Maps to get lost is a unique and fascinating project. A plastic artist, Horacio Sánchez Fantino, and a writer, Reynaldo Sietecase, gather their views to retell Buenos Aires through a story of love and failed encounters. The idea is to show the city with the tools of art.
They will walk through the geography of the city with, as Rimbaud said, "the crazy eye of the foreigner". With the freedom and strangeness of lovers in their first meetings. Sánchez Fantino and Sietecase, more than ten years ago, have decided on Buenos Aires as their vital destination and launching platform for their professional projects.
The artistic strategy chosen by the authors includes the making of around twenty works (the Maps) which will be accompanied by narrations, chronicles and poems, acting together as an urban Log Book.
The Maps will be rendered in canvas, wood, collages, papers and cardboard. The city of Buenos Aires will be narrated, and at the same time, will function as the scenario of a quest.
The artists will translate the chosen places of the city (avenues, streets, neighborhoods, fairs, bars, squares, cemeteries) from every possible angle. Even from above. There will be underground views and also maps of the sky.
The works and the stories will be part of an exhibition –scheduled for April 2010, at Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires- and will include different multimedia items. Along with the exhibition, an art book will be published –reproducing the paintings, the literary texts and accurate references to the real places there mentioned (with addresses and photos). In its proposed design the book will have hard covers, 26 per 26 centimeters in size (10,23” x 10,23”), full color pictures and approximately 150 pages.
The Work in Progress of Maps to get lost can be followed through the Internet. At the Web site http://mapasparaperderse.blogspot.com/ you will find the genesis of this work. In this site, the artists will be releasing the drafts of drawings and texts, pictures and researches, videos, music and any other item related to the project.
They will walk through the geography of the city with, as Rimbaud said, "the crazy eye of the foreigner". With the freedom and strangeness of lovers in their first meetings. Sánchez Fantino and Sietecase, more than ten years ago, have decided on Buenos Aires as their vital destination and launching platform for their professional projects.
The artistic strategy chosen by the authors includes the making of around twenty works (the Maps) which will be accompanied by narrations, chronicles and poems, acting together as an urban Log Book.
The Maps will be rendered in canvas, wood, collages, papers and cardboard. The city of Buenos Aires will be narrated, and at the same time, will function as the scenario of a quest.
The artists will translate the chosen places of the city (avenues, streets, neighborhoods, fairs, bars, squares, cemeteries) from every possible angle. Even from above. There will be underground views and also maps of the sky.
The works and the stories will be part of an exhibition –scheduled for April 2010, at Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires- and will include different multimedia items. Along with the exhibition, an art book will be published –reproducing the paintings, the literary texts and accurate references to the real places there mentioned (with addresses and photos). In its proposed design the book will have hard covers, 26 per 26 centimeters in size (10,23” x 10,23”), full color pictures and approximately 150 pages.
The Work in Progress of Maps to get lost can be followed through the Internet. At the Web site http://mapasparaperderse.blogspot.com/ you will find the genesis of this work. In this site, the artists will be releasing the drafts of drawings and texts, pictures and researches, videos, music and any other item related to the project.
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The story:
Maps to get lost tells the story of a quest.
A lost man in search of a lost woman. Both of them, prisoners of lust, walk the city as tireless ghosts.
The urban scenario is the involuntary main character in these desperate walks. Public spaces are transformed in a whimsical manner. Nothing is what seems.
Buenos Aires is not the biggest city in the world, but is indeed one of the most mysterious. Everything may happen.
The streets lay out their traps. There are futile shortcuts. Too many one way tickets to nowhere.
When the lovers are closer is when they get most apart.
As an inventful cartographer, this born-in-Buenos-Aires Ulises will draw impossible maps with the aim of finding the love he has lost.
With the faith of the desperate he will follow these disturbing routes. He will pass through milongas - tango balls- squares, harbors, neighborhoods. He will sleep in cheap hotels, in shanty towns, in fairs.
Many times they’ll try to halt him. He will fall in the temptation of giving up. He will stop, but only to keep walking.
Our hero will have to come up with a plan to go back to the place he has never been: the heart of the woman he lost.
In search of his dream he will descend to the very underground of the city.
To arrive to his destination he will invent signs, he will draw in the sky, he will gather the foot prints of his wandering.
And when he is about to reach his goal, he will be lost again.
As in a tango by Piazzolla, as in a tale by Cortázar, there will be in this story a destiny of failed encounters. Loves and enemies will emerge. Passion and betrayal. The deep marks of the city will be exposed. Sometimes Buenos Aires will be easy, some others unapproachable.
And when he can no longer stand, “when every bell you rang has run out batteries …” ….far from giving up, the illusion hunter will imagine a new way through.
He will draw another map to get lost.
