POTATOES AND PREMONITIONS: GRIPPO’S SUBTLETY AT ESPACIO FAN

A gallery dresses itself in white—the mineral white of plaster. In its storefront window, it displays time itself: four wired potatoes and a passage from Dostoevsky. It is Tiempo by Víctor Grippo (1936–2002). Espacio Fan turns its attention to the work of the Argentine conceptual artist who sought to “provide a totalizing image that would destroy or weaken that kind of blindness which has rendered it almost invisible to the majority.” Curated by Sol Echevarría and Carlos Godoy, the exhibition Sutil undertakes the task of recalling premonitions and revisiting realities.

The show brings together Grippo’s two most recurring universes: that of the earth and that of construction. The potato, as root and labor, and lead, as the material that forges the city, share space in a conceptual dialogue that reflects on Sarmientine tensions. “We created a crossing between what, for us, constitutes Argentine identity,” Echevarría explains.

Drawings and diagrams reveal the artist’s reflective and theoretical backstage. “Watch out! Trio: matter, energy, consciousness,” reads one of the sketches—words that encapsulate the exhibition’s subtle scene. The note could well be the conclusion of endless studies: that trio should not be thought of in isolation.

Why bring Víctor Grippo back now? Godoy responds: “For several years, the art world has sought to recover certain lines of thought that predate the Conquest. In that sense, Grippo feels extremely current. He works with potatoes, he works with energy, he works with minerals—a line centered on the roots of labor. We are at a moment when these issues are being debated: the glaciers law, labor reform… Grippo’s agenda is not only an art-world agenda; it is a social one.”

“To enter Víctor Grippo’s work is to enter the raw material and the labor force that gave rise to our tradition—not to untangle a knot but to point to its tension, insofar as we remain bound by its premises. That point where the rope is always about to snap and, like the sword of Damocles, fall upon our heads,” Echevarría adds.

When the discipline engages visceral themes, revisiting artists becomes a contemporary gesture.