Mechanical Sarcophagi

This chronicle is part of a collection of impressions gathered during numerous walks in the Argentine capital. They are all available in three languages (EN,ES,FR) and are part of the MIBA project developed on Senses Atlas.

Some people like to point out that architecture is considered the first major art form, so how lucky would we be, modest city dwellers, to live in the middle of a gigantic open-air art center? Still, we’d have to have the time to look up, the space to stop and contemplate, or even to know what we’re looking at. And what makes this building a work of art and that one not? Especially if these two are placed face to face, or worse, side by side. Is it the same difference that exists between art and craft? To tell the truth, I don’t really care about this distinction, which is sometimes merely a matter of semantics.

In Buenos Aires, the modest urban walker will simply be pleased to have his gaze caught by the play of light between two balconies, the reflection of a shop window, the distant silhouette of a high-rise building and its walkways, he will be impressed by the sensation of thickness reflected by a bank or the volumes of formerly public telecommunication buildings. He’ll probably be more sensitive to the compositions of buildings featuring classical motifs on the facade, or to houses with art deco compositions and angular bas-reliefs.

But this gallery of buildings and architectural elements, immobile monoliths, displayed before us and lining our comings and goings, are also a framework that sometimes fades into the background in favor of what happens between these facades. The proportion of the street, the crushing or the breathing, the anxiety of the narrow or the too-big. The space created by the emptiness between these solids is a space that can be explored, invested in and appropriated, and which unfortunately often does not escape commercialization.

As you move away from the city’s wide avenues and anonymous urban centers, the architecture changes and the scale of the built and unbuilt diminishes. The urban fabric becomes more homogenous, forming residential areas where single-family homes multiply. Away from the incessant traffic and deafening noise, we regain control of ourselves. We are given the opportunity to slow down, to cross streets, sometimes forgetting traffic lights, to take a detour or retrace our steps, and finally to see new elements emerge to occupy public space.

Buenos Aires sculptures

We’re offered works without artists. On a sunny day, silvery reflections first caress our faces, before strange statues sprout. Their angular shapes, compressed and taut, punctuate our walk. For some, they’re just motorcycles and other two-wheelers, the rarer cars hidden under a tarpaulin. For the more attentive, it’s a balance between harmony and chaos, the purest expression of panneggio bagnato, that arrangement of sheet and fabric revealing while concealing the mechanical body housed here. It’s another Christo-style approach, offering his works to the public, wrapping them up to reveal them better. Monumentality is out of the question, but the ephemeral nature of these works makes them visible to residents and visitors alike.


Buenos Aires sculptures

It’s also a death mask, the last expression of a covered, sometimes suffocating mechanical work. The brushed aluminum hides the wounded sheet metal. Two-wheelers often seem to want to struggle and escape, while cars have already given up and accepted the sometimes eternal sleep. These carcasses under carbonite allow us to dream of an urban landscape where, little by little, all vehicles will be wrapped up under these funeral sheets, never to wake up again. Leaving the pedestrian free to roam the city, that famous open-air museum that would assert itself more than ever, stretched as far as our legs can carry us.

These sculptures, impassive to the test of immediate time, may be gone tomorrow, in a week or a month, but they will have succeeded in stimulating our imagination and justifying their place in the fragile urban diorama.

Buenos Aires sculptures
MIBA

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