Under the guise of an interview with visual artist Sebastián Gordín, this article sets out to review the exhibition that he presented in 1992 at the entrance to the ICI (Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana [Institute for Iberian-American Cooperation]). The reviewer asks how the artist had conceived this project, how he had implemented it, and what, if any, were the repercussions. According to Gordín, his presentation consisted of a model of the ICI in which his own work was exhibited. In response to Fabián Lebenglik’s question concerning his “future exhibitions of this kind,” Gordín replied that he planned to keep showing his work at places that were unreachable to him, such as the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, the hall of Galería Ruth Benzacar, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and maybe at Federal Police headquarters as well. In the preamble to his article, Lebenglik says that “in a medium as vital as the visual arts have been in recent years, in which artists move with little transitional effort from the [underground] Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas gallery to the [best-known] Recoleta, the ICI, or Ruth Benzacar’s galleries, the artists’ options for showing their work are no longer limited to just a couple of venues [given that], in the post modern period, there are certain factors in play that make the periphery and the center virtually interchangeable.” 

Art critic Fabián Lebenglik was among the first to review the exhibitions presented by artists who were part of what was called the “Rojas group”—those who relied on the exhibition space at the Galería del Rojas (which was launched in mid-1989 in the entrance hall of the Ricardo Rojas Cultural Center, which was part of the Secretaría de Extensión Cultural de la Universidad de Buenos Aires [Department of Cultural Extension of the University of Buenos Aires]).

Beginning as an underground space in Buenos Aires art milieu, it gained considerable visibility in 1991 and 1992. The “El Rojas” artists (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, Alfredo Londaibere, and  Liliana Maresca, among many others) gradually saw their work being included in the exhibition schedules of important places such as the ICI (Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana), the Centro Cultural de España [Cultural Center of Spain], and even the Ruth Benzacar gallery.

The reference to poetics of the past, such as Pop art, minimalism, Concrete art (under extremely personal reformulations), besides 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.”

The “center-periphery” issue, mentioned in the article, can be followed in various articles in the Buenos Aires weekly magazine Página/12 [Page/12]: “Cuando los costados encierran el centro. Un líder de la periferia y dos de sus jóvenes seguidores establecen dos o tres nuevas pautas de ver los común” [When the borders engulf the center. A leader from the periphery and two of his young followers suggest two or three new ways to see what is common,” “Gumier Maier” (both of which were published on Tuesday, December 19, 1989), “Hasper y Nigro. Dos artistas en el teatro” Hasper and Nigro. Two artists in the stage] (Tuesday, August 8, 1989), or “La peregrinación llega al centro. Tendencias” [A pilgrimage reaches the center. Tendencies] (Tuesday, May 15, 1990).