Juan Gugger, from Córdoba, is One of the Winners at the

IV Biennial of Young Art

By Veronica Molas

Juan Gugger is one of the winners at the IV Buenos Aires Biennial of Young Art. The
young artist recounts his experience of a peculiar residency program and
explains «Deck,» the work he will present in September at the Biennial.

With his project Deck, Juan Gugger became one of the six winners at the Biennial of
Young Art, in the visual arts section. Until the end of this month, the group of
laureates is working at Centro Metropolitano de Diseño in Barracas, Buenos Aires.
They have been living there for some months now, incubating their works for the
exhibition that will take place in September.
The awarded artists of the Biennial of Young Art 2015-2016 are between 18 and 32
years old.
Gugger received a recent award from the Oxenford Collection, with which he traveled
to Los Angeles last year. As much as the Biennial of Young Art, it is not just a
distinction. "In the case of the Oxenford grant, they offered me financial resources to
travel and develop a work at the Getty Research Institute, which will be materialized
as a printed catalog, and which I would like to publish next year," he says.
The prize in the biennial, he points out, "consists of the financing of a project of a
certain complexity, the studio space to carry it out, and the acute and sustained
accompaniment of very experienced artists such as Pablo Siquier, Marcela Cabutti,
and Gustavo Dieguez (from the collective a77). It would have been really difficult to
develop these two works without the support of the Oxenford Collection or the
biennial prize".

Artistic Experiment
Deck ("Something from where you look, and something to be contemplated," as the
artist describes it) will be displayed at Sala Planetario, in Centro Hipermediático
Experimental Latinoamericano (CheLA). "The piece proposes an artistic experiment
made of negotiations and silences with the rest of the artists and their pieces in the
Biennial's show," Juan says. On the other hand, it "outlines an intermittent struggle
between utilitarian relations with objects and the possibility of pointing out minimal
sculptural experiences."
And what Gugger explains clearly: "To do this, I exploited some fortuitous
relationships between objects of the world that are not sculptures. The relationships
between shapes and materials circulating mainly in metropolitan regions. A small
industrial object that after multiple accidental movements among the crowd ends up
in some slit with the same proportions. Or a gum, a small plastic volume that after
being sculpted for hours in the mouth of an anonymous individual, ends up on the
floor, crushed hundreds of times by footwear that deposit dust particles over and over
again, blackening it. The sidewalks of Buenos Aires are full of these grey spots, which
seem to have lost almost all their volume, mimicking the texture of the tiles.

Solidary Objects
— How would you define your work?

— I wouldn't define it at all. I have some interests (more or fewer constants), but the
landscape is diverse. I like to think of some particular works as objects that
collaborate with projects that often exceed me. They connect to history, society, and
the future. It seems to me that the works, from some points of view, can be
interpreted as objects that have yet to be defined, and in this effort to define them,
new cognitive connections can be generated. Those connections illuminate our
understanding of the past and present enabling us to figure out future forms.

— Is there any expectation regarding the public?

Yes, but it is a soft expectation. This deck proposes an orientation in the route of the
exhibition and is made according to the installation of the rest of the works. I had to
keep an eye on the development of the other pieces. The shape of the work changed
as the curatorial idea, the other artists' decisions, or even the rules of municipal
authorization changed. I find a contradiction in its existence because it is less
autonomous than the other pieces, but at the same time, it preserves its autonomy
intact. I think that at times a fight is generated between the concept of this deck as
something from where you look, and as something to be contemplated.

Artist-in-Residence
"This biennial is an experience quite different from others I had even in long-term
residences. My colleagues are all very interesting artists, and we also work in
adjoining studios at Centro Metropolitano de Diseño", he says. They've been working
on this space for four months now, where they receive studio visits by curators,
directors of institutions, journalists, and other cultural agents who come to hear about
their processes. Another benefit, he says, was to experience the biennial's campus,
with workshops, seminars, and crossings with artists from all over the world:
"Rarely do so many things occur that are concentrated in such a short period, right?"
"I had many opportunities in Córdoba, and I always took advantage of it to carry out
what I was interested in doing. I never felt I couldn't do my job there," says Juan
Gugger. It refers to spaces such as CePIA, Emilio Caraffa Museum, or El Gran Vidrio
Gallery.
"At the National University of Córdoba, I found some incredibly essential educational
spaces. I think it's a very important opportunity for an art student. The more time
goes by, and the more crystalline I can understand how enormously valuable and
unique it was", he reflects from a distance. And he anticipates that in October he will
present new work at MuMu. Extending my working territory to other institutional and
operational realities, he says, can bring new challenges, and sometimes also new
content.

Originally published in the August 15, 2015 edition of La Voz del Interior newspaper.