A man sits on an ordinary chair, eyes closed, levitating a potato chip between his hands.
This is the latest large-scale work by Cecilia Skalkowicz, and the fifth project from Malba’s ‘Intervention’ programme, which features specially designed works by local artists. Blown up to fill a wall, this absurd, giant snapshot hits you as you ascend the escalator of the gallery.
Cecilia brings a new playful energy to Malba. Her past work includes ‘Sarita’, a gigantic print in which a girl, caught off guard, buries her head in a pillow. In similar humour ‘Los Dos Vincents’, exhibited in the ArteBA art fair, shows Cecilia’s friend Vincent posing by a Vincent Van Gogh painting. Moments spent messing about with your friends are made giant and monumental.
The Argentina Independent went to meet Cecilia.
What materials do you like working with?
Images, magazines, prints, designs, everything! In my work I am moving away from traditional art forms and disciplines to try something new…to extend the limits of art. I see it as a world of endless possibility, a world without limits.
I often work with my boyfriend, Gaston Perisca, and others. I like working with others, it’s how ideas grow. You might start with something and then chat it through with someone and then they have an idea and it gets taken to a new place, it becomes something different.
How did you come up with the concept for ‘Todo es Posible’?
The curator at Malba, Inés Katzenstein, invited me to do a photo installation. She had seen my other work, and that’s where the process began. Then we worked out the space I would use – Malba doesn’t have much open wall space you see. Then I worked at images and sent in various proposals.
The idea with the two pictures is that you are presented with two snapshots, (dos golpes), that you can then view in sequence.
I wanted to work with time, with the idea of moving images, changing scenes, life moving on in a very everyday, ordinary way. A little like the posters you see on walls on the streets, that change everyday. Most people don’t notice, but all the time these things are changing as life moves on. I like working with layers – exploring the different facets to every moment in life, every little snapshot. One moment, one picture, can mean a hundred different things to different people.
What do you want people to feel when they look at the installation?
(Long pause.) I want it to be different for every person. There isn’t one message that I am trying to get across. I want people to feel that, like the title ‘anything is possible’ for each person, anything can happen. I want each person to respond in their own way. But I guess the idea, demonstrated in quite a humorous way, is that, if you try hard enough, anything can happen – if you concentrate hard enough you can make a potato chip levitate!
Is this what Mariano Mayer (who writes the blurb for Cecilia’s installation) means when he mentions the scattered memory?
Yes. I like the idea of layers of meaning…hundreds of different opinions at the same time. It’s like a test, an experiment to see what is there, asking questions, and seeing how many questions can be asked. My art isn’t really about giving an answer to anything – it is just allowing people to open their minds, to question. I too am questioning.
Space is also clearly important to you with this piece
Yes, I like working with different but generally large spaces. I wanted to use this wall in Malba because you don’t see it when you first walk in. You have to walk round and look up. It’s a little bit awkward and uncomfortable.
And size too? I notice that your photos are usually of something quite ordinary, and yet it is extremely large in scale.
I like to work on these exaggerated scales. Making something that is a tiny insignificant moment, huge, important and oversized. It’s a bit of a game really. I like to create a tension between the casual nature of the photo, the low resolution of it, and the then huge size of the picture. It’s the incongruity of it all that I like.
I like to make intimate things into something huge: to change the scale and show people that ordinary daily life is important, it matters.
I was once asked to exhibit at an exhibition that was called ‘Diamonds’, that focused on precious objects. I focused instead on pebbles, and had pieces of paper with pebbles on them that people could take away. I wanted to make these ordinary stones precious, and contradict the idea of the priceless diamond.
You use a very low resolution for this photograph. Is this part of wanting your art to appear easy?
Yes, exactly. I want people to see that it’s something that anyone could do – for example, you don’t need a great camera or a studio to do what I have done. With basic items you can create art…and then question whether or not it is art! I work with images and abstract ideas, and the low resolution gives the picture that feel – like it’s not quite so clearly defined. I think that it gives it more potency.
What does your work bring to Malba?
A freshness, I think. I don’t know.
Of course, those who love art and contemporary art are the ones who will understand it the most. But I want this to be accessible to everyone. Everyone should be able to get something from seeing this.
I see you are involved in music (she is in a band) and writing (she hands me two copies of ‘The Script’, a short independent publication that she and Gaston have written about art and literature). How do you feel your photography works without the presence of these two disciplines?
Music and words are still present, because everyone looking at the photo will be thinking about something they have read or have a song going round their head. Their thoughts and images affect and join in with their experience of looking at the installation.
So, the individual becomes part of the installation?
Yes, they make it change and become something else. That’s the sort of idea that I am testing out.
What is most important to you in terms of your art?
That my friends like it. I always have them check it, see if they like it.
There’s a quote by Robert Nickas on your My Space page which says ‘art is there to change what we hope to gain from art’. What do think about that in terms of your work?
I want to create art that doesn’t look like art…art that breaks boundaries, goes out of the norms that we are used to.
There are two quotations by Andy Warhol, one in which he famously said ‘making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art’. The other simply says ‘the world fascinates me’. How do you find the balance between doing what you want to do and making it sell?
(Giggling a little) Well, clearly my work is not commercial, at the moment. No, I don’t tend to think about the money when I am creating something. That limits things.
How do you see things developing in the future? Do you have plans for your art?
No, not in that sense. There’s no big goal I am heading towards. It is a process – art – and that’s the part I enjoy the most; the process of creating.
Why?
Because of the possibilities. I’m asking questions, not providing answers.
‘Todo es Posible’ (Anything is Possible) consists of two images which will be shown one after the other. The first is currently installed and can be viewed until 26th November 2007. The second photograph will be presented on 28th November 2007. For more information, visit www.malba.org.ar