The works of Buenos Aires-based artist Esteban Diacono look like white box rooms where unnerving genetic experiments are cultivated by alien civilisations interested in Planet Earth.

Result #1

The works of Buenos Aires-based artist Esteban Diacono look like white box rooms where unnerving genetic experiments are cultivated by alien civilisations interested in Planet Earth. The artists sculptures—each of which was created by constructing a vacuum cleaner from a metal grating—are built of layers of black plastic and a variety of other materials, including an aluminum grating and a glass of water. The sculptures are made of concrete, resin, and aluminum and are each titled With, B, or M. With, for example, a mirror with a chrome-plated mirror, 2011, and a folding mirror with a mirror, 2012, in which the viewer can peer inside a vacuum cleaner. The piece was installed on a low pedestal, so that it looked like an armature for a door, which also served as a sort of pedestal for the vacuum cleaner. The piece is a kind of laboratory, a place where the scientists are testing the limits of human intelligence.On the floor, a small glass of water, made of a material used in making water filters, sat on a small metal grating. The grating was covered in white paint and had a sharp edge, like a knife or a saw. The water was in fact a sealed container, a container of something that is neither alive nor dead. It was a container of water that could be used, like a vacuum cleaner, to remove something from the earth—a rock or a plant, a dirt or a soil. In this case, the water was a form of water that could not be used. It was a sealed, white, nonhuman substance that was not meant to be used. The grating, the metal grating, the transparent material that could not be opened, the scientific context that prevented the water from being used—all of these objects made the object a dead object, a material incapable of being used, and one that stood for the inability to be used.The show, then, was a space of experimentation, a place where the body and the body of the earth are transformed into one another, where a human being is transformed into an organ, a cell.

Result #2

The works of Buenos Aires-based artist Esteban Diacono look like white box rooms where unnerving genetic experiments are cultivated by alien civilisations interested in Planet Earth. . . . , 1999, a pair of black-and-white photos, one of them of a male nude in a bathtub, the other of a female nude in a bathtub, shows an abandoned bedroom, a bed, and a piece of furniture, all of which look like the works of a former lover. The images are mounted on metal shelving, suggesting a fragile but highly tactile world. Theyre also highly formal, with a taut, compressed, and elliptical, almost balletic line that punctuates the image. The textural qualities of the metal shelves recall the so-called baroque tradition, and the way the paint is applied to the shelving surface suggests a kind of minimalism. The paintings, which are made up of a variety of images, are all very small, and theres a lot of space between the viewer and them. The paintings are also very small, and theres a lot of room between the viewer and the work. The sculptures, which are made of wood and metal, are even smaller, and theres a lot of space between the viewer and them, too.In fact, theres a lot of space between the viewer and the sculptures, too. The works are very small, too, and theres a lot of room between the viewer and them. They also look like paintings, but there is no canvas to be painted on. Theyre just very light, and they make the viewer feel very small, too. The sculptures look like paintings too, but theres no canvas on them either. Theyre just very light, and they make the viewer feel very small. The drawings and sculptures look like paintings too, but theyre just very light; they look like drawings, but they look like paintings. The drawings and sculptures look like paintings too, but theyre very light, too.

Result #3

The works of Buenos Aires-based artist Esteban Diacono look like white box rooms where unnerving genetic experiments are cultivated by alien civilisations interested in Planet Earth. This impression is heightened by the artists reference to the work of American artist Rosalind Krauss, who, in the 60s, explored the question of the museum as the site of a strange hybridity between the art and the public. For the last twenty-five years, Krauss has been questioning the relationship between art and the public, but she has not been able to find a way to stop us from thinking about art. Her project, which she calls a project of the gallery, is to find a way to bring art into the gallery. She has been asking what happens when a work of art is exhibited in a gallery, and has found a way to get around the problem of the gallery as the site of a strange hybridity.In her installation at the Palacio delle Grossi, Diacono showed seven sculptures that are based on the same idea as the artists earlier work: to create a work of art by means of a work of art. These are not pieces that were created in collaboration with the artist, but rather pieces that are fabricated out of the same materials as those used in the artists earlier pieces. The work that was shown here consisted of a wooden box that the artist had cut in half and filled with a thick wood. She then used this wooden form as a kind of support for a metal arm, which she held in her hand, and that she used to cut the other half of the wooden box. This is a kind of gestural sculpture, in which the work seems to be about the impossibility of doing something else. In this way, it is about the necessity of doing something. The wooden box is also a box, which is also a work of art, and so on. The work is about the relation between work and gallery, between the two.Diaconos work is not new.

Result #4

The works of Buenos Aires-based artist Esteban Diacono look like white box rooms where unnerving genetic experiments are cultivated by alien civilisations interested in Planet Earth. The cavernous spaces are filled with antigravitational substances, ranging from coal dust to epoxy resin to powdered metal. The objects are arranged in a way that makes them resemble fragments of an ancient temple. Each piece is composed of a series of two to four panels of the same dimensions and a panel of equal sizes, which together form a square. Each panel is made up of two overlapping panels, which are then joined to form a square. Each panel is made up of a series of two to four panels, and so on, with each pair of panels forming a single, smaller panel, which is joined to a panel of the same dimensions as its neighbor.The work evokes the legacy of Minimalism in its use of materials that seem to defy gravity. In the past, Diacono has worked with the material that has come to be associated with the golden mean—silicate, for example, or platinum, which is also the material of the ancient temple. In this case, the gold dust is mixed with epoxy resin, and the resulting wood is then applied to the surface in layers and layers of adhesive. The result is a sort of organic, organic material that suggests an archaic, organic presence. The gold dust is then covered in epoxy resin and then placed on top of the resin in a way that evokes a kind of burial. The resin acts as a kind of stone, and it appears to have been left behind by the artist in the course of the performance. The material seems to have been used in a ritual that is both heavy and delicate, yet also light and fragile. The material is, in fact, the material of the grave, and in this context it becomes a monument to the memory of those who have passed away.In the works on paper, the epoxy resin is mixed with other materials, such as graphite, ink, and pencil.

Result #5

The works of Buenos Aires-based artist Esteban Diacono look like white box rooms where unnerving genetic experiments are cultivated by alien civilisations interested in Planet Earth. The artist has described the installation as a room with an opening, a door that leads into the other side of the room, where the genetic material is hidden. The entrance to the room is made of wood, and the white walls of the rooms interior are covered with a taut, layered, and overlapping mesh of light-sensitive paper. The material was taken from the artists collection of photographs and documents, which included the label of a DNA test, the photographs of a city, a photo of a woman with a face, a newspaper article, and a series of drawings. The series of drawings, which chronicles the different stages of the same laboratory, reveals the human body through the interface of the biological and the artificial. The flesh is made of paper, the skin is covered with sticky paper, and the paper is lightly smeared on the skin. These drawings, which take as their point of departure the human body, are made of white paper, the pages of a book. They are assembled according to the same logic as the DNA tests. One of the series consists of a series of sequential photographs of the same woman, which she turns into the arms of a chair. Another series consists of drawings of an object that could be a medicine cabinet, a vial, a microscope, or a phone. The title of the latter series is Anima en el gran en el rosso (Anima in the mirror, 1993), and it is a reference to the existence of an object that can be used as a surrogate for a body, a mirror, an instrument of contact, and a tool of communication.In the series of photographs, titled El gran en el rosso (The mirror, 1993), Diacono focuses on the delicate passage between the flesh and the mirror, and on the negotiation between the two. The material that covers the skin, that is what we see in the photographs, is of the same material that hides the body.