Cristóbal Lehyt
Die Ecke, Santiago
Cristóbal Lehyt positions himself very well in large and reduced contexts. After the exhibition “El penúltimo paisaje” (Fundación Teléfonica, April-June 2009), the viewer is surprised once again by his powerful simplicity and by the discovery of how the Chilean artist shifts from obvious references to experiences of concept, beauty, and poetry, but on this occasion, in a reduced setting.
Previously, he had featured monumental formats and assertive objects associated to his country of origin; here, only a pair of card- board rolls deployed on the gallery floor exhibited in care- ful order 31 “objectual traces”, small artifacts made of string and wood. Painted with white blotches and crusts from gesso which has fallen on them as if haphazardly, they become even more enigmatic, since they might be basketwork remains, or remains of pre-Columbian looms or of rural instruments; archaeological pieces, minimal sculptures or “information artifacts” that tell as much of art as of “social manual production processes”. The artist, who is a resident of New York and a former assistant of Alfredo Jaar, might well represent the issues that the work of the Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer has commented on since the 1960s regarding how to be a Latin American artist conceptual and commercial,criticalandnot exoticizedintheglobalizedartscene.
