Jorge Macchi: Mikrokosmos

Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zahnradstrasse, Zurich

Inspired by the collection of progressive piano pieces Mikrokosmos, composed by Bela Bartók between 1926 and 1939, Jorge Macchi creates with his exhibition a little universe: the works on view act just like Bartók‘s etudes, and continuously increase in their level of complexity, building up on each other. At first each piece acts for itself. Yet, the invisible parallels and links that keep all the works together within the cosmos are soon sensed. Familiar components from technique, materiality and format; or fragments of images can be encountered consistently though assembled in an entire different way. Thus, in Extreme Weather (c-print, diptych, 46 x 56 cm) we encounter the details of two city maps that were recorded at a different time and place. While the view of the map of an English city has been damaged by rain drops, the map of a small town located near Buenos Aires has been affected by sunlight. A dialogue between the permanent and the transitory, stability and the destructive influences from outside is also present in Cardboard (oil on canvas, 105 x 129 cm). The painting shows the broken window of a car that has been temporarily substituted for protection by a piece of cardboard. Macchi translated the snapshot character of the photograph that served as his source to the large-format canvas. In Iconoclasta (oil on canvas, 196 x 106 cm) we are confronted with the destructive forces of gravity in an ironic way. One might smile at the sight of the cracked glass plate of an over-sized realistically painted iPhone.

 

The reference to music is also a driving force throughout Macchi's work, giving it at times a formal, and at times a content-related frame. So it is no surprise when we walk through the exhibition and come across Línea y punto (see invitation card) on a sheet of  music of Bartók's Mikrokosmos: directly on the white gallery walls hangs a simple small-sized sheet of paper showing the score of an Etude by Bartók. Like a waterfall, flexible iron wires of varying thickness fall arbitrarily to the ground from each individual note. Music, which is actually something fleeting and intangible, becomes suddenly an unusual haptic element that connects with the physical exhibition space. The installation Ladder resembles a scale whose melody leads us over a 260 cm running wooden ladder towards an indeterminate direction.

 

At the same time, Macchi succeeds to sensitize the viewer to the perception of everyday optical phenomena: in Mare Marginis (lat. "marginal sea") (installation, 150 x 80 x 75 cm) he uses a mere wooden table, covers it with a transparent paper and a glass plate and by the pressure of a simple desk lamp creates a structure of semicircle folds on the tender paper. The artificial light source enhances the depth of the wrinkles and reminds one of the even waves on a slightly choppy sea surface. The instrumentation of various artistic means such as drawing, text, installation, sculpture, ready-made, photography, collage, cut-out, print, architecture and painting, in Macchi‘s works is constantly moving around the conflicts between interplay and autonomy, attraction and rejection.