Pierre Restany

Before talking about the birth of conceptual art, it is important to bear in mind the actual date when it all started,1966. A key year for Argentina's cultural environment, in that it saw the emergence of the lnstituto Di Tella and the winds of change sweeping through the United States and Western Europe.

This was the second quest for the source of self - expression in urban civilization-the first was the birth of constructivism in 1922 - within the awareness of a unique urban and metropolitan climate, the relationship with the streets, in particular with life on the streets.

This was the moment-at least my intuition tells me so-when the concept of art in expansion was verified in all its power, John Cage's theory and the concept of George Maciunas which was subsequently developed in a more semantic fashion by Umberto Eco. This was a major mark on the landscape of general culture, for this first essay in what I call consumerism was as visible a manifestation in the United States as it was in Europe and Argentina.

The socio-economic conditions in Argentina were very stable, and the optimistic view of an urban world prevailed in much the same way as it did in North America and Europe. This was practically a mystic vision of the possibilities of technology and the imminence of prosperity and economic wealth, encouraged by the myth of space travel.

The contribution, or union, of art and production is a matter of great significance. The artist's view of industrial production-hence the relevance of the date, 1966-had as its objective the conferral of a second life on the object, one both semantic and poetic, a dematerialized existence following on from its first functional life.

Before, we were utterly entrapped in the kingdom of the object as something manipulated, transfigured and valued from an aesthetic point of view; this was the first chapter in the adventure of the object, followed, as from 1966, 1967 or thereabouts, by this current of the dematerialization of art which led to conceptualization: the shift from object to idea, from object to concept.

The first time that voyeurism was questioned in Europe was in 1967, with the Arte Povera movement

spearheaded by Germano Celant. This is highly significant as, in fact, this was the first dimension of existential urban art, invented by a forceful opposition to the exaggerated optimism and portrayal of the wealthy urban world popular at the time. Let us not forget that American pop Art was a direct contemporary of the Vietnam War. Yet there is not one single work in pop art which refers to this agonizing episode in North American history, one which was at once an individual, collective and dramatic problem, as well as one full of pathos.

Neither Rauschenberg's Neodada, nor Jasper Johns, nor Alan Kaprow, the inventor of the happening and the environment, nor Nam June Paik, the inventor of video art, ever talked about Vietnam. These people assume the poetically optimistic mantle of the times, eschewing any criticism of the consumer society. Doubts only began to surface a little later, in 1966 -1967, with, for instance, Homenaje a Vietnam, where you in Argentina, particularly Margarita Paksa, and León Ferrari, took it upon yourselves to be the active protagonists of this moment of truth. You can seek out other Argentine authors, such as Floreal Amor, Rubén Santantonin or Rodriguez Arias-Stoppani, Cancela-Mesejean or others, but in none of them will you find a critical work that describes this dramatic social situation. But before this, you had already begun to develop minimal art and this period resounded with the powerful vibrations of your presence, of David Lamelas and Margarita Paksa, using light, and you yourself, using both light and sound to synthesize different motivations. In part, this is the resurgence of the kinetic and geometric movement in Argentina; it should not be overlooked that when I founded the Nouveau Réalisme movement in Paris in 1960, Le Parc was at the same time founding the Groupe de Recherche d´Art Visuel (GRAV). Our fundamental motivation was purely spontaneous, and consisted of interventions on urban territory which added a new dimension to the view of consumer urban life, a way of creating distance and analysis which were increasingly minimalist and synthesized, akin to the search for fundamentalism in thought. To return to the conceptual issue under discussion, Ricardo Carreira's work has always been fundamental, as it has an individualist dimension; he never made declarations in the style of Kosuth and he was permanently assailed by existential doubts, primarily about two leading issues, chance and the existential game we play, which were the typical features of that era, the second urban and existential quest, which on this occasion took the form of conceptual art, an analytical form imbued

