ZMUD: THE CELEBRATION OF A CYCLE AFTER SEVEN YEARS
Since July 17th, the contemporary art gallery ZMUD that did so much - and still does - for the Argentinean art scene, whether from the professionalization of artists or the commercialization of works, dresses its walls with the works of all those artists who once went through it to close a stage. Larisa Luz Zmud, founder and director of the gallery, described it with sincere words in an e-mail that circulated through galleries ZMUD friends, thrilling and reflecting all its readers: "I do not propose this as a closure, but as a transformation to change to something more in keeping with the real situation of Argentina and its art market. It's not an end, it's a new chapter". This is why ZMUD says goodbye in a big way through an intense two-week cycle with open talks on collecting, analysis of works, feminism, and everything you can imagine: of course, crowning him with a party on Saturday 28th at the space itself.
With only 25 years, Larisa Zmud and Natalia Sly founded Slyzmud in the heart of Villa Crespo, seven years later already consecrated as one of the most important contemporary art galleries in Buenos Aires, the gallery that today only bears the name of ZMUD is dismiss or, rather, say until soon. In conversation with Arte Al Día, Larisa argued that the decision is not due to a specific element of the economic, political, social, artistic or global context, but to a sum of all of them. "As a gallerist, I have to rethink and rethink the role that galleries play today and carefully scrutinize the art scene to see what happens," Larisa explains between photographs by Miguel Mitlag and drawings by Nahuel Vecino, adding, "always leaving aside the hypocrisy that the market and art should not go together".
Seen in this way, on the one hand, the closure of ZMUD appears more like a change of air, a parenthesis to see how to cooperate with the professionalization of Argentine art and its repercussion abroad, a mission that all the Meridiano galleries have. On the other hand, it also emerges as a metamorphosis in the career of a very interesting figure for Argentina that is Larisa Zmud.
Co-founder and member of the management team of Meridiano, at only 32 years old, Larisa admits that the end of this cycle is also an exploration to cooperate with local art but from another side: "When we opened the gallery with Natalia they had an institutional role that today, happily, it has been occupied by institutions such as the Torcuato Di Tella University or the Modern Museum ", says Larisa and says that at present one can spend days in the gallery without anyone entering. Consequently, the curator sees this as a new opportunity to contribute from the pedagogical, especially focused on the role of the spectators. In this new cycle, he assures that he would like to form a kind of collective of curatorial education sustained through projects and patronages, or belong to an important curatorial team of a museum, either in Argentina or abroad.
Also, in relation to the local artistic context, Zmud recognizes that what Argentina needs are agents. "Luckily we have figures like Inés Katzenstein, in the MoMA, to mention someone. That is precisely what local artists need, a legitimating voice that does not come from the galleries. "
Full of emotions, the assembly of the gallery that is at 721 Bonpland street, covers all the environments of the building. Almost as if it were a family home, the walls of Zmud express the seven years lived by a group of curators, artists, colleagues, friends and brothers. Salón Smooth, as it is called this last period of two weeks, is the reflection of all that represents ZMUD as a gallery and Larisa Zmud as one of the people most committed to the dissemination of contemporary Argentine art.
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Ph: Matías Helbig
