Material and Its Images María José Herrera
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In 1984, Osvaldo Decastelli embarked on a singular adventure:
exploring a material and symbolic possibilities of that single material—
corrugated cardboard—that has many uses in daily life but, until then,
none in art. He chose it for several reasons, one of them its very
familiarity. “I felt the need to look for less gloomy images that might be
closer to the larger public,” he said.(1) Thus, this highly suggestive
material, charged with the connotations of its extra-artistic uses (light,
rustic and industrial, it is used for boxes and other packaging), was a
creative challenge to Decastelli, as he sought means to work with a
material outside the art tradition. Unbound to styles or prior models, he
has engaged, from that moment on, in invention as close to what the
material suggests as it is free from the conditions that it might impose.
When I was nine, for my birthday I got a soccer ball and a tennis
racquet, as well as a canvas stretcher and an easel, things related
to art. My interest in art was natural and fluid, but I never thought of
it as the beginning of a career . I was supposed to be an accountant.
When I was a kid, I remember I would often wake up in the morning
and sit on the side of my bed and say to myself: Today I will make
something up!
In the summer , I felt the need to get a job related to art. In the
mornings I would go to the club, play tennis and paddleball and go
swimming, and in the afternoon I usually worked at a workshop of
some sort: once a book binding workshop, another time a porcelain
workshop where it was my job to paint figures, and then a window
dresser’s workshop that was working on the springtime window
display for Thompson and Williams.
(2) When I was through working
there, the window dresser told my father that I had talent and
suggested that I go to art school. Until then, that was unthinkable
for me. But I guess it was somewhere inside, latent, because when
my father mentioned it to me, I immediately started looking into
how to get in. And so I prepared and took the exam. I didn’t tell
my parents until it was all set! I studied at Belgrano (3) thinking that
I would be a painter , but then I discovered that I loved working in
three dimensions. Then I went to Pueyrredón,
(4) where I majored in
sculpture. That changed my life; my classmates and I formed a very
tight group and the teachers were good: Juan Batlle Planas,
Aída Carballo, Ana María Moncalvo in printmaking; Mario Arriguti, Luis Balduzzi and Labourdette in sculpture; Miguel Diomede and
Aníbal Carreño in painting; Irene Crespi and Marta del Castillo in
composition. Blanca Pastor was my Art History professor.
The same teachers taught at De la Cárcova, (5) so once I had
graduated from the Pueyrredón, there was no reason to |
(1). Luis Aubele,
“De lo simple a la
fantasía”, Buenos
Aires, La Nación
newspaper , April 24,
1995.
(2). A traditional tailor
shop in downtown
Buenos Aires.
(3). Escuela de Bellas
Artes Manuel
Belgrano, first level of
study in the fine arts
program.—Trans.
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go on.
It was not common in those years to take studio classes… the best
ones were at the schools.
I consider Luis Balduzzi my true mentor . He told me whatever he
thought about my work, not only the good things, and that allowed
me to grow. I stayed in touch with him after I had graduated.
Although at that time no one spoke of “crits,” that was what we
were doing. I took him the work or he came by my studio, and we
talked for hours. That went on until 25 years ago, exactly the same
number of years that I have worked with corrugated cardboard.
I remember showing him my first works in cardboard. When I went
to see him, I was agitated; I didn’t know what he was going to say.
Even though it was the 1980s by then, sculpture continued, as it
always had, to value traditional materials. But Balduzzi encouraged
me a great deal and said, “Whatever it is you are doing you are
doing it well.” He said something to me that later proved true:
“If you keep working with this material, it’s going to become a sort
of mark of your identity. People are going to associate Decastelli
with corrugated cardboard.” And he was not wrong…
Would you say that your sculptures are textile in nature?
