Half Full or Half Empty
A sensitive stage set for an intelligent building

Since Saturday, April 27, 2013 Medio lleno o medio vacío [Half Full or Half Empty], a collective work that brings together interventions by artists Esteban Álvarez, Pablo Rosales and Cristina Schiavi, has been on exhibit in Fundación Proa’s Contemporary Space.

Curated by Esteban Álvarez, the project operates on Proa’s three levels, making use of the facades and structures typical of La Boca neighborhood, which it brings into the interior of Proa’s architecture by means of barely visible alterations as well as major theatric displays. The building is thus infused with the neighborhood’s surfaces, now displaced from their original locations. 

Half Full or Half Empty by Esteban Álvarez

The exhibition is conceived as a joint work that harnesses and heightens the potentials of the participating artists. It ensues on the three levels of Fundación Proa’s building in barely visible fragments as well as major interventions that act directly on the architecture without damaging it.

This project and its conception celebrate the poetic and ghostly nature of La Boca; its empty bases for sculptures reflect the act of waiting for a detail that will alter, albeit slightly, the vision of the whole. The neighborhood’s mutations, neglect, and transgressions temporarily form part of the visual and functional characteristics of some of the spaces chosen.

We propose a series of improvements in Proa’s architecture in the hope that the viewing public will feel the presence of the neighborhood as it is at present after having crossed the borders into Proa’s architecture. There are no actors in our sensitive stage set, rendering the visitors dedicated users. It is our hope that those who visit this set cross the threshold and venture into the world of La Boca, finding themselves startled before the base of a sculpture that is not there and walls that silently shift a few millimeters with each vibration that reaches them from the street. Proa’s angular white surfaces joyfully embrace Boca’s traditional colors of blue and gold, a delicate combination of the luxurious and the cheap, one whose origin lies in the baroque and that was our undoing in the nineties. After all, is there anyone not tempted to look through the windows of Caminito? Are they full or empty? Are they stage sets or the final remnant of a cluster of real dwellings, as colorful as ancient Greek sculptures so white and familiar to us?

Exhibition Credits

Half Full or Half Empty
Artists Esteban Álvarez, Pablo Rosales and Cristina Schiavi
Invited Curator Esteban Álvarez
Coordinator Santiago Bengolea

With the support of Tenaris – Organización Techint