Unable to refer specifically to the works that would be shown at the exhibition about which he was attempting to write, Pablo Oyarzún, the Chilean essayist and an authority on philosophy, discusses the idea involved in the term “context”—as in “out of context” or “shattering of context”—in regard to the exhibition of works by Robert Rauschenberg that was presented in Chile. Keeping in mind the importance of the North American artist’s exhibition, Oyarzún refers to the overwhelming “specific contexts” that underpin his display of technical expertise and allow him to critically question and relate to Chilean art.   

This text appeared in the catalogue for Fuera de serie, the exhibition presented at the Galería Bucci y Sur in Santiago in September 1985. The list of participating artists included Arturo Duclos, Juan Domingo Dávila, Eugenio Dittborn, Francisco Brugnoli, Virginia Errázuriz, Carlos Leppe, and Gonzalo Díaz. One of the gallery walls was used to hang texts by Pablo Oyarzún, Nelly Richard, and Gonzalo Muñoz, whose writings were published in the catalogue.   

In July–August 1985 the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes hosted the monumental exhibition Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange (ROCI). The event bought together 224 of the North American artist’s large pieces, including works based on Chilean themes he had researched during a previous visit, works produced in other countries he had visited, and a retrospective selection of his oeuvre. The “transnational” exhibition prompted debate on a “change of context,” a subject that Oyarzún discussed in detail and that provided him with an opportunity to talk about the local art scene that stubbornly resisted the dictatorial context of the period, thus explaining the lack of a specifically Chilean one. The exhibition made people in local art circles feel uncomfortable and suspicious as a result of the sociopolitical conditions in Chile under the military dictatorship (1973–90), the event’s lack of contact and communication at a local level, and the  technological disparities (production means and methods) that put it beyond the reach of Chilean artists at the time. Oyarzún struck a raw nerve by pointing out that the international exhibition was insensitive to local realities in a peripheral country.