Not my sculptures, but some of my works are. I distinguish between
these works and my sculptures because in the latter volume, space
and form predominate. Lately, though, many of my works are textile
in nature, because the material is crucial and they are wholly
abstract. I realized that before the material was, for me, just a support;
now I dialogue with it and observe how we communicate. I provoke
the material to get a response; I hit it so that it vibrates; I scrape it and
respond to it; I tear and uncover , generating confrontations. That’s
how I get the best out of it, forcing it to reveal its soul. I render the
formal qualities of corrugated cardboard subjective. I recycle it until
it becomes something else and thus continues its course. To
reinforce this idea, I like the notion of disemboweling, that is,
removing or taking out its innards. Investigating, discovering the Luis Balduzzi and Labourdette in sculpture; Miguel Diomede and
Aníbal Carreño in painting; Irene Crespi and Marta del Castillo in
composition. Blanca Pastor was my Art History professor .
The same teachers taught at De la Cárcova, (5) so once I had
graduated from the Pueyrredón, there was no reason to go on.
It was not common in those years to take studio classes… the best
ones were at the schools.
I consider Luis Balduzzi my true mentor . He told me whatever he
thought about my work, not only the good things, and that allowed
me |
(4). Escuela Nacional
de Bellas Artes
Prilidiano
Pueyrredón, now part
of the IUNA (Instituto
Universitario Nacional
del Arte).—Trans.
(5). Escuela Superior
de Bellas Artes
Ernesto de la
Cárcova (the
post-graduate
level art program),
now part of the
IUNA.—Trans.
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to grow. I stayed in touch with him after I had graduated.
Although at that time no one spoke of “crits,” that was what we
were doing. I took him the work or he came by my studio, and we
talked for hours. That went on until 25 years ago, exactly the same
number of years that I have worked with corrugated cardboard.
I remember showing him my first works in cardboard. When I went
to see him, I was agitated; I didn’t know what he was going to say.
Even though it was the 1980s by then, sculpture continued, as it
always had, to value traditional materials. But Balduzzi encouraged
me a great deal and said, “Whatever it is you are doing you are
doing it well.” He said something to me that later proved true:
“If you keep working with this material, it’s going to become a sort
of mark of your identity. People are going to associate Decastelli
with corrugated cardboard.” And he was not wrong…
Would you say that your sculptures are textile in nature?
Not my sculptures, but some of my works are. I distinguish between
these works and my sculptures because in the latter volume, space
and form predominate. Lately, though, many of my works are textile
in nature, because the material is crucial and they are wholly
abstract. I realized that before the material was, for me, just a support;
now I dialogue with it and observe how we communicate. I provoke
the material to get a response; I hit it so that it vibrates; I scrape it and
respond to it; I tear and uncover , generating confrontations. That’s
how I get the best out of it, forcing it to reveal its soul. I render the
formal qualities of corrugated cardboard subjective. I recycle it until
it becomes something else and thus continues its course. To
reinforce this idea, I like the notion of disemboweling, that is,
removing or taking out its innards. Investigating, discovering the most difficult and hidden part of something, penetrating those
hidden parts of a material… Removing, tearing out the innards.
The actions that the artist describes yielded works like the series
Vibración [Vibration]. The various layers that make up the corrugated
surface are subject to pressure and blows. Thus, the pre-fabricated forms
of the material reveal a hidden appearance, generating other references
which Decastelli makes use of or not as he transforms it. The cardboard
reveals its textile “soul,” the malleable fibers of its wooden past.
What is the advantage of working with this material as opposed to
wood? With cardboard, you know what you are in for , right?
To a certain extent. I can organize things such that I know what I am in
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for , because if I lay out the cardboard so that the bumps are facing the
same way, a certain thing happens. If I turn them over , something else
happens. But it also depends on the cut; if they are cut
perpendicularly, diagonally or even on a more accentuated diagonal,
that also has an effect…it’s not that predictable.
The cardboard is made from three papers: two liners and one wavy
sheet. The wavy sheet is always darker. It is usually made from
recycled paper and, as a result, softer. The different components
mean that there are variations in color. I use the hardest
cardboards there are, the ones made from actual wood, not
recycled cardboard.
