THE IMMENSE AND THE INTIMATE, A MAGICAL RECORD TO VISIT AT MALBA PUERTOS
Between the exposed Misiones jungle and the revealed basin of the Río de la Plata, the museum proposes a journey through the work of Florencia Böhtlingk this summer.
At first, the exhibition asks to be read, to be heard. MANDIOCA, PARROT, PARANÁ RIVER, TACURÚ, PARADISE, JUNGLE, TOBACCO, TOUCANS, FEIJÃO, ORCHIDS. AGRARIAN REFORM, PEOPLE, WISDOM OF AMERICA, TRAITORS TO THE HOMELAND, THEY STOLE EVERYTHING, CIVILIZATION AND BARBARISM. Painted like shouts across two large works, these words form the map of Florencia Böhtlingk’s absolutely real—almost fantastical—world (Buenos Aires, 1966). Malba Puertos presents I Swear All of This Happened in One Day, bringing together more than 90 works by the Argentine artist, spanning 14 years of production. A deeply poetic body of work, about what the territory offers and what takes place within it.
Sharpening one’s gaze to grasp a lush piece, or simply contemplating the landscape on canvas. Observing the jungle by day, tracing the measured lines of its leaves, the spirals of shrubs, the undulating fall of the waterfall, the roundness of the fruits; or not fearing the nocturnal image, and savoring the silence of the water, the spherical trees, their deliberate owls, and their enveloping blue. Through different geometric plays, Böhtlingk manages to fit an immense world onto a canvas, to make everything happen in a single day. This is how the artist portrays the city of Buenos Aires and the Río de la Plata basin, or the Misiones jungle—astutely, mathematically, densely, and yet alive.
Driven by a desire to record, Böhtlingk presents images that recall popular art as well as codes from pre-Hispanic art. She depicts everyday scenes that are not free of tension. She produces simple representations from which a magical hue emerges, where the immense and the intimate merge. The immensity of the territory, the intimacy of the ordinary. The intense yellow of the sun on the leaves draws us in, the complex necks of herons delight, the movement of water’s touches sets things in motion. Beauty lies in the moment when everything converges.
Böhtlingk reveals the elegance of her horizons by using the divine geometric rules of nature to represent it. She draws the wild that cannot be silenced and its coexistence with the human, and that human uncertainty—and need—to understand what cannot be quieted.
Behind certain pieces hanging in the gallery, the artist places a self-portrait on the reverse. Böhtlingk presents a story of her own.
The exhibition can be seen through March 8, 2026, at Malba Puertos, Alisal 160, Bahía, Puertos, Escobar, Province of Buenos Aires (Argentina).
*Cover image: Florencia Böhtlingk. The Great Nighttime Projects, 2024. Oil on canvas.
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