building silence
DESCRIPTION
author: guillermo kuitcaTRANSCRIPT
7/17/2019 Building Silence
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Building
Silence:
Guillermo
Kuitca
TEXT
GRANT
JOHNSON
"...forget,
forget, make silence.. 1
-Paul
C6zanne,
Dragons in
the Clouds
There
is at
least
one dragon winding
through
serene clouds
in
Guillermo
Kuitca's
pictorial
project.
From
the
isolated
microphone
stands
and
wall-
facing
paintings
of his
stagecraft
series,
across
the empty
beds
and
bare mattresses
that serve as
both
subject and support,
right up
to the
vacant
concert
halls and arrested
baggage
carousels of
recent
years, it
arcs
in and
out of
view,
a half-hidden
secret. The
dragon is silence-not
the
silence
that equals
death,
but an activating
energy
that passes
through
nearly all of
Kuitca's peripatetic
paintings,
drawings, and
col-
lages,
a unifying
thread.
Indeed, the monumental
and
disarming
retro-
spective
Everything -
Paintings
and
Works on Paper,
1980-20o8
reveals
Kuitca
as a master
architect
of silences.2
The scope
of
the
exhibition
allows us
to grasp silence as
much more than
the subject of
his
work-
which has long
been a
staple of its
critical reception.
Here, silence
becomes the
vital operational
mode of his
art.
The
artist once
told
Hans-Michael
Herzog that
in
good
painting,
"[t]here
is
an experience
of solitude,
no, not solitude,
privacy. That
is the
pictorial
measure. 3
The
subtle hesitation as
Kuitca's
thought
moves
from
solitude
to
privacy --and
which
appears,
by way of
commas,
as
a
small
silence-opens
another
possibility. I
fantasize a
scene in
which
I
take Herzog's
place:
GK-There
is an
experience of
solitude,
no, not soli-
tude...
GJ-Silence?
GK-Yes, silence.
That
is the
pictorial measure.
In
that momentary
hitch,
which
is in fact
a silent
space,
I
can
imagine
Kuitca
authorizing my exegetical
thesis.
Were
he to
have
simply
stated,
There
is an
experience of
privacy.
That is
the
pictorial
measure, any
other options
would
have been foreclosed.
But through
the
portal
of his
pause, I
enter
and rearrange the
mental furniture,
exchanging
"silence"
for privacy,
occupying the
space opened by
his
hesitation with
a
cre-
ative
insurgence.
This potential
recurs
again and again
in
Kuitca's
pic-
tures
as they
build a momentous
quietude-which
Jean-Louis Chr6tien
describes
as
a "...communicative,
radiant, and
cordial silence,
which
invites
us
to
live within
it.'4
Of
course, these fantasy
lines never passed
between
us, but I
did speak
with Kuitca
this July,
after seeing Everything
at the Walker
Art
Center in
Minneapolis.
Although I
had not
yet
developed the notion
fully when
we
spoke,
I did mention
that my strongest
impression from
the show was
one
of
shared
silence.
He
warmed to
that,
saying
that
he
looked
for-
ward
to my
exploration
of
the
idea. Like
a dragon in the
clouds,
that
exploration
has
been
far-flung and
recursive, ultimately
leading me to
circle
tightly over two paintings,
but not
without many flourishes
and
glances towards other
images and
series.
Signals
to Silence
All pictures
are silent.
We know
this
as
a
bare
fact,
even if pictorial
silence
does not
press
forward
in
current
critical discourse.
I
admit
that
although I often
tried to tune
in
the sounds
of paintings
and
other pic-
tures,
I had given
their silence
little
consideration before
seeing
Everything. For
one thing, silence
is difficult
to
talk about-it silences.
This
unavoidable
symmetry
is why discussions
of what
Chr6tien
calls
"the essential silence
of
painting always
risk
tautology-can
it even
be
a picture
if it
is
not silent?
But Kuitca shapes
another class
of silences
altogether.
His
are
supplementary
to "essential"
pictorial silence.
