Marcelo Grossman
E.C. Fotografía Contemporánea. Buenos Aires
In the Guilty! series, Marcelo Grosman (Buenos Aires, 1958) ventures along an uncomfortable path, wondering who might be the one to blame in a society that makes criminals, that judges based on appearance (color, sex, origin). The series is composed of photographs (some of them the mural size) exhibited in E.C. Fotografía Contemporánea, a gallery that has won its place in the artistic map of Buenos Aires, and has even organized a prize award event to stimulate creation. By double printing plate on plate, the artist creates a gallery of potent characters with faces of fading outlines that defy penitentiary photography, that which fixes, and at the same time dilutes, the inmates’ identity.
Grosman ́s works, which he has exhibited in solo shows since 1989, evoke the image of the “culprit” built by the sensationalist media which does not hesitate to blow crimes up and invent wrongdoers and combat the racist theories that hold that there are born criminals, recognizable by the structure of the skull and the facial features. In her introductory text, Shila Vilker states that the images suggest that “culprits are the sacrificial objects of our culture”. Are they the ones who exercise violence or those who suffer the punitive fury? A risky proposal that calls a society full of fears because of insecurity that really exists to reflection.
