Guillermo Kuitca: Diarios is organized by The Drawing Center, New York, and curated by Brett Littman, Executive Director. This exhibition and its accompanying publication are made possible in part by Bettina and Donald Bryant, Jr.; Charles Van Campenhout and Risteard Keating; Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin; Solita and Steven Mishaan; Cindy and Howard Rachofsky; and an anonymous donor. Special thanks to Sperone Westwater, New York. The presentation of Guillermo Kuitca: Diarios at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University is made possible by the MSU Broad’s general exhibitions fund.
About the Exhibition
Since 1994 Argentinean artist Guillermo Kuitca (b. 1961) has taken discarded canvases, stretched them over a round table in his studio, and, for periods of time ranging from about three to six months, drawn, doodled, and written on this surface, creating a personal diary. These drawing activities occur in arbitrary zones on the table, and the completion of each Diario is governed by time rather than a consideration of form. Phone numbers, titles of paintings, email addresses, traces of objects that sat on the surface, and lists record the ebb and flow of life inside and outside the studio. The table thus acts as a device that records all of the activity within the artist’s workspace. The final artworks become a hybrid of intentionality and chance; they are narrative paintings without plots, abstractions without balanced compositions. The Diarios are an independent body of work that allows Kuitca to return his painting to the condition of drawing and writing. Although the canvases contain echoes of previous ideas and compositions, the resulting works depict something separate from his original concept and act as windows to his oeuvre as a whole. To complement the exhibition, The Drawing Center, New York, commissioned Kuitca to produce the video seen here, which shows a Diario being made in the artist’s studio in Buenos Aires.
Images
