ArtDealer from Buenos Aires;Argentina

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Buenos Aires Art Dealer Editorial

Buenos Aires Art Dealer is a trimestrally issued magazine on Art, Antiques & Collectibles made or found in Argentina.

Our country during the last few years experienced an outstanding growth in tourism, this inspired us to offer the visitant an alternative mean to get to know the city, its beauties and treasures. So we aim to complement the city's “natural” virtues such as tango and its outstanding gastronomy with the possibility of rediscovering the marks of our own cultural, historical and esthetic evolution.

Buenos Aires is one of the most important Latin American cities, for it's a cultural, artistic, commerce and fashion center. This breath taking city offers the best of South America: the perfect blend of Latin and European styles. It's high class architecture, excellent gourmet restaurants, top hotels and sights make of this city a must in every one's life. The one hundred barrios porteños described in many tangos are home of all of them. Landmarks of Buenos Aires, each neighborhood –barrio- has a life of it's own, including local variations of language and art. Historically treasured, the city of tango has much to offer to tourists and locals.

For the traveler seeking art, antiques and collectibles items, we offer a tailored tour to suit your needs as well as this periodic magazine for both locals and occasional visitors who enjoy the pleasures of life.

ere you'll find tips and inside data on the city as well as the whole country, recommendations and useful information to make your journey as pleasant and easy as possible.




Go back to Art Dealer´s Homepage: www.artdealer.com.ar

Idea by Artdealer:Roberto Dario Frassinetti.
Editor: Florencia Rodríguez
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[artdealer]

From time to time I find some artist with a promise,this is one of them........

Interviewing Francisco Adaro (Changáa),painter,Argentina.


It was three in the afternoon when I rang the bell at his apartment. For I’m usually late, and I didn’t want it to happen this time I had arrived almost half an hour earlier and to a walk to a nearby park were I sat, smoked a ciggie and watch the kids play for a while.

Francisco comes to the door and invites me in.

As we walk inside he tells me he has just arrived home from work and that he’s going to have lunch. He offers me to share the casserole, but I had eaten a while ago.

We sit in his beautiful living room, surrounded by some of his works. Although the images express there are intensively harsh and painful, the room is perfectly balanced, and I feel at ease. Shiny wooden floors, clear cream walls, and a perfect lighting is the scenery for this about to begin conversation. I love the place, high ceilings and a beautiful inner patio where he tells me he works late at night. Although this is the lowest floor of the building the opening goes all the way to the top, so at night you can see the stars.

I had met him a while ago, when we first went to see his art together with two lovely Americans who had come to visit Buenos Aires and touring through San Telmo had discovered his works and set the meeting to see more of this awesome artist –as they had described it to me-. That time I had met his girlfriend, a beautiful young dancer with sparkly black eyes and his cat, who was now sitting by my side messing around with some paper leftovers.

We begin to talk about Art Dealer’s project, about the way we conceive art and culture and the reason for this interview: we were touched by his paintings and wished to share with our readers and net surfers his work.

As we keep on talking we both find out we’ve got many things in common, friends, acquaints… he had even painted a mural in my faculty’s central yard –it’s still there and its amazing-.

In a very porteñan way we start our conversation with mate, a friend builder, we talk about his work, were he began, how does he manage to work with those terrible images and why does he feel the need of painting that.

Before I press the REC button of my tape recorder I comment about one of his works behind me, were a bunch of people is generating and being suctioned by a sort of twister. I interpret it as a hard look of a folk northern music, in carnival they play for hours and hours a pipe instrument –sikus- and dance all day and night. But he seems to be confused with my comment. I explain, and as I do so I look closer and see that those twister pipes are bullets. “What an interpretation” he says… I have to go to the northern provinces of the country and check it out…

We begin our conversation…<br>

End of Part 1.

[artdealer]

Part 2.

Interviewing a great Argentinean Muralist by Florencia Rodriguez for Art Dealer:


ArtDealer: Hi Francisco, thank you for conceding us this interview

Francisco: Thank you

AD: Tell me, how did you begin painting.
F: I began very young, when I was a child… I really don’t want to give you a cliché answer, but it’s the truth, I’ve been painting since I have use of reason. But I do recall a turning point in this painting, it was when I first met Susana Fedrano, she’s a very well known Argentinean artist, and she invited me to her atelier. I can say it was a before and after this encounter in my life.

AD: Her works are similar to yours, I mean with such an impressive political meaning, as well as the use of different textures and materials?

