INDEX

FAIVOVICH & GOLDBERG



THE SAN JUAN MASS OF 
CAMPO DEL CIELO 
EN LA COLECCIÓN GUERRICO



IAB iron meteorite, 53 kg
MUSEO NACIONAL DE BELLAS ARTES, BUENOS AIRES  27 NOVEMBER 2014




Between 2014 and 2015, an interdisciplinary event was held at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, in Buenos Aires, in which a selection of artists, curators, and musicians were invited to intervene the traditional halls of the institution, transfiguring the social perception of its architecture and its collection. Summoned by Bellos Jueves (the name of the event), Faivovich & Goldberg presented The San Juan Mass of Campo del Cielo en la Colección Guerrico.

With its bright red walls and housing over 500 pieces of various kinds, the Guerrico Hall safeguards one Argentina’s first art collections, whose entry into the public domain, through a staggered donation over several decades, ended up laying the historical foundations of the country's most important museum. In addition to its foundational value, the room is distinguished by a particular exhibition design: the general installation was deployed following the documents and photographs that detail its original and salonesque disposition back in the 19th century.
Resting on a pedestal and under the surprised gaze of La Clarina, by Tantardini, a foreign body blends with the galaxy of objects -paintings, bronzes, tortoiseshell, and porcelain- that make up the Guerrico collection: a meteorite. The piece, weighing 53 kg and known as The San Juan Mass of Campo del Cielo, has a certain reputation in the scientific field but had never been exhibited before. It was loaned for the occasion by another museum, the Natural History Museum of La Plata (Buenos Aires).

The act of interfering in an exhibitional narrative that deliberately employs the anachronistic as a didactic and scenic maneuver, actually supports Faivovich & Goldberg's primordial inclination to exercise a material use of time itself. This uchronic unfolding of the space of the room, executed through a subtle contribution to the encyclopedic and wunderkammer spirit of the collection, seems to have generated a new timeline in which Guerrico's curiosity could have also extended into space: an alternative history that enables the interweaving of related sensibilities through the ages, in a story that is neither entirely fiction nor entirely truth.




BIBLIOGRAPHIA