The Fundación Banco Patricios was created in 1984 and was one of the most important exhibition spaces during the 1990s Buenos Aires. In March 1998 it closed its facilities with the bankruptcy of Banco Patricios.
Beginning with the title of the show, the proposed generational cutback becomes significant in relation to the articles published by the Página/12 newspaper—in its Tuesday visual arts section—such as, for example, “Preparados, listos, ya. Largadas” [Ready, Set, Go. Let go.] by Alberto San Miguel (the pseudonym of Miguel Briante) or “La cuestión de los jóvenes” [The Problem with the Young] by Fabián Lebenglik, (both texts were published on January 23, 1990, on page 14, see records 770020 and 764362), in which the scant exhibition spaces for young artists are pointed out. In fact, in the latter article, the Fundación Banco Patricios facility is mentioned as one of the few available ones. The topic of “youth,” linked to “institutional marginality,” among others, was through its repetition, consolidated via the articles published by Página/12, above all, those referring to La Galería del Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, between 1989 and the first years of the following decade.
The Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas is a cultural extension of the Universidad de Buenos Aires. In 1989, the Galería del Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas was created in the entrance hall to the university campus. Between 1991–92, aproximately, it began to acquire an important visibility within the Buenos Aires art milieu. In this way, the “young” artists from “el Rojas” (Liliana Maresca, Fabián Burgos, Graciela Hasper, Feliciano Centurión, Martín Di Girolamo, Alberto Goldestein, Sebastián Gordín, Miguel Harte, Agustín Inchausti, Luis Lindner, Nuna Magiante, Emiliano Miliyo, Esteban Pagés, Ariadna Pastorini, Marcelo Pombo, Cristina Schiavi, Enrique Marmora, Sergio Vila, Benito Laren, Omar Schiliro and Alfredo Londaibere, among many others) began to be incorporated in the agendas of key exhibition spaces. The ICI (Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana), as well as the Centro Cultural de España, or the Galería Ruth Benzacar, should be mentioned in this regard.
The reference to the poetics of the past, such as Pop art, minimalism, Concrete art (under extremely personal reformulations), besides the elements of kitsch, have helped to characterize the resources of expression of such artists. Toward the end of the decade, the artists who made up “el grupo del Rojas,” were grouped, in a generic manner, as the representatives of the “1990s Argentinean art.”
In close relation to this text, please see “Virtudes, fracasos y mimetismos en una exposición de arte joven” [Virtues, failures and mimetisms in a young art exhibition], an article by Jorge López- Anaya, published in La Nación newspaper on Saturday, March 2, 1991 (see record 768352).
