Guillermo Kuitca’s fascination with plans, maps, and architectural drawings took on a new dimension a few years ago, when he began drawing the seating plans of European theaters—culminating in his series “Puro Teatro,” 2003. This turn is not surprising, given his experience designing stage productions in Buenos Aires in the ‘80s, and his move from painting to collage might be considered a natural extension of the theatrical craft. He credits a visit to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, during which he realized that seating plans usually reveal an actor’s-eye view of the audience, with inspiring the series. His fascination with the actors’ perspective is evident here. Each seat in Covent Garden II, 2004, is painfully articulated, in what could almost be a visual expression of stage fright—in contrast to the explosive planes of Teatro Rojo, 2004, or Wiener Staatsoper, 2004, whose collapsing tiers suggest a broken Venetian blind. In the gallery’s unfinished cellar “Vault Room” is a four-part collage, The Ring, 2003–2004, which, while not as eloquent or meticulous as the theaters upstairs, is graphically very strong. Each collage depicts the cover of a noteworthy recording of the four cycles of Wagner’s opera. Composed of long shreds of undulating paper, mainly in black and white, they echo the similarly stark representation, upstairs, of the Festspielhaus Beyreuth, 2004—the theater Wagner specially commissioned to premiere the cycle, in 1876.
