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.
Jacques Bedel (b. 1947), the artist and architect, was a regular participant in the CAYC’s group exhibitions ever since Escultura, follaje y ruidos (1970). He was also a member of the Grupo de los Trece from the time it was founded in late 1971. During that period, he moved away from the kinetic ideas he had been exploring in the 1960s and started producing works that experimented with different materials and their interaction with physical phenomena.
In the months before the Grupo de los Trece took part in the XIV São Paulo Biennial in September 1977, the CAYC organized solo exhibitions for some of the group’s members (GT-737, GT-738; doc. no. 1477390, GT-746; doc. no. , 1477396, GT-757; doc. no. 1477397, GT-758; doc. no. 1477398, GT-759; doc. no. 1477399, GT-761; doc. no. 1477419, GT-764; doc. no. 147743, GT-765; doc. no. 1477432, GT-766; doc. no. 1477433, GT-772; doc. no. 1477435, GT-773; doc. no. 1477436, GT-774; doc. no. 1477437, GT-775; doc. no. 1477438, GT-785; doc. no. 1477448, GT-786; doc. no. 1477449). At the exhibition announced in this newsletter, Bedel presented works from two of the series he began that year: El gran límite and Ciudades del Plata. In the former, he explored the concept of infinity by creating a number of sculptures that were presented as fragments of a single hypothetical structure. In the latter, archeological models of ancient constructions are hidden inside books whose covers are wrapped with sisal (jute); their metallic finishes are a reference to the riches that the conquistadors hoped to find in America.
These works, along with the ones produced by the other members of the Grupo, were part of the installation Signos en ecosistemas artificiales that was presented at the 1977 São Paulo Biennial, for which the group received the Grande Prêmio Itamaraty.
