Title: Matías Duville. Author: Eva Grinstein Place and date: Buenos Aires, 2008. Published in Artecontexto Magazine, #17 Madrid. In occasion of the exhibition Una escena perdida. Alberto Sendrós Gallery, Buenos Aires.
A member of the young generation of Argentinean artists, which, since the beginning of this century, has had a strong impact on a national and international level, Matías Duville (Buenos Aires, 1974) occupies an established position purely as a result of his talent, regardless of trends and fashions. While many of his contemporaries were wondering whether they should attach themselves to the committed political-conceptual line or to the formalist-childlike-decorative one, Duville was working in what could be seen as an anachronistic way, concerning himself with the vicissitudes of materials and anchored in a personal narrative from which, without straying from his theme, he gradually learnt how to make digressions responding to the interest aroused by the experiments he conducted with different media.
Duville’s development was swift: after graduating in visual arts, his inclusion in the contemporary art circuit coincided with further training at the studio of Jorge Macchi and, between 2003 and 2005, with the scholarship he received which was directed by Guillermo Kuitca. His first exhibitions, at the Alberto Sendrós gallery (2003, 2005) were soon followed by individual shows at the MACRO museum, in Rosario, the Galería Baró Cruz, in Sao Paulo, and, this year, at the MUSAC, in Leon, in addition to a residency at the prestigious Italian Civitella Ranieri centre. Argentinian collectors followed his career with great interest, and he is now one of the most sought after artists in Argentina. But “success” does not seem to have gone to Duville’s head, although undoubtedly it has driven him to intesify his production, as can be appreciated in his latest solo exhibition at the Sendrós gallery.
A figurative draughtsman, neither realist nor surreal, Duville is consistent in a his predilection for the forms of landscape. His scenes tend to display the conjuction of natural situations -places, phenomena, animals- with cultural artefacts -automobiles, houses, bridges-, which is intensified by the almost complete absence of human figures. Free from the rhetoric weight of anthropomorphic representation, the spaces and objects themselves become the protagonists of stories which do not entirely wish to be told. The stories lie in the gabled roofs, in the lakes surrounded by trees and their shadows and in the trees, bent by a possible gale.
Drawing with pen on silk or with a crayon on paper, to mention just two of the media he has used, Duville developed fairly extensive series which revolved around subjects which appear to be interconnected when the whole of his body of work is seen in perspective. His most recent production, which he has titled Una escena perdida, sees the return of several of his recurrent icons, such as the tree and the house, but in an unexpected change of scale, driven by his chosen medium; chipboard, a material used to reduce construction costs, which is sold in sheets, which Duville juxtaposes, forging enormous planes, 2 metres tall and 4 to 7 metres wide. The enlarged landscape thus becomes like wallpaper, a mural painting, a panoramic screen. The chipboard adapts to the landscape like a grained background, telling the brushstroke how to behave and offering itself in small coloured fragments, which become detached and are restuck.
Given the size of the works, it was impossible for the gallery to hold more than four or five, which are tightly packed nonetheless. The sensation is strangely contradictory: one wants to se more, and at the same time overwhelmed by the weight of the infinite details which render Duville’s work an ideal trigger for daydreaming and delight.