
Matías Duville (Buenos Aires, 1974) lives and works between Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata. He works with objects, videos and installations, although his work is developed mainly from drawing. Duville's works are part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Museum of Latin American Art in Los Angeles, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection of Caracas and New York, Lima Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, Museum of Art of Rio de Janeiro, Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rosario, among others .
