Art Basel: A Door to see BA from a New Angle

By Pamela Aguirre Leonetti

A white and light-blue revolving door at the end of a wooden pier in the Río de Plata. On one side, the horizon. On the other, Puerto Madero skyscrapers. It is six o’ clock in the evening, the sun is setting among the clouds and the image is sheer poetry. It is the artwork Perspective of Absence, of Argentine artist Eduardo Basualdo, which can be visited until September 12 from 12 to 20 at the pier of Asociación Argentina de Pesca, at Puerto Madero.

Arriving there is not easy. It is a precarious wooden structure stretching 800 metres out into the river, where wind and water are strong. But it is worth the effort. It is, perhaps, the most poetic artwork of Art Basel Buenos Aires and it is, undoubtedly,the one we like the most.

Basualdo thought about the borders of the city to create the artwork and he chose this place because it is the farthest end of Buenos Aires; that is, he thinks, the best of this work. “We are a mix of land and water, the door is a symbol, a blurred limit that  allows us to contemplate the horizon but also brings us back to the shore”, he says at a talk at Asociación de Pescadores.

The door is the end, the last stanza of the poem. Along the way we find small installations, and when we reach the last part of the pier, a dark room left us without light so that we can see the door with surprise, full of eagerness, fancy and hope.

Le Banana Picks

We suggest that you visit Perspective of Absence at sunset, until September 12.

Before, 15 minutes away by car, you can visit the artwork Kermit the Frog, Even by Alex Da Corte. Ejerce? At Arenas Studios, Av. Don Pedro de Mendoza 965.

The best of it? To wait until the performers dressed in frog costumes appear and hold Kermit the frog as if it were a puppet on a string. If you go, don’t miss that moment! When? Until September 12, from 12 to 18.

Also at Arenas Studios but from 13 to 17, if you like contemporary dance, you can enjoy the performance Aggregate by Romanian artist Alexandra Pirici. 80 dancers dance and sing in a performance where movement repetition is at the center.