LALANA EXHIBITS ART AND DESIGN AT XIPPAS GALLERY
LALANA is an applied arts project devised by Argentine curator Florencia Cherñajovsky that transfers artworks by Argentine visual artists to the production of functional pieces: handmade rugs and tapestries, wallpaper and furniture objects. Weaving an interdisciplinary fabric, the venture that began in 2019 works alongside artists and artisans to create pieces that propose new ways of activating and inhabiting works of art. The exhibition will take place at the Xippas Gallery in Uruguay until May 29 under the title 'Essay 2', chosen because it is LALANA's second exhibition project - the first took place at the Nora Fisch gallery (BA) in 2021.
The exhibited works are rugs or tapestries that are located in a border and convening space; between the artistic, artisanal, decorative, functional and domestic. LALANA extends the possibilities of overflowing modern and contemporary art towards other materials, in a rethinking of scales and points of view. The selected works have been made in the privacy of the artist's workshop and contain that creative and unique moment in front of the canvas or the sheet of paper. LALANA intervenes that moment with hands that weave collectively, creating a piece crossed by new bodies and experiences. Unlike a painting or a drawing that is viewed from a distance, textiles make physical contact possible: their hair invites caresses, rubbing. With this action the distance between the body and the image is shortened until it is almost eliminated. This flexibility in its use and disuse brings new statements: carpets and wallpaper, for example, function both as a container -delimiting a spatial framework- and as content, projecting an image.
The designs gathered here belong to Roberto Aizenberg (1928-1996), Luis Fernando Benedit (1937-2011) and Jazmín Berakha (1980). A set of different generations that addresses the idea ofindefinite space. Whether from a work of planes and perspectives, the three artists put us before enigmatic situations. Aizenberg and Benedit, both linked to architecture, build scenes by layers and cross sections. A landscape is then generated inhabited by the colorful footprints of Benedit, the cornered figure of Aizenberg and the soft silhouettes of Berakha, who stand up against gravity. In all cases, fleeting or ghostly bodies are perceived.
These hybrid objects are born from a heterogeneous mixture associated with Latin America, used as a tool to rethink the "semi-modern, semi-developed, semi-indigenous" [1]. In this way, LALANA questions the viewer by provoking unprecedented forms of connection with the works, which break away from their original support to occupy new spaces, fluctuating between art and design.
Florencia Cherñajovsky (Buenos Aires, 1986) is an art curator who graduated from the Sorbonne with a degree in Modern Literature and a Master's in Art History from the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris). She worked at the Centre Pompidou from 2009 to 2016, first in the curatorial department "Contemporary and Prospective Creation", contributing to the research and preparation of the exhibitions "Danser sa vie" (2011) and the retrospective of the French artist Pierre Huyghe (2013 ) and then as curator of the "Nouveau festival" in the Department of Cultural Development (2014-2016). More recently in Buenos Aires, she worked as an independent curator, with Pablo Accinelli's “Nubes de Paso” show at MALBA. She started the LALANA project in 2019. She currently resides in Madrid and is preparing a group show for the Madre Museum in Naples (Italy). In parallel, she leads this commercial project, with a wide catalog of products for sale, from Argentina to the whole world.
[1] Néstor Garcia Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies to Enter and Exit Modernity, Mexico City, Grijalbo, 1990.
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