By Joyce Kryszak
Buffalo, NY –
The Albright Knox Art Gallery opens a major exhibition Friday tracing the work of Argentine artist Guillermo Kuitca. The 48-year old artist is known around the world and his work is collected by major galleries, including the Albright Knox. WBFO's Joyce Kryszak stopped by the gallery Thursday for a preview. And she got a personal guide through the exhibit from the artist himself.
Click the audio player above to hear Joyce Kryszak's full story now or use your podcasting software to download it to your computer or iPod.
Theatre seating plans are only one of Kuitca's inspirations. He also is partial to opera house seating plans, blueprints, and maps. That might sound like dry subject matter. But it is what Kuitca does with them that is transporting. He said it is a little like using google maps.
Kuitca uses a larger context that explores physical and social systems, as well public and private space. His map paintings zero-in with minute detail showing the real and sometimes fictitious connections between highways, cities and countries.
Albright Knox Art Gallery Director Louis Grachos said Kuitca redefines the concept of borders and notions of place. Grachos said its a thread that continues through Kuitca's work, including his masterpiece where he painted maps on beds.
Yes, Grachos did say beds. Mattresses to be precise.
Some are hung on the wall. Others are on frames clustered together at the center of the gallery floor. But don't think this is artistic artifice or a mere gimmick. Kuitca's reasoning for using beds is sound. Perhaps even profound.
"Most of the crucial experiences of life - life, sex, dreams, birth, death - takes place in a bed. It's an object that covers some of the more important human experiences," said Kuitca. "The idea to have this very small and private object that also includes such a collective experience as a map it was an interesting thing to put two extreme experiences of the human experience in one."
Grachos said you can add to that the metaphor of bed as a place to sleep and dream and transport you to anywhere the imagination can go.
The exhibit is curated by Albright Knox Chief Curator Douglas Dreishpoon. He said it took three years and a collaboration with three other galleries - the Miami Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum and the Walker Art Center - to pull together the extensive exhibit of 75 Kuitca pieces from all over the world. But Dreishpoon said it was worth all the effort.
"He's an amazingly poetic, philosophical and very bright human being who looks at painting as a battleground...painting is something that should be constantly tested and constantly redefined, so it's a sensibility I appreciate," said Dreishpoon.
It is a sensibility that Kuitca began developing at a very early age. His first exhibit came when he was only thirteen years-old. But his influences began even earlier than that - and from somewhere that will sound very familiar.
Kuitca said he had his first exposure to modern art in 1969. That's when an exhibit of the Albright Knox Collection came to his hometown of Buenos Aires.
You can see for yourself how Kuitca's work has evolved and come full circle. The exhibit opens Friday at the Albright Knox Art Gallery. And you can hear the artist talk some more about his work Friday night at Gusto at the Gallery.
More information is available at Albright Knox Art Gallery.