Víctor Grippo. Transformation

Curated by Alicia Chillida, the exhibition entitled Víctor Grippo, transformation will remain open until March 4 of 2015 at the Museo de Arte of Banco de la República in Bogota, Colombia. The exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo of the Universidad Autónoma in Mexico City, the Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and the Unidad de Artes y Otras Colecciones of the Banco de la República de Colombia. Víctor Grippo. Transformation is presented as a retrospective of the work by this important Argentine creator considered one of the pioneers of Latin American conceptual art and an artist that for five decades—from his early works in the 1960s to 2002, the year of his death—created works that combined science and art. From an early age, Victor Grippo explored drawing and painting. He eventually went to study chemistry and pharmacy at the Universidad de La Plata in Argentina; processes that allowed him to incorporate in his artistic work laboratory experiments with everyday elements. According to Alicia Chillida sys about "Grippo works with (almost) perishable materials in ephemeral installations in which he uses time as one of the materials. He for instance uses potatoes as a natural element that, with the passing of time, becomes a perishable element that eventually is transformed into energy." In this exhibition Grippo sees himself as "an alchemist who, through installations and actions, merges and contrast polarities in a search for answers that allow him to understand the world: the conscious and the unconscious, instinct and reason, the spiritual and the material, the masculine and the feminine, ethics and aesthetics." Víctor Grippo. Transformation showcases some of this artist's paradigmatic works, such as Algunos Oficios (Some Trades, 1976), Construcción de un Horno Popular (Construction of a Popular Bread Oven, 1972), the Valijitas Serie (Small Suitcase Series, dedicated to Le Corbusier, Kafka, construction workers and the shrewd critic), Naturalizar al Hombre, Humanizar a la Naturaleza o Energía Vegetal (To Naturalize Mankind, to Humanize Nature or Vegetal Energy, 1977), Vida, Muerte, Resurrección (Life, Death, Resurrection, 1980) and Analogía IV (Analogy IV, 1972), among others.