F: No, her style is much more classic. The thing is that meeting her impacted personally on me, it made me want to fully dedicate to my painting. This back in the early 90s, ’92-’93, while I was still in high school. Some time later I met an awesome drawer, Enrique Morales. His works and mines are in the same path, I think that at that time I was defining myself much more as an artist, my style…<br>
An other thing that I believe had a great impact in defining my style and profile were my political activities. For many years I was an activist in many cultural and social organizations, even when I was still in school I was very involved in our student unions.

I believe all these aspects have played a big role in defining the kind of art I try to portrait.

AD: And now do you live from painting or do you work on something else to make a living and paint at the same time?

F: I started working while I was still at school, doing almost everything, inventing works out of nowhere, I managed to do whatever they needed me to do. Here in Argentina we call these men who do this kind of “all kinds of work” changarín… Some years later my friends nicknamed me El Changa. So I worked to help at home –financially- and at the same time I did my artworks.

I’ve always done both, work and paint; I still do. However I’m trying to advocate myself completely to my art.

Throughout the last few years I’ve been more and more defining what I really want to do; and I started working on some murals –which I love to do- I began to meet people more into this artistic world many local paintors, many of them who live nearby, I went and saw them working, creating, I began to feel “this is my thing”.

And at the same time I was meeting with these fabulous artists, I was working together with CETERA, a social political group that works very much in needed neighborhoods that work very much with murals. All these works are very much inline with my personal view of art, as something that’s public, I mean, art as a public and political action.

AD: Explaining reality…<br>
F: Exactly, a means through which one can deeply think about reality. I mean, I think about art as something more than a mere decorative object. But at the same time I find myself in the need of maintaining myself, roughly said, I have to eat! And this is like a two way road, for I need to do some other things that for the time being will allow me to keep on painting from my heart; so I work as a messenger or currier with my bike downtown Buenos Aires… So you might meet me riding my bike, taking and bringing stuff to others, and then, you come to my house and find me painting, quite an eclectic combination. But, thanks god, for the time being is working out, although to many it would be quite surprising to find out that I’m both those men, the messenger and the artist. [He sweetly laughs as he tells us this]

AD: When you were involved in those political organizations did you paint murals or did some artwork together with them or you kept on doing it on your own?

F: Well, it’s a complicate answer, it’s yes and no. My political work did not consist in painting murals, but I did paint murals at many of the neighborhoods I worked politically. Do you understand what I mean? I mean, when I painted those murals, it was a brief thing to do, although it was a great thing to do, this action was sustained by a much long term political, cultural and social collective work that involved not only me as an artist, but many other people as social beings, which was far more amazing.

And although I believe that’s one of the most important things in my life, I had to stop the car for a moment to figure what I wanted to do regarding myself, my life, my future, everything. I worked with all kinds of socially oriented political groups, from peronism to left wing associations, civil rights, everything, but I found out I needed to focus a bit on my art, I needed to seriously commit myself to it and do it the best I could.

AD: So, when did this shift happen?

F: Well, of course, as everything in life it was a process. I’ve been working on murals for the past seven years, but it was only last year when I seriously began to work with my paintings. Many of my biggest works are from last year. I used to have a work shop at the Pueyrredon –he refers to the Art school here in Buenos Aires- they had given me a class room to use for painting. But now I’m working at home, and I can be all night up painting. When I found this place, this house to live in and work in, I began to do what I had been thinking of doing. At the same time I found an excellent place where I get all my materials, very good ones… and here I am. The materials I’m buying at the moment are great, and this is not a secondary thing in order to fully advocate to this art, for if the base materials you work with are not good, you can’t expand them, create with them, they are no longer tools, but limitations itself.

AD: Many of your murals or paintings express or portrait one of the darkest times in our history, the military dictatorship and the oppression and exploitation suffered by many Argentineans…<br>
F: When I paint I want to use my own language, not a common one, not the one that everybody likes or understands. I believe that nowadays many artists try to manipulate their artistic language and accommodate it in order to make their works more profitable, or to express some kind of sympathy without committing to what you say or express in order to make your business more “cost effective”.

This is not the way I work. I’m not interested in painting what everybody else wants to look at, but what I need to show, my dreams, my nightmares.

I paint what’s not seen.

That’s the clearest concept I can formulate about the way I paint. One could say I’m still activating politically, but using some other means, paintings.

AD: Are you thinking about organizing a personal exhibit?