When we speak of a textile quality, I am also referring to the fact that the
material is vegetable. Historical records have shown that paper keeps
better than canvas. In that sense, this is a very noble material, though it
is often called “precarious.”
And that is exactly what I am trying to get across. Many people ask
me how this material is preserved. I speak of early printing. But
actually I don’t worry about that very much, because I think that
what really matters is that the meaning and constant values endure
over time… I am more concerned with that other time, which is
unrelated to the preservation of materials. I joke and say that we
could make a hologram of the work and then it would exist forever! The image in your work makes reference to play, to toys of the sort “what
can I make up today?” How would you describe your creative process?
I am going to tell you about the phases of my work. When I started
with the corrugated cardboard, I had been working with the human
figure. I started with the profiles of two figures, one male and one
female, standing up. I divided each one up into five equal parts with
parallel cuts in each, so that I could later recompose them.
Depending on where I later put the fragments, different images
arose, giving a sense of mechanical, non-organic movement despite
the fact that these were human figures. I was surprised by that and
started to concentrate on it, making a series of characters. Furthering this idea of mechanical movement, I started modifying the
scale of the objects we use every day. I made these sorts of hinges
that caused many people to wonder if these pieces moved or were
imbedded, when they were really just one piece. When I finished that
series, I kept working with the idea of movement, but this time with
real movement. It occurred to me to work with box-objects. The box
is inherent to corrugated cardboard and the movement of opening
and closing, showing the content which is also the container . I also
made a series of book-objects using |
(6). See Jean
Baudrillard,
El sistema de los
objetos, Buenos
Aires, Siglo XXI
Editores, 1969
(English title: The
System of Objects).
(7). Jorge Romero
Brest, Nuevas
modalidades del
arte, Buenos Aires,
Ediciones Culturales
Olivetti, 1970.
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the same criterion. Furthering
this idea of opening and closing, content and container , I made
purses that were intended to be household objects but, if you
wanted, could also be taken out and become functional.
The object was one of the terrains conquered by 20th-century art.
It furthered the development of Dadaist, Surrealist, Informalist and Pop Art
imaginations… In that exponential proliferation of objects of which
Jean Baudrillard spoke, artists have used humor and intelligence to
challenge the necessarily impossible categories of a world first
mechanical and then digital. Though objects are defined by function,
they exceed use or , at least, do more than satisfy functional needs.
They are fruit of the mental and cultural structures of each era. (6) This is
very clear in the sphere of art. So, Decastelli’s aesthetic experience
extends the meaning of the work of art by combining it with the
messages found on the street. In keeping with the theories of Jorge
Romero Brest, this is an “art for consumption” obviously geared
towards “the body as a whole,” not just the eyes and mind, the way
traditional art is.(7) After starting to create objects, I was invited to participate in a
series of group shows, like Rostros de la máscara and Calzar el arte,
the latter with the shoe designer Sylvie Geronimi. Each artist made
a piece of footwear in keeping with his or her image; both shows
were curated by Silvia Ambrosini. (8) I also participated in group
shows of screens and fans, toys and games, artist’s books…
The origin of the “artist’s book” lies in the early 20th-century avant-garde
and it reached its height in the 1960s. With the crossing of genres that
took place at that time, many artists combined painting, sculpture and
poetry in books. Though based on the physical form of the book and the
codex format (a set of pages put together in sequence), “artist’s books”
attempt to break, modify, transgress or emphasize the book and its
format. Some focus on literary or visual contents, on different experiments
with conceptual aspects of the Western conception of the book.
Decastelli’s books entail metaphors and references based on the codex
format. In Buscando una mujer I [Looking for a Woman I] (p. 49) and
Existencia orgánica [Organic Existence] (p. 53), for instance, the structure
of the object is the sheets of bound cardboard. Historically, books have
created and shown worlds, and Decastelli works with this idea when
he engraves forms at the heart of the object that are revealed as the
pages are turned, engaging the temporal nature of all reading.
