Ever since it was founded, the CAYC (Centro de Arte y Comunicación), helmed by the cultural promoter, artist, and businessman Jorge Glusberg, was intended as an interdisciplinary space where an experimental art movement could flourish. The establishment of collaborative networks connecting local and international artists and critics played an important role in this process. The exhibitions shone a light on these exchanges, in which overviews of trends or individual artists provided an introduction to the innovations of international contemporary art and made Argentine and Latin American artists better known on the global scene.
As an internationally known Conceptual artist, Donald Burgy (b. 1937) was present at major Conceptual art exhibitions, most notably Information (MoMA, 1970). In July 1971, after showing his work in Arte de Sistemas (Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires)—and having a one-man show at the CAYC—this newsletter announces his second solo exhibition in March 1973 at the CAYC. On this occasion, Burgy presents works from the French edition of The Observer is the Observed, published by the Sonnabend Gallery in Paris, which supported the main creators of Pop Art, Minimalism, Arte Povera, Post-Minimalism, and Conceptual art. Since the 1970s, the elimination of any distinction between “work” and “viewers” became Burgy’s dominant theme, expressed in several series, all with the same title, The Observer is the Observed.
In this version (published by the gallery in Paris in 1972), black-and-white photographs of Earth taken by the first astronauts are combined with phrases about energy (such as: “All transformations of energy take time,” “All transformations of energy are irreversible,” etc.). Working with two kinds of representation (verbal and photographic), Burgy imagines that the viewer is not only the point of intersection between them but is also where subjective and objective elements intermingle.
The newsletter also announces the presentation of a bilingual publication by the artist (published by the CAYC); there is a phrase on every page that questions the observer, not unlike the one that was published for the 1971 exhibition.