Maps of the cafés – Essential cartography, allows us to quickly get to our bars and cafés which -though possibly distant in time or space- we always feel close to us.
Mixed media on canvass – 160 x 200 cm
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Ojalá ta (1)
Is there in the slum an open door to heaven? Ojalá. Going through it will be the end of all misfortunes? Ojalá. The slum is Latinoamérica. It smells of urine, limitless sun, open skies, children running, violence, little joy and more. Football, drug dealers, teachers, hookers, scrawny dogs, laborers, sweet women, dumbos fried from crack, priests like Mugica (2), nasty policemen. I went to the heart of the settlement for you . Arrived at a narco's following your waist. Through mazy corridors, in the deep night I pursued your fears and vices. “A beautiful sad woman never goes unnoticed”, old ladies told me. “She's not here”, “she never came”, some bums explained. No one knew about your brief trips. You went for a day, I remained. You only get out of a maze flying upward. You only get out of the slum by chance. Or in a bag. Dead you get out. Ojalá, hojalata, ojo la lata (3). Words that say nothing when said. Ojalá God sometime gazes at this ill-stricken place of oblivion. Gazes at it and comes down to turn water into wine, sadness into party, poverty into justice. Amen.
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(1) Ojalá ta: pun. Ojalá: word of arabic origin; it literally means “Allah willing”. Ojalá is a colloquial expression of hope in Spanish. It translates as I hope, Hope so, Wish so. Hojalata means tin. In slums, houses are mainly made of tin. (2) Mugica was an Argentinian third world priest killed during the last dictatorship. (3) Ojo la lata: pun. It literally means "mind the tin". Ojo (n, eye) Arg. colloquialism: watch out, be careful, mind.
Map of shanty towns –Bases on the aerial vision of Villa 31, we dive into its labyrinthian streets, stopping at those places that interest us.Metal and acrylic on wood - 150 x 300 cm.
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Neighborhood carrousels.
Ships traveling on their axis. Same as the dreadful world bearing them. Spinning. Neighborhood carrousels. Keys to joy. Spinning. Races won in wooden horses. Flyovers in airplanes never leaving the ground. Spinning. Trips to nowhere that are worth a childhood.
Map of carrousels – Invites to a labyrinthian route through carrousels and roundabouts of Buenos Aires.Digital work intervened on canvass – 160 x 200 cm.
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The creation of maps.
Fifteen thousand years ago, as on every ordinary day, the males went out hunting. Fifteen thousand years ago, lofty in their rudeness. With their clubs and hairs. Clumsy but determined, whatever it may come, they went for food. All but one. Someone, that day, decided to remain in the cave. Someone decided on solitude, on the hazard of quietness. He had already prepared his blends and small tools of bone and bristles. That day, someone stayed to paint. From that trembling hand, the first drawing was born. From his hallucinated heart, the colors. From his few certainties, the first maps. When all went out hunting. He remained in the cave. Why did he do so?
Maps of the neighborhoods – Using the graphism of a petroglyph (Bedolina) as a model, on each board was engraved a map of one of the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, with only those paths essential to our quest.Mixed media on wood – 16 pieces - 50x 50 cm. each – in metallic colors – Aggregate dimension: 220 x 220 cm.
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Getaways
“What a trip to be standing here”, you told me with a smile. A face of pride. A challenge to the soul. Your expertise was the getaway, few homecomings. You celebrated routes as the only choice. “Don’t know where I’m going." “Don’t know where I come from.” You were mocking. You always mocked while walking the skin of the city you felt hostile as much as beloved. You surrendered your body to its places of risk and beauty. You dragged my illusion as a flag on defeat. “What a trip to be standing here”, you told me crying.
Map at random – This painting places our main character (and the observer) at a starting point (you are here) located on a rotary disc. Thus, the path to be followed and the final destination are more related to chance than to certainty.
Mixed media on wood -190 x 130 cm
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Plaza de Mayo
Low clouds. Rain that doesn't wet. Grey curtains, omens of confusion.
“Fog of the Riachuelo, anchored to the memory, I am still waiting for you”.(1)
Without you I’m a blind man trying to cross 9 de Julio Ave.
“She never came back, I never saw her again, never again her voice named my name by my side. That same voice that said goodbye”. (2)
Silhouettes in Plaza de Mayo. Memories of other fogs. They are there. They are the breeze in the scarves that gently blows the Mothers' hair.
Weather advantage: Eyes that do not see, hearts that have a feeling.
(1)(2) In the original, literal quote from the tango Niebla del Riachuelo.
Low clouds. Rain that doesn't wet. Grey curtains, omens of confusion.
“Fog of the Riachuelo, anchored to the memory, I am still waiting for you”.(1)
Without you I’m a blind man trying to cross 9 de Julio Ave.