Ultimately,
they
transform
this given
dimension of pictures,
even as
they
derive momentum
from
it.
Whereas
essential pictorial
silence
is
featureless
and
interchangeable,
the
silences
I encountered
in
Everything are varied
and
particular. They are,
among
many
others,
the
silences
before
and the silences
after, diagrammatic
silences
and
the
silences
of music.
While no single
image
provides a complete glossary
to the operations
of silence
at play in Kuitca's
oeuvre,
L enfance
du Christ(The
Childhood
of
Christ),
1989, does
deploy
an intricate
sequence
of
those
operations
which
echoes
throughout Everything.
The
painting
depicts
a
series of
box-like rooms, packed
tightly together
and rendered in crimson
and
sienna
cooled
by metallic blues.
We view
this
isometric
grid from high
above
through
a
web-like veil
of white.
The
entire construction floats
in
a
shimmering gray
nebula. In place
of
human
tenants: empty beds
unused chairs,
and
a microphone
on
a
stand,
painted with
a precise
yet
tremulous
hand
that gives them
all the
look
of dollhouse
furniture.
The first secretion
of silence
comes before
the fact, from
the short cir-
cuit
between image
and title. With
nothing
in
common,
they
refuse
to
communicate
openly,
and
therefore seem to
be keeping a secret.
Astute
to
the partnership
between silence
and secrets,
Kuitca often
elects enig-
matic
titles
that
keep mum
in this secretive
way,
such
as
l mar dulce
Sweetwater
Sea)
and
iyo_fuera
el inviernomismo
IfIWere
WinterItself)
But this particular title-L'enfance
du Christ-compounds
silence
at least
twice
more.
First,
by its
most available reference:
the
chroniclers
of
Christ's
life are quiet
on the subject of
his childhood,
outlining only
a
few
brief
scenes.
In
this
sense,
the
words
L enfance
du Christalways
mark the
silence of
an untold story.
Silence
erupts
on
another register with the
discovery that
L enfance
du
Christ
is the
title
of
a choral trilogy
by
Berlioz.
o give a
painting the
name of
a
musical
piece-a recurring
gesture for
Kuitca-is
to point out
INSIDE
FRONT COVER: Guillermo
Kuitca,
Untitled,
2008, oil
on canvas, 95 x 83 cm
private collection)
/ OPPOSITE,
TOP TO
BOTTOM: Lenfance du
Christ (The
Childhood
of Christ), 989
mixed
media
on
canvas,
60.5 x
80.5 x
2
inches
courtesy
of Ramis
Barquet, New
York); El mar
dulce [The Sweet
Sea], 1986,
acrylic
on
canvas,
78.75 x
118
inches
collection
o
Ambassador
Paul
and
Trudy
Cejas,, Cejas
Art Ltd.) all
images courtesy
of the artist and Sperone
Westwater,
New
York)
3
ART
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by
contrast,
that
the painting
cannot sing. It is
also,
especially
in the
quiet
of
the
museum, to
call forth
the
silent
memory of that
music, or, if
one
has never heard
the
piece
in
question, the silent imagining
of music
unknown.
Thus, titles such
as
L enfance
du
Christ
and Siete
6ltimas
can-
ciones
Seven
Last
Songs),
as
well
as Ku itca's eponymous revisions
of CD
covers
from recordings
of Wagner's Ring
Trilogy,
replay
musical compo-
sitions within
the silent context of the
museum, and against
the
silent
backdrop of the artist's pictorial project.
Miraculously, we are
made
to
hear music-familiar
or unknown-in a new space
where its sounds
are
inaudible yet present. (Imagine
Beethoven's
Ode
to
Joy
without
hum-
ming
it
and
you
will hear something
like what
I am talking about.)
When
a
work
cues a viewer
to imagine
choral
music that
she
has
never
heard,
it opens
up an expansive field
of
creative
possibilities.
And yet, this
realm of potentiality nevertheless
derives its direction and complexion
from initiatives
of the artist.
