David Lamelas

Critical text

David Lamelas (b. 1946, Buenos Aires) is a pioneering figure of Argentinian conceptual art and experimental cinema. Initially a sculptor, after the new right-wing conservative regime came to power, Lamelas left his country to participate in the Venice Biennale in 1968, where he presented an installation questioning the growing role of media in contemporary communication processes. That same year he entered London’s Saint-Martin’s School of Art and made his first film. Manoeuvring the script, multiplying or suppressing the screen, he used language and projection as tools to subvert the conventional narrative cinematic structure. This led him to interrogate the way we perceive and intuit both location and temporality. Coming back to volume, Lamelas created several outdoor sculptures and architectural projects in the 1980s and 1990s. This is the case for ‘When the sky low and heavy’, an installation with a title reminiscent of Baudelairian spleen and created for the exhibition ‘America. Bride of the Sun’ at the Royal Fine Arts Museum of Antwerp in 1992. Composed of three rows of trees aligned under a metal roof, the work is currently threatened with destruction by the museum’s expansion. An epitome of our hazardous becomings, this installation and its uncertain future served as the starting point for the selection of artists featured in this section.

Text by Mouna Mekouar