MACBA -Museum of contemporary art of Buenos Aires-. 2024

From the extensive production that Gilda Picabea developed in the last decade, the most recent works were selected for this anthological exhibition, many of them large format. They are paintings like master maneuvers that twist the membranes of sleepy eyes at a telescopic distance. Sometimes the artist rehearses on small canvases the movements that allow her to later lead to oil painting, without losing its bravery, in a larger size. The passage of the brush is visible because it is the way through which the sensations of the contingent circulate that lead us to think about the performance of a painting in its time (which is any time in which a painting is seen). The latter is important for a production like Picabea’s whose program seeks to resume and give continuity to the developments of South American concrete abstraction that emerged in the mythical year ’44. Several of the paintings that are presented in the first and second basement of this museum establish a state of controversy with other paintings that are their references—but sometimes with resources or tools typical of the craft of painting and drawing. Sometimes, the artist copies those historical procedures, a little to try them herself and a little to see them under this sun. With these new works, Picabea builds a landscape that is capable of containing the daze to which the images accustomed us and putting other of his abilities to work, for example, making us exercise difference; even if it’s not because they provoke a question like, do you see that as pink as I do?