And since silence is
the
only space
where
such
possibilities exist,
Kuitca gives
L enfance
du Christ a silent sound-
track,
distinct
from
the silences
of Wagner or
the
tango,
which
also
have
their place in his oeuvre.
These
are
intense
experiential revelations built
on
the
fundamental
lesson of John Cage's
4'33 , 1952-that
silence opens
a space in which every noise
and movement,
no matter how small,
is
transfigured.
Silence
is
the
space
of limitless creative
potential.
The Wide
Spread of
Silence
Kuitca deftly shapes that
space over the full sweep
of
his long practice.
The
earliest work in
the show, Del 1 a 30 000
(From to 30,000 ,
198o
presents the
total
number
of
Argentina's
desaparecidosas a
meticulously
drawn sequence
without gaps. Referring directly
to
Pinochet's
brutal
silencing
of the opposition,
the
image
redoubles that
silence by
render-
ing
the
individual
numbers indistinguishable-by
filling all space,
he
makes
a
space
of silence.
Later, in the
stagecraft
series,
tiny
props, sets,
and
pieces of furniture shiver in
cavernous theaters
where water pools
on the stage and
staircases lead
nowhere.
Although
specific
silences
issue from details
like
empty beds,
lonely microphones,
and paintings
turned to the wall, they
soon vaporize into
the
overwhelming
hush of
massive
empty architecture.
In the Puro
Teatro
pictures,
first appearing
in 1994, and based on diagrams
of auditoriums, the silences are
those of
empty
seats
and
of
the
viewer
positioned
on
the vacant stage.
They
are
also Ku itca's silencing
of
his source
material by
re-coloring the sections
to
prevent
them
from
broadcasting
their
assigned
values.
In the paintings
Terminal, 2000 and Trauerspiel (Tragedy),
2001 the
image of
an
empty baggage carousel-shut
down for the night
or for
repair-proclaims
its
own silent
stillness.
It can
also
recall-or even
induce-the trance-like
state of a
jet-lagged
traveler
awaiting reunion
with his personal effects.
And then again there is
The
Ring
series,
2002,
whose title invokes
a silent
soundtrack
while its
imagery
acknowledges
the
special
silence
in which
we
contemplate record
album sleeves; a
class
of
picture
whose silence
is
always set starkly
against the music
it
(un)covers.
Indeed,
nearly all of the works
in Everything
announce-
more
or
less
insistently-Kuitca's ambition to wield
silence itself, proto-
plasmic
and
excessive, as
both
figure
and ground
in
his
art.
Empty Rooms, Absent Sounds
Let's
go back to L enfance
du Christ for a moment.
We have established
that,
beyond its
essential
pictorial
silence
and the silences
that its title
articulates,
L enfance
du
Christ
s a catalogue of silent
rooms, each
with
its
own shape
and
texture.
And
so, silenced
by the silent
face-off
betwee
title and
image, we stand ready
to
explore this hushed
house, vacan
except
for spare furniture
and a
microphone.
Inside,
in its rooms,
Kuit
seems
to have painted
the silence in a way analogous
to
that
by whic
C6zanne
painted the light and air between
himself and
Mont
Saint
Victoire.
Empty chairs line up along
certain walls of some
rooms,
seemingly
s
ting
in
the familiar silence
of
waiting.
Such chairs-un-upholstered,
re
tilinear-are strewn
throughout Kuitca's early canvases,
and often lie o
their
sides
or
backs,
sustaining
the
silences
of
their
percussive
hit
on
th
floor.
Prone, they
are
also silenced
as chairs,
becoming
mute sculptures
forgotten props instead. In
L enfance du Christ, hey may be waiting f
the promised
sound of the
lonely microphone,
with
its
voluminou
potential
for
all
manner
of song, speech, and feedback.
A straightene
question mark, this
microphone
may
stand
at
the closest pass betwee
title and image
as it
suggests
the
possibility
of a present-day Young
Jes
rehearsing
the Sermon on the Mount in
his
parents' paltry flat.