F: I’m really looking forward to some exhibits. Actually on Thursday one of my works will be exhibited in the Centro Cultural Borges of Buenos Aires. This painting won an award last year at a contest organized by the cultural center, and that’s why they are exhibiting just one piece.

I participated in other collective exhibitions. A few years ago I won the first prize of a contest organized by the Latin American Art Museum of Miami, and my painting was exhibited at the museum for a long while. [They kept my winning piece]

And four or five years ago at the Pabellon 4 Gallery, here in San Telmo, I showed a complete series of my work. However at that time my work was a bit different from now.

AD: Have you ever taught art ?

F: I did organized some art lessons a while ago but it was always very linked to my cultural and social activities specially working with mural paintings for example in Villa Retiro, Almagro, Faculty of Philosophy and Literature at the University of Buenos Aires … and I hope that those murals are still there.

AD: And regarding techniques, which are those you prefer to use in your creations?

F: I express myself mainly with drawing and painting, and combine a variety of materials such as chalk pastels, acrylic, and sand, wood, graphic and aquatint, tin, photocopies, digital images and carvings among many others that I apply when I feel they might add feeling to my works.

AD: And do you work on wood and paper?

F: Yes, now those are my favorite prime materials… though at first I worked on whatever white canvass alike material I could get hold of.

AD: How would you define your style?

F: I would say that is “Sur realism”, sur for south in Spanish…realism from the south.



AD: Thank you very much for your time and for this lovely conversation

F: Thank you for coming .

End of Part 2.

[artdealer]

Part 3.

ENDING



I stopped the tape and thanked him for his time. He laughs, it’s been a great conversation.

We keep on talking about Argentina, it’s history and culture.

To me he looks just like a good friend of mine, tall, long haired and beard, dark eyes… Many say it’s a very common Che Guevara alike look. I don’t know if its because of the Che or because his girlfriend loves the long hair and beard, or because he’s most comfortable in it.

I can swear I’ve seen him before, may be at the Uni or at a public act on behalf of human rights… may be we’ve been friends in an other life…

His art to me is incredible, the way he puts into images my deepest thoughts or fears makes me look up to him as an amazing artist and a good hearted person. I believe that’s the raw material for an outstanding performer.


Autobiographical synthesis by
Francisco Adaro (Changáa)




I had to go to the goalie or sit in the bench
I express myself through images using a variety of techniques
I write in order not to suffer from insomnia

Born in 1978 in Buenos Aires. Argentinean. From a genealogical mixture similar to the one in tango.

I quit smoking on a Friday.

Images, words, memory and oblivion grow inside me; histories that climb as questions that entangle in the ceilings of constitución.

I deliver sugar and salt in my three wheel motorcycle that also works as an ambulant “national show room”.

I live in the bottom of a pit with three cats and a winged witch.

I wanted to be a musician and a poet

I was a gardener and a delivery man, and they nicknamed me “chagaa” (Spanish slang for someone who works in whatever is available and needed)

Now I love olives and electronic tango

I’ve always loved spring, tropical shirts and parties.

I draw impatient and violent

I drive through the city during the morning

I write fragments in pieces without watching any order,

overwhelmed with motives, senses and sensibilities.

I draw because I’m physically impelled to do it

I accumulate papers and select shapes

At night I cook

Thanks to the art work I was never bored

I try to be honest to the spectator using my own language and not his

I don’t want to paint what others want to look at, but to watch me in my own reflection

Living together with my ghosts and guilts, and showing it barefaced

Between 1994 and 1999 I worked together with a wide range of social, cultural and political organizations, this had a radical impact and influence on my thoughts and my retinal experience

I learnt a lot from many people, I had the opportunity of studding with con Susana Fedrano and Enrique Morales.

Since 1994 I’ve been developing many investigations on mural art and public monumental art considering their formal, conceptual and technical aspects.



Many of my works are exhibited at:

Modern Art Museum of Miami (USA), Mutual Enrique Santos Discepolo (Argentina), Comisión nacional de excombatientes de Malvinas, Mutual sentimiento (Argentina), Mutual Homero Manzi, Centro cultural Nuestras Raíces (Argentina), Museo regional Rhuma Huasi (Córdoba, Argentina), UOM de Quilmes, UOM Matanza, Asociación de Artesanos y productores Tai Pichin,(Córdoba-Argentina), Asociación de Productores Apicolas de Olavarria (Argentina) and private collectors.