This will be the first presentation of the Argentinean-Hungarian-Swiss artist, where he will be displaying his most recent work: watercolours and paintings engraved on metal, created mainly for this exhibition. After his magnificent light and sound intervention at Puente de la Boca and surroundings, created in Buenos Aires at the end of last year for the Night of the Museums, De Vajay will be crossing over to Montevideo, bridging the artistic path between the two sides of theRío de la Plata, when Montevideo inaugurates its first Biennial of Visual Arts.
Sigismond de Vajay will present his work in the Uruguayan capital city, prior to his participation at the group exhibition of international contemporary art“Apo-calypse”(Montreux, Switzerland), together with Jonathan Monk, Hans Op de Beeck, Ai Weiwei, amongst others, thus anticipating his own at Xippas gallery in Paris, and his participation at the Biennial of the Americas in 2013.
About the work of Sigismond de Vajay
“If modern times have brought along a productive system packed with artificial lights, brief images and vertigo, Sigismond de Vajay exploits all its implicit contradictions with the gesture of a landscaper, almost a chronicler, who anticipates the frightening, breathtaking beauty of our decadence.
Using traditional formats such as water colour –a very bucolic technique–, De Vajay accentuates the disturbing transformation of the exhausted nature he portrays. Cities trapped amongst cables and networks, individuals immersed in endless crowds, artificial paths which lead the life of the species towards dystopia. This world, our world, reveals itself as much artificial as it is unrecognisable. In other words, this build-up of cables and gadgets is the possible utopia, the sum of our efforts towards dominating the environment and proclaiming civilization as a superior stage.
(…)
Hence the temptation for disaster, the naked beauty of chaos. Each disarray in which history is put on hold offers the possibility of a new beginning. If the excess of intelligence can reach a catastrophic threshold, De Vajay’s work holds that ultimate pleasure, the vision of he who faces the imminence of disaster”.
Pedro Donoso