Li
chairs,microphones are
ubiquitous
in
Kuitca's
floor
plan and
stage
se
series,
where
they
seem to
assert
silences
louder
than those of
the
peers. Is it
paradoxically the
silence produced when an amplified
voice
used to mute the
crowd? Or is
it
the
silence
of
an
unwanted
explosion
noise that has
been shut off?
Richer
still
are
the
echoing
silences
of
the
empty
beds
in L enfance
d
Christ,which link back to
the single empty bed in
the small, almost
nee
ful painting Nadie
Olvida
Nada
(Nobody
Forgets
Nothing),
1982,
who
covers turn down in anticipation
but
are
too tightly tucked
to
offer a
we
come. The peculiar silence
of a Kuitca-painted empty bed can
present
th
absent sounds of lovemaking,
which at some
other moment might b
heard inflagrante. It may
also carry the more
profound
silence
of
dream
whose sounds erupt in
unconsciousness, only
ever heard in soundles
memory. Reaching
out
to
the viewer's
bodily
experience,
the image of
vacant
bed
can
also be
an
invitation to the simple stillness
of sleep.
An
finally,
attending these
intangible bed-borne silences
like acolytes, w
find
the
solidified
silences
of blankets,
pillows,
and
mattresses-palpab
vehicles
of quiet and absorbers
of sound.
Ultimately, behind
the rooms and
their contents, Kuitca spreads a
enveloping atmosphere of
silence
made
visible
as a
formless
void.
Th
amorphous, ubiquitous
silence spans both invocation
and benedictio
between which
Kuitca
conducts
his
tour
of
this enigmatic dwellin
where many of the chambers are
near duplicates
of one another,
an
each opens
into
the
other
without any hallways.
As a house and a maz
it
recalls the setting
of
Borges'
1949 story The
Aleph,
as well as
the
gre
Argentine
author's preoccupation
with
labyrinths, reminding us that
h
is
Kuitca's
countryman
and artistic forebear. But
the structure's righ
angled
and equilateral
geometry, seen
against the
amorphous
bac
ground,
reflects
more
faithfully
the
spaces of
the gallery, and sudden
another
silence
rushes in, one
always
given in advance-the
silence,
hush, of the museum.
Sweeping
In
the
Museum
It is common to
decry the museum's
hush as a
stifling
effect of the
he
metic seals
that led
Sartre
in
Troubled
Sleep
to
denounce
the Museum
Modern Art as ...organized, approved, enclosed,
sanitary, and sterile.
But Kuitca
turns
away
from Sartre's
sneer to embrace the silence
of th
museum, and thereby transform
it.
He
explicitly
invites
that
silence in
OPPOSITE, TOP, LEFT
TO RIGHT:
House
Planwith Tear Drops,
1989, acrylic on canvas,
79 x 63 inches collection
of the
Walker
Art Center, Minneapolis;
gift of Mary and John
Pappajoh
20101; Mozart-Da Ponte
/ 1995, oil,
pastel and graphite on
canvas, 71 x 92 inches collection of
the Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian
Institution,
Washingto
D.C.;
Smithsonian Collections Acquisition Program,
19951; OPPOSITE,
BOTTOM:
Trauerspiel
Tragedy), 2001,
oil
on canvas, 77 x 133.25 inches collection of
the Hirshhorn Museum a
Sculpture
Garden, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, D.C.;
Joseph
H.
Hirshhorn
Purchase
Fund,
20031
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V enfance du Christ with a composition that
could have
been drawn
directly
atop a
gallery
floor
plan. We recognize
in
the
image a
model
of
the galleries
around
us, and a picture
of how we
might imagine
the
whole
show;
namely
as
a
suite
of
rooms,
each
shaped
by
its
own
unique
silences.
