artnexus #62

Marcelo Pombo (Buenos Aires, 1959) was since the early 90s part of a significant group of artists who, based around the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, began to reformulate the role of art and of the artist on the face of the weight achieved by globalization in the international scene. The Rojas, as the center is locally known, was active since the late 1980s and became the space that promoted, with its exhibitions, workshops, and debates, a kind of counterculture in the Buenos Aires art scene.

As one of the early protagonists of these developments, Pombo’s images were nourished by visual elements from his generation and social context: allusions to advertising, rock album covers, conventional designs, using various materials but with a special interest in non-conventional ones. He creates his works on the basis of cloth, artificial flowers, found objects that he cleans and salvages, resulting in works of art that move between the ambiguity of the elegant and the off-putting.

The seemingly fun and color-filled appearance of his paintings should not lead to the simplistic view of them as decorative and entertaining objects; there are meanings to be disentangled, and there is an emotional background to be discovered. By taking objects out of their habitual context, Pombo refers to his time and place, reformulating a predictable meaning.

IVONNE PINI