"Money Talks". César Baracca in Rome

 

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Laboratorio in gallery: “Memoires - Archive / Works of Sala 1” presents "Money Talks" by César Baracca.

An archive preserves the past, its traces and memories lie within a repository of human knowledge it is also a dynamic place for critical engagement and creative invention. It also offers the ability to create new ideas and different interpretations in the multifaceted world of art.

This is what gallery Sala 1 intends to propose through this new project “Laboratorio: Memoires - Archive / Works of Sala 1”: a space in which to reflect and create alternative visions, researched through photographs, documents and texts. Under the supervision of Mary Angela Schroth (Director of Sala 1), an international team of young historians investigates, re-organizes, photographs and analyses the collection of the gallery, then re-interprets new ways of understanding some of the selected works.

The contemporary artists participating in the Laboratorio are: Edith Schloss, artist and American critic. Claudio Sperati who with original ideas, procures daily objects of all kinds. Susana Serpas Soriano, Italo-Salvadoran artist, who attended last PHOTOGRAPHY International Festival of Rome and the manifesto of art such as the Pavilion of Bangladesh for the 54th edition of the Venice Biennale.

Curated by Chiara Ducatelli, Ana González, Sonia Lozano, Catherine Morasco, Barbara De Maria, the project aims to make the public aware of the various works and documents that are part of the collection and archives of the gallery, and to promote the inclusion in the exhibition of new works for the collection, such as the work of Argentine artist César Baracca, who exhibits his work from February 20, 2015, in a show titled “Money Talks”, curated by Alessandra Migani and under the Institutional patronage of the Embassy of Argentina in Italy.

Throughout Baracca’s artworks, a series of mosaics made by credit cards pieces, there arises a question: “What happens when art becomes money and money becomes art?”. The inevitable answer is the skill with which Baracca meticulously cuts the credit cards to create works of color into a totally different artistic form. The cards, donated by people from all over the globe, are therefore helping to create what Baracca likes to call “A mosaic of cultures”.

The Laboratorio therefore hopes to offer not only to the team Sala 1, but also to the public, the opportunity to participate in an in-depth search of the results of forty years work of this independent space.

Born in Rosario (Argentina) in 1959, César Baracca studied Fine Arts at the National University of Rosario, where he later taught sculpture as an assistant professor during 1988 and 1989. Baracca is one of the co-founders of the artistic Argentinean groups La Vaca (1988) and RoZarte (1989), who achieved renown for being among the first groups emerging during Argentina’s nascent democracy. He has also contributed to the creation of more than 50 exhibitions, worked as part of the team on The Reichstag Project (1995) in Berlin created by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and with artist Rob Miller, who he assisted in the production of murals for the Vermont/Santa Monica metro station in Los Angeles, (1997). Among his most important group exhibitions, were at the National Portrait Gallery in London, the National Museum of Fine Art in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the CCPE in Rosario, Argentina. For the last four years he has been invited to contribute work for the “RCA Secret” event, organized by the Royal College of Art, London. His solo exhibitions include Zizi Gallery in Mayfair (London), the MACRO in Rosario, Argentina, where three of his works have become part of the permanent collection.