Indeed,
once
this
painting
reveals
itself
as
a
visual analogue of
the space
in which
it hangs, it becomes
an
enchanted mirror of the
entire
exhibition-and
we find ourselves on
both
sides,
inhabiting
a
series
of refractions that fork
and
join
in
all directions. Maria
Gainza has
said
of these
effects that
Kuitca's
oeuvre
ramifies
endlessly.
6
By
them,
our experience
of
the museum
is
transformed.
Our
view of
the
various
series
becomes
analogous to Kuitca's
making of them,
which he
described
to me
as
being
like a
physical
revisiting
of
familiar locations,
or like strolling
from room to
room
in
a
well-known
house.
In
a moment,
we are
transported, no
longer
in the museum
but
walking
with the artist
from
chamber
to
chamber
in
the mansion
of
his
creative
endeavor.
Moreover,
the surplus energy of
these
effects arcs, jumping
to
other
images of
floor plans and institutions,
such
as
House
Plan
with
Teardrops,
1989,
and
The Tablada
Suite, 1992.
They,
too, become
reflec-
tions of
the museum-simultaneously
fractional
and endlessly fractal.
This is one
of the primary channels
by
which
Kuitca,
in the words
of
Leah
Ollman,
manages
...
to abbreviate
the
distance
between private
and
pub-
lic space,
the intimate and
the
institutional. 7
It is
also an example of
what
curator
Olga Viso means
when she says that
...Kuitca
has
focused
in particular on
the
spaces
where
individual
and communal experience
and personal
and collective
memory are exchanged.
8
Both
of these
observations can be
read
as
referring
to the museum-as
a public insti-
tution and space
in which collective
memories are exchanged.
I
do not
mean
such a reading
to
exclude others-Kuitca is
clearly
concerned
with
other
institutions
and modes
of
exchange-but
Ido
suggest
that it
is
the
museum's
space
and
silence
that he
addresses
most insistently.
This
seems more
than plausible
for an
artist
who
came
of age already mak-
ing pictures
for
the museum,
and
who
must know
its
silences as well as
he
knows
those of his own
studio.
The
Opposite
of
Cinema
Now
on to the lush silences
of Odessa 1988, in which
the artist
layers
a
grayscale
rendering
of
a
frame
from
Sergei
Eisenstein's
Battleship
Potemkin-the famous
runaway-pram-on-the-steps
sequence-with
a
partial road map
of Russia that includes
the titular city.
By
arresting this
cinematic
image,
which
we already
know to be silent,
Kuitca
superim-
poses a
second
silence:
stillness.
In that
stillness,
we
can discern the
image's graphic
logic
of
sounds
and
silences.
The
alternating
light-and-
dark progression
of
the
steps
fills the
top third
of the
canvas
with
a
metronomic
rhythm
that outlines
dark
silence
with
spare beats of
lighter sound.
The brightness
of the baby
carriage
cries out against
this
backdrop
as
it
follows
in
its
downward
plunge
the path cleared by its
own preceding
shadow-the silent
space
into
which
it, like all
sounds,
must eventually fall.
Although
quieted by
the
absence
of
color,
this
pic-
ture demonstrates
with rare elegance
the
simple
truth that all sounds
take
shape against
silence.
But
it
is
also
the
synecdoche
of
a
scene
notable
for its
sonic richness, which
Kuitca
has
hushed. We are
acutely
aware that
we do not hear what we
can clearly see;
the bumping
of
the
carriage
on
the steps,
the
squeak
of
its springs,
the cries
of the
baby, the
massacre's cacophony.
As with
the silent soundtrack
of
L enfance
du
Christ,we
cannot help
but
recreate
these
absent sounds silently
for
our-
selves. A last sound is mangled with
all
this:
in
the quiet
of
an imagined
movie
house,
the
primal
silence of
a
collective
gasp
as
the audience
responds in
shock.
The
silence of the
map
compounds these
silences
of the cinematic
image with diagrammatic
silence
or the diagrammatic trance. It is
the
effect
that all maps, charts, and diagrams
have
on us when they trans-
port us
into
contemplation
of
that which
cannot
be
expressed
any
other
way.