with the reality of the times. It is interesting to note that Romero Brest also possessed the admirable virtue of admitting and confessing his omissions in public; a reasonably perceptive man, but one whose distance held him back, even though he did not reject things openly. Thus it was that he permitted the exhibition of Experiencias Visuales 67 and 68, which were clearly conceptual, and in which you participated. The conceptual temptation in the Bony's work La familia obrera was also key, an unexpected and intriguing development, as I did not think that this was a matter of particular concern for him. Another major moment was when Garcia Uriburu dyed the waters of the Grand Canal in Venice, before the researches carried out by Beuys and Christo, who made the first major art intervention on the Australian coast in 1969.

Pierre Restany (1930-2003) spent his formative years in Morocco, before undertaking his studies in France, Italy and

As a witness to all these processes during my frequent visits to Argentina, I could say that my first interest lay in lunfardo pop, as it offered up so many analogies-neither quotes nor imitations, but true fundamental and organic analogies-with other similar phenomena in the United States and Europe. This is most significant, because Argentina at the time was living a uniquely local version of this manifestation. This was the golden age, before the military took over. It is likely that the civil government of Humberto Illia will go down in history as a wondrously human and generous end to a chapter of incomparable importance in the cultural history of Argentina.

Ireland. From 1963 onwards, he worked with the architecture D´ARS magazine, and in 1985 took over the position of director of the D'ARS magazine. In 1955 he met Yves Klein, which led him to the theory of "new realism" which he would present in 1960, the year when the group of artists that went under the same name was created. A great friend of Argentine art, he often traveled to these shores, particularly during the period when the lnstituto Di Tella was at its peak.He authored several publications about 2oth-century art. These statements are from work Restany carried out with Margarita Paksa for the research project on Los inícios del Arte Conceptual en la Argentina en los´60, based at the Facultad de Bellas Artes of the Universidad de la Plata

"Guggenheim Scholar Ship"; "Faena Art District" Multimedia Award; Salón Nacional Nuevos Soportes, First Prize and Second Prize at the same place the year before. She took up three months residence in "Banff Centre for the Arts", Alberta Canada; where she has just put her work: " El Partido de Tenis", on-line. "Installations" (Hollographics and Neon) In "The 5th. International Biennial El Cairo. "Fortabat`s Found" First Prize in Painting, among others.

Her work`s not only owned by many Museums such as: "The MALBA", MANba, "Bellas Artes" Museum, "Sivori" Museum, "MACRO" Museum in Rosario, and "MAC" in Posadas, Misiones, but also by a number of private collectors such as: "The Citibank", and "The Velox Bank", Fotabat`s Found. Ruth Benzacar, Mauro Herlitzka and the Bronx Museum, in New York; Owens Gallery; Argentinian Embassy, in Ottawa; A Space Gallery, in Toronto; Gaby Warrens collections; Miguel Jantus; Dwight Fulford, in Canada; Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and Achuel Moreno.

Individual Showings:

2007: "ULTRA REAL" Video Installation Analogical � Digital, FAENA Theatre; "ULTRA REAL" in ARTEBA; "500 WATTS 4.636 KC. 4,5 C" Epson Lounge Recoleta Cultural Centre.

2005: "El Partido de Tenis", Cultural Centre of Rio Gallegos.

2004: "PROYECTOS", Contemporary Art Museum, Posadas Misiones.

2003: "Estrategias para la Apropiación. Four Projects displayed in Bellas Artes University, San Carlos Valencia. "Proyecto en ejecución", Museu de'Art Moderna, Tarragona County Council, Spain.

1999: "Impresiones Digitales" Ruth Benzacar Gallery.

1998: "Tenis", Tha Banff Centre, Canada.

1997: "El Partido de Tenis", Digital Video Installation, Modern Art Museum "Cuatro Instalaciones", Del Barro Museum, Asunción, Paraguay; Oboro Gallery, Montreal, Canada.

Group Showings:

2004: "The Digital Arch", Federico Klemm Gallery.

