Nicanor Aráoz

Gorno—a term derived from the words gore and porno that describes a subgenre of horror film obsessed with guts and genitalia—is useful to consider when faced with Nicanor Aráoz’s installation Glótica, 2015. Consisting of a series of eight scenes set with eroticized and mutilated plaster human figures, the piece could be understood as a vision of humanity in a time dominated by the detachment of virtual reality and overstimulation. The bodies are mounted on wooden structures that are filled with a shapeless mass of polyurethane foam and polyester resin, to which the artist has added pieces of marble, acrylic, animal fur, and neon lights, among other things. Like a low-budget film, the work’s treatment of details can come off as crude and careless. While its high degree of theatricality may narrow one’s experience of the exhibition, this does not mitigate the vertigo produced by its visceral jumble of matter.

Aráoz emerged on the local art scene in Buenos Aires ten years ago with surreal installations that combined taxidermy with gothic mythology and extracts from pop culture. His works, which have always brought a much-needed injection of contemporary art to the city, have since then veered away from the narrative to focus instead on spatiality. IMNXTC—or “I’m in ecstasy”—for instance, was a conceptual party project he presented at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires in March 2013. The trance of bodies dancing in its dense, discotheque-like atmosphere was volatile, and it marked a turning point in Aráoz’s career. With this latest installation, though, the artist startlingly returns to a more classic, sculptural order without abandoning the thread of his research on bodies in spaces of heightened intensity.

Translated from Spanish by Jane Brodie.