I refer to
the impossibility
of
writing
or speaking
the
road map of
Russia that Kuitca
has painted here.
Even
if
it could be judged
somehow
correct,
such
a
text
would
be
absurd and
useless. When we read
a
map-floor
plan or
seating
chart-we
fall
silent
not
only
because of
the force with which it impacts memory
and imagination but also, and
more fundamentally, because
we can no
longer
rely
on
language.All of
Kuitca's maps share this power,
but
the
one
in Odessa
is unique in that it
does
not
occupy
the
entire
picture
plane, but
rather
disappears
under
the image from
the film.
Better
still,
the two images
cross-fade.
Unlike in
a
movie,
this
effect
has no direction
in time. Sweeping in
either
way,
it
beautifully embodies the
function
of
clearing
out
that I
have ascribed
to
silence in
Kuitca's
work.
This function operates
in
pictures
as nowhere
else.
What's more, in
a
cultural
landscape dominated by cinema, it
pres-
ents
a truly
radical
proposition.
It might
even
be said
to be
the
opposite
of cinema.
We fall
silent in movie
theaters,
but without
the
prospect
of
meeting a reciprocal
silence
in
which
creative
potential
ramifies
end-
lessly. Instead, our
silence
simply
makes room
for the
film's
sounds
and
images, which proceed
with
or
without
us. Odessa effortlessly
carries
the
weight
of
its
pictorial
inheritance right through the
age
of
cinema, and
teaches us
that at the
core of his
practice,
Guillermo
Kuitca
walks
and
paints
in
silence.
NOTES
1 Quoted
in
Jean-Louis
Chr6tien,
Hand
o
Hand:Listening to the
Work of Art,
Fordham
University Press, 2003 57
2. Miami Art
Museum; October
9,
2oo9-January
17,2010
/
Albright-Knox
Gallery,
Buffalo;
February
19-May
30,
2010
/ Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; June
26-
September 19,
2010
/
Hirshhorn Museum and
Sculpture Garden;
October 21
2olo-January
16, 2011.
3. Hans-Michael Herzog
in
Conversation with Guillermo
Kuitca, in Guillermo
Kuitca:
Das
Lied von
derErde Zurich:
Daros-Latinamerica AG,
2006.
4. Chr6tien, Hand o
Hand:
Listening
to
the Work
of
Art, 19.
5. Jean-Paul
Sartre quoted in
Chr6tien,
19.
6. Maria
Gainza, Guillermo
Kuitca, Artforum
42:2 (October
2003 : 178.
7. Leah
Ollman, Guillermo Kuitca
at L.A. Louver
- Venice,
California,
Art in
America 90:1 (November
2002): 166.
8.
Olga
Viso, Guillermo
Kuitca:
Connection
and
Contradiction, Distemper:
Dissonant
Themes
in the
Art
of the
199os Neal
Benezra and Olga
M. Viso, eds.,
Washington, DC and New York:
Hirshhorn
Museum
and
Sculpture Garden
Smithsonian
Institution
and D.A.P. 66-77.
Grant
Johnson
is
a
professor
of
Visual Art
at
Alderson-Broaddus College,
Philippi, WV, and
a
working
artist. He began writing professionally
on
art
relatively recently,
but
his
deep
engagement
with critical
discourse
is
long-standing.
OPPOSITE, TOP:
The
Ring, 2002, oil
and colored pencil
on
linen,
5
panels, overall dimensions:
71.13 x
322.38 inches
(collection
of Daniel Tempton, Parisl;
OPPOSITE,
BOTTOM
LEFT
TO RIGHT:
Untitled,
2008, oil on
canvas,
95
x 83
cm Iprivate collection); Odessa, 1988,
acrylic
on
canvas, 180 x 100 cm (CoLtecci6
MACBA. Fundaci6
Museu d'Art
Contemporani
de
Barcelona; Dip6sit Coleccion
Alfonso Pons Soler)
6
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Building Silence: Guillermo Kuitca
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