“She never came back, I never saw her again, never again her voice named my name by my side. That same voice that said goodbye”. (2)
Silhouettes in Plaza de Mayo. Memories of other fogs. They are there. They are the breeze in the scarves that gently blows the Mothers' hair.
Weather advantage: Eyes that do not see, hearts that have a feeling.
(1)(2) In the original, literal quote from the tango Niebla del Riachuelo.
Map of Fog – On a structure of cartographic coordinates, Buenos Aires is shown hidden under such a dense fog that the fog itself becomes the subject matter of the artistic work. Traces of names, roads, layouts, elements that refer us to the city and to our history can be find.Mixed media on canvass – 200 x 250 cm.
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Let’s go, we are coming.
Where is I? When I am here I want to be there. I dream. I muddle up corners and places. I keep nightmares in different pillows. I greet people not ever met. I get lost.When I am there I am in despair. I long to come back. I kiss the wrong woman. I hug blokes willing to kill me. Confusions of the heart , lack of compass.
I have a deep wish: to erase the borders with my lips. To shorten the distance with hot bites.
Where is I?
From San Telmo with its fruit market , its recently-aged antiques, its tango orchestras bettering the evenings, its English ladies at the verge of a hug?
From República de la Sexta with its simple manners, its tree-lined streets, its Plaza López facing the Paraná, my intimate loves and childhood friends?
Departing is breaking yourself apart. No pain no gain, so never curse Heaven. Nor of the ground you're standing on. Or the city you left behind.
Map of Rosario and Buenos Aires – Playing with the confusion of living in two cities, the one in which you were born and the one adopted, places and characters are overlapping on an ideal map. Short routes connecting places very far apart in reality but very close in our thoughts.Digital artwork intervened on canvass – 160 x 200 cm.
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Rompecabezas
Round and round around a block. The story of the traveler who never left his neighborhood. The explorer of the closest things. The man who knows by heart the geography of proximity. What Doña Juana does at naptime.
The faults of the policeman at the corner. The small scams of the grocer. Clara's smile revealing her happy nights. The man knows who has love, who suffers, who may die tomorrow.
He is the spiritual leader of his neighbors. Impossible not to trust his instructions. He can shuffle the streets and mix them up. He can change everything without changing anything. Switch the maps at his will. To provoque failed meetings, misunderstandings, disputes. Parties, coitus at doorsills, carnival balls.
He is a mysterious and popular god, disassembling for the fun of assembling.
The faults of the policeman at the corner. The small scams of the grocer. Clara's smile revealing her happy nights. The man knows who has love, who suffers, who may die tomorrow.
He is the spiritual leader of his neighbors. Impossible not to trust his instructions. He can shuffle the streets and mix them up. He can change everything without changing anything. Switch the maps at his will. To provoque failed meetings, misunderstandings, disputes. Parties, coitus at doorsills, carnival balls.
He is a mysterious and popular god, disassembling for the fun of assembling.
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Map of uncertain routes – With no fixed starting point and no safe point of arrival, the map is developed in 25 panels, daily changing its arrangement. There will be no better road and any route is uncertain.Mixed media on canvass – 25 canvas of 30 x 40 cm – Aggregate dimension: 220cm in height, variable width.
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Milongas
Games of seduction. Caress at the time of dos por cuatro. The tango is a mystery drawn with the feet. A way to understand everything is so brief that no excuse is worthy.
I met her at La Ideal, we danced almost by chance. At a distraction I kissed her at La Viruta. My hands were the wheel driving the lustfulness, her legs led to the abyss. At Gricel I promised the impossible so she wouldn't leave me. We were a couple and a unity. Fish and bait. I lost her at El Fulgor. “I’ll be right back” she told me.
Her satin dress, her red shoes, coming back to my eyes as a curse. “First you need to know how to suffer, then how to love, then how to depart and at the end wander without thinking”.(1)
Condemned to dance with her shadow for ever and ever, I find out bandoneon means: do not abandon.
(1) In the original, literal quote from the tango Naranjo en Flor.
I met her at La Ideal, we danced almost by chance. At a distraction I kissed her at La Viruta. My hands were the wheel driving the lustfulness, her legs led to the abyss. At Gricel I promised the impossible so she wouldn't leave me. We were a couple and a unity. Fish and bait. I lost her at El Fulgor. “I’ll be right back” she told me.
Her satin dress, her red shoes, coming back to my eyes as a curse. “First you need to know how to suffer, then how to love, then how to depart and at the end wander without thinking”.(1)
Condemned to dance with her shadow for ever and ever, I find out bandoneon means: do not abandon.
(1) In the original, literal quote from the tango Naranjo en Flor.
Map of the Milongas – Misleading paths place us closer to tiled patios and milonga dancing steps.Mixed media on canvass – 160 x 200 cm.
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