2002: Puente - Paksa - Orensanz, Ruth Benzacar Gallery; National Bank Award; "XCI National Lounge, Palais de Glace; Politics and Art in the 60`s.

2000: Prodaltec Award; Constantini Award, Electronic Art, Bahia Blanca.

1999: Fortabat Award, II Mercosur`s Art Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil; "Traslocal Poll" Ipso Facto Gallery, Nantes, France; The Stanley Piker Gallery, Kingston, England.

In a commentary made in 1989, in the catalogue from one of her exhibitions, Margarita Paksa admits the possibility that an artist's work will essentially always tell the same story. The narrative thread, she says, is expressed not as a linear sequence of events, but as a perplexing circular succession.

I believe that the evolution of her own work is a good example of this recurrent trend, the obsessive stalking of an obscure yet perpetually remote question. When this question is about the issue of temporality, the circle has to turn on itself yet again to search in vain, closing the circle to cover the unsalvageable distance between its two extremes.

The two installations presented by Margarita Paksa in this exhibition are about this obsession with the dragon biting its own tail, according to her own description of the figure mentioned above. An obsession with time, which, disfigured by the refraction of the symbol, inevitably unfolds beyond itself, producing gaps and confusions. An obsession with the mechanism of the reflection produced by these disengagements, a reflection in turn responsible for the radical confrontation between what is real and what is merely named. An obsession with the meaning of art, of the myth and rite which always try to explain what follows on from death, or attempt to reveal the depths of man's final rest.

El arte ha muerto, viva el arte-art is dead, long live art-is the title the artist gives to her first proposal. Perhaps she is alluding to the good health enjoyed by so many dead executed by the illusion of time; a mention of the new king who succeeds the dead one (who is perhaps always the same) or a reference to that old threat uttered by Hegel to the horror and delight of entire generations. On the basis of this proposal, the artist attempts to close the circle by speeding it along its path, leaping forward in order to look back at it from the other bank. To be present at one's own funeral rites can only happen in dream and myth. Or in art, charged with endowing the impossible with an image.

To play out the rite, and simultaneously be present at its enaction, the actors must divide themselves and plunge into an alternative time frame. But this operation creates the ultimate schism, leaving things on one side and images on the other. This is why the scene is always set in the lintel of the cave and names the objects even as it identifies their shadows. Mi cuerpo deseó su sombra (My body desired its shadow), says the poem through which the artist converses with Big Jim (God). Immediately, the text suggests a stratagem to meet that desire and consummate the cycle, to reestablish the mathematical harmony of the circle. To access La hora cero, either a countdown must be started or time must be frozen. But this task is futile, for the gaze needs distance just as memory needs absence and desire seeks to replace a lack of something. Form can only take shape against a backdrop of what is withheld.

The second installation presented by Margarita Paksa is called El descanso de Loreta - Metamorfosis. The elements she uses are different, as is the layout and the montage itself. But her obsession with the relationship between reality, image and symbol remains, as does her concern with the recurrence of time and its parallel passage: the perplexing evolution of the succession of events taking place on the other side of the scenario, beyond the final frontiers.

Dreams are the only memory of that time in its transgression. Informatics is the memory of ordered time. The artist brings these rival perspectives into play and inverts their sense of direction through perverted mirror games, so that dreams are recorded and repeated and projected a thousand times, while the image of the computer and the video becomes troubled by the nebulous reasoning of desire, by the intricate time weave of dreams.

It is indeed true, the story told is always the same one, the attempt to derogate death and decipher dreams. The chance to distort the logical sequence of time, discovering its folds and shortcuts to meander tortuously back on itself, finding false walls and bottoms in a convoluted flow leading to multiple directions. But, in the end, time is neither linear nor circular. Perhaps it is just a device which measures the waiting for an impossible moment, the one which marks the execution of art, everlastingly stayed at the last instant. Perhaps it is simply the name of that pointless gap lying between one dream and the next.