In the cross between zoomorphic characters and sculptural books,
Garrá lo libro que no |
muerden [Grab at Them Books, They Don’t Bite]
(p. 50) manifests the artist’s sense of humor , combining a common
phrase with the playful and threatening shape of an animal’s maw.
…Then came the years when I made small pieces of furniture to
store things. But I gave that up when I walked into MoMA in
New York and I saw one of my chairs!
(9) Of course, I was familiar with
Frank Gehry as an architect, but I knew nothing about his objects.
When I put mine at the store in the Museo Sívori, everyone said,
“This reminds me of something.” So I said, “Enough.” It was, in fact,
just a passing moment in my work, a logical outgrowth of the
constructive properties of cardboard.
After that, I started this current phase of dialogue with the material.
Along the way, and in the interest of going further , I took an X-ray of
the material, did tests with small cardboard objects that I later cast in bronze using the lost wax technique. That technique is very
precise and it allows you to reproduce tiny textures and folds…
The way that you “estrange” the material with that passage to bronze is
ery interesting. The resulting piece looks like it is made of cork or
tone. You are intentionally working in very different ways. When and
ow did photography appear in the course of this evolution of the
mage and the objects that you have told me about?
One day I was looking at family photos and I cut off the head of one
of my grandchildren. I put it on cardboard and that made way for
everything I am doing now. I was not only interested in the outcome,
but also in the association with printed boxes, packaging. I saw the
way that photography reinforced one of the images associated
with cardboard.
You made a similar association at the beginning, when an industrial
material, cardboard, created in your mind an image of the mechanical
world: hinges and gears. All materials are always associated with
other things. In the industrial and the virtual movement that emerges,
see comics. Something like the comics that you tell yourself through
hese objects. Have you ever been interested in the work of
Fernand Léger?
No, I have never been interested in being part of any ism, nor
have I felt influenced by anyone. If you ask me what artists I am
interested in, I wouldn’t know! I might say… Alberto Heredia,
Antonio Berni… but I don’t know exactly how they might have
influenced me. Maybe something about their playfulness and their
use of somewhat raw, unmasked materials. How does an image take shape in your mind? When you start working,
do you make a sketch? |
(8). In 1970, Silvia de
Ambrosini founded,
along with Germaine
Derbecq, Artinf, a
prestigious art
journal. A disciple of
Romero Brest,
Ambrosini was in
charge of the
education
department of the
Museo Nacional de
Bellas Artes. As a
freelance curator
and on the basis of
her work at the
journal, she has
organized
anthological
exhibitions of object
art, the first of which
was Más allá del
objeto in 1989.
It is different at different stages. Early on, I made sketches and
drew. When I arrived at the image, I took the drawings to scale.
The objects and installations were a mix of drawing and mental
construction. And the others… just trial and error .
Your description sounds like a “Cubist procedure”…
I think so. My thinking is totally rationalist and I believe in the simplification of forms and the representation of objects according
to man’s image; that might fit into the Cubist procedure.
I truly believe that you tell stories through your objects. Is there any
connection between what you read and the stories you want to tell?
Any literary influence?
No, I think my inspiration is more psychological in nature, though
anything you read affects you in some way.
Decastelli tells me that he has read a good deal of Julio Cortázar and
I see a certain amount of Surrealism in his installations with fantastic
and threatening animals or in the altered scale of his giant knives,
wheels and gears. I can see that he is interested in science fiction and
Zen philosophy, and I understand that the precision of his forms is
born from the discipline of his imagination. Specifically, in the 1995
installation Estigma [Stigma] (pp. 31-35), he formulates “the dilemma
of contemporary man before a society that demands the
homogenization of the individual, the erasure of differences,
domestication.” That’s how Corinne Sacca-Abadi put it, comparing his
work to Cortázar’s House Taken Over. “As the internal spaces are
occupied, the inside and outside are fused, contaminating the house,
rendering that universe uninhabitable.”(10)
What is your relationship with technology?
I am fascinated by the Internet… everything is there. My daughters
had computers from the time they were small, the Commodore back
then. I learned about computers and made some programs that
generated shapes, and I then made some of them in three
dimensions. My current photographs are also the product of digitally
modified direct shots.
