Maybe a story is not fully articulated, but it's presenting a point of view.
My name is Alejandro Cesarco and I’m an artist.
Through my work I’m interested in questioning the stories we tell and the way we tell them. When I come to the museum I can’t help but ask what type of story is the room articulating? I don’t think art should present a conclusion, but what are the questions that this room is asking? It allows for these creative misinterpretations, for play.
Once you start making art, you become like a professional viewer, you know, like it’s very hard to go back to looking at things in a more amateurish way. But there is something productive about allowing yourself to be surprised, or the suspension of cynicism. Like, is it possible to look at Giacometti without knowing his entire body of work, the history?
There’s something ultimately very sad and hollow about this statue. It’s not a fun object. It stares back at you. We’re not aware what she is waiting for or why exactly she’s standing so still, so aligned. But the surface of the body makes it not feel quite rigid. It is as if she’s broken and agitated, trembling from within. The scratches or wounds cover the body, but are they meant as self-inflicted or do they come from the outside? Why is her body so elongated, so thin, so anemic? Does it refer to the historical context, to the images that were just circulating of bodies in concentration camps? In either case, the passage of time creates a different context today, so the framing is part of the meaning of the work.
In the case of Gallery 907, maybe we could look at this and say: what is the woman looking at? What is she contemplating? Why is she so still? Is she overseeing these young girls? Is there judgment involved in that? Are those memories from her past? I don’t know—I can go on and on. It’s like, obviously all that I said is wrong. It has nothing to do with the work. This is just my projection onto the work.
That is what happens always in art. It’s always this mistranslation. The museum can be a rather abstract voice. Maybe a story is not fully articulated, but it’s presenting a point of view. Someone is making these decisions. It provokes us to consider, what does looking mean?
