Luis Camnitzer
Alexander Gray Associates, New York
In this second solo show that the Uruguayan artist presented at the New York gallery, Alexander Gray, Luis Camnitzer (Lübeck, 1937) considered a leading figure in the realm of Latin American conceptual art posed once again, a reflection on the dictatorial regime that ruled Uruguay between 1973 and 1985. This time Camnitzer, employing a minimalist aesthetics which although we have seen him use on other occasions, is not his only poetic resource reproduced Montevideo’s telephone book, inserting in it the names of the nearly 300 people who ‘disappeared’ during the dictatorial regime.
Thus, Memorial was an installation comprised of 195 pages from the mentioned book, conveniently and soberly framed in black and displayed, one after another, as if they were part of an archive. These pages were apparently undistinguishable from those included in the original telephone directory, and the names of the ‘disappeared’ could not be told apart from the rest.
In this way Camnitzer, in a treatment of political art unconnected with propaganda or graphic illustration, introduced a modification, with precision and sensibility, in one of the issues inseparable from every socio-political tragedy: the invisibility of the event. The artist rendered the ‘disappeared’ visible by concealing them in a reflection which was as subtly poetic as it was complex on the futility of classification. Nothing in his lists distinguished the victims from the aggressors, so ambiguity reigned to account for a profound conceptual content, in which language itself and its arrangement became the protagonists.
The work of Camnitzer, who settled in New York in 1964, has been widely shown in the international art scene, but he has always remained faithful to his conception of art as a product of reflection rather than as a commercial work.
Until 31 July, the Central Library in Zurich will be exhibiting the installation El Último Libro (The Last Book), a collection of visual and written testimonies by more than 680 artists from 50 countries, compiled and launched by the artist to create a legacy for posterity.
