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 a key role in this process. The exhibitions shone a light on these exchanges, in which overviews of trends or individual artists introduced the innovations of international contemporary art and made Argentine and Latin American artists better known on the global scene.
Leandro Katz (b. 1938) was born in Argentina and lives in New York; he is a key artist in Latin American Conceptual circles. He is a writer and a producer who is known for his films and photography installations, exploring aspects of the history the Americas in works that combine historical research, anthropology, and the visual arts. After spending time in various Latin American cities, he settled in the United States, where he has produced works based on language. He claims that the project called “Las 21 columnas del lenguaje” [The 21 Columns of Language] was inspired by his reading of Elements of Semiology (1964), in which Roland Barthes describes language as a sort of architectural construction.
Quoted in the Buenos Aires magazine, Primera Plana, the artist said that, “At twenty-one places around the planet there will be an accumulation of human languages which, when arranged in a vertical architectural shape, could rise up to a height of no more than 60 kilometers.” Using machine-written rolls to build columns of words on monuments and performing actions involving monuments, Katz created his columns in various cities around the world. In Buenos Aires he stood in front of the Obelisk holding a sign that said: “For Sale.” His goal with this project was to criticize the established art system.