Are you in analysis?
No, never have been, but I am interested in it. One of my daughters
is a psychologist and I have had many psychology students at my
studio, so I am somewhat familiar with the field. I have the vision of
someone who wants to know deeply. |
(9). He is referring to
Gehry’s Easy Edges
series, created from
1969 to 1973.
(10). Corinne
Sacca-Abadi,
“Estigma y dilema.
Decastelli en el
Museo Sívori”, in
ACI (Arte, Crítica,
Investigación),
newsletter of the
press office of
the Asociación
Argentina de
Críticos de Arte
(AACA), nº 2,
Buenos Aires,
1998.
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What, for you, does “inventing” mean?
I associate it with constructing, making up a toy or mechanism for
myself. I am drawn to everything that entails movement… one day
I came up with the idea of an object to make square hard boiled
eggs. A student of mine was studying industrial design, so the two
of us started working on that. Then I made a “bench for crowds,”
a bench made from corrugated cardboard that looks like a folder .
You unfold it and sit down, then you fold it up again and take it
with you: very useful at concerts! Another student, an architect, and
I had a cubic meter project: a meter of concrete, glass and iron to
be placed in Puerto Madero, San Telmo (Chile and Balcarce, say),
naturally peaceful places that encourage contemplation. A space for
artists to do interventions. A cubic meter , or more, for each artist.
We would have to get sponsors and authorization for it, though…
I believe in formulating life such that creativity is developed at the
daily level, starting with childhood and through maturity. Because
many things come from life itself. Let me give you an example… in
the year 1994, the students at my studio started getting together for
dinner here, at the studio, once a month. We decided that each of us
would cook his or her specialty. In two year’s time, each of us had
cooked. At that point, I proposed that each of us organize a meal
with the help of another . The idea of getting together was a constant,
but no longer in the studio or in restaurants or private homes.
The get-togethers were to have a creative aim. So we moved from
place to place, like theaters, railway bridges, parks and so forth.
Though friends and others wanted to participate because of what
they had heard, we decided to keep it for us, within our codes.
And that is how Cena “Arte a punto” [Dinner , Art at the Perfect
Coction] came about, a project that was eventually taken to the café
at the Museo Sívori. Now we invite artists to share in the project’s
aesthetic, conceptualization and sentiment, which means expanding
into another art form, the art of cooking. There are interventions in
the space, the tables, the dishes… and other art actions.
How did you go from sculpture to photography?
I started with the photograph of my grandson and I kept testing
things out. The first works were objects in which I included a
photo. One day I was “peeling” a piece of cardboard and, as always, I was very aware of the process. I was struck by the
shavings that were being produced. So I photographed them, and
that led to the photographic works. The idea is that they are part
of something that |
they were (the cardboard) and they come
together to become something else. In the midst of this,
I was invited to show at Arte x Arte. I don’t consider myself
a photographer , though I am interested in experimenting
with photography. That’s why I decided to do two photographic
installations on that occasion.
The photographs are an outgrowth of the textile phase. They focus
on the textural qualities and the images that arise from them. As in
Malas hierbas [Bad Herbs] (pp. 12-15), where through an object the
artist reconstructs the feeling of the wind, of movement through a field.
A fleeting feeling from a trip to Africa. Decastelli exhibited that object
along with photographs that show things that the human eye cannot
see straight away. Zooming, scanning and digital intervention open up
the meanings of an object whose identity, whether in the original or the
photographic reproduction, lies in the material, the corrugated cardboard.
Lastly, considering all the years that you have been working and the
images you have brought to this world, what do you think is at present
the function of the artist?
I don’t think you can speak of a universal function of art or the artist,
though their fields are immense. While the conception of both has
changed over time, in the end their essence is the same:
“discovering” the self and, thereby, revealing the historical moment
in which we live.
According to Jean Duvignaud, art has the power to anticipate by hinting
at what is possible in life as well as in the experience of groups and
individuals...
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