Pablo Guiot

Participant

Something Blue

My project consists in making a hollow wooden box measuring 1.80 by 1.20 by 1.20 m.
It will have a small access and exit door with internal latches; on two opposite sides there will be a slot about 15 cm long. Inside the box, I will place a slanting shelf that will serve as a working table, just below the slot described above. I will also pit in a comfortable chair and a drawing lamp. Intentionally hiding inside my box -that I will paint blue- I am planning to produce a number of drawings and writings that I will throw out through the slot as they are ready so that any passer-by that might be interested in them can pick them up. I am considering placing my box in different places, some of which will be related to the art field while others may be public buildings, promenades, parks, squares. I am particularly interested in connecting places such as entrance doors, corridors, landings, but I do not discard the possibility to set my box up somewhere and call on to the audience at a given place and time. Whichever way, the action will be carried out over a number of hours and, if it were an art exhibition, the box would be left there to be "activated" only when I am working inside. In my hiding-place (my blue box) I will do whatever crosses my mind: little drawings, writings, ideograms, some games, little projects easy to put into practice, etc. In fact, everything that I will produce will be related to my feelings at that particular moment.
(...) starting from my not being there physically. My devices act as artificial limbs fixed onto the world, as something that makes me vanish from the scene so as to set up a number of agents who "speak in my place." I disappear to be found in many ways, disseminated in wholeness, regarding the word as a live phenomenon, as a journey. (...) Now, I'm looking for the shortest distance between my body and that of others. Through this project I intend to build a machine with myself as an engine. Apparently, this box where I will hide will work in exactly the same way as other devices I have built, but in fact its mechanism will be exactly the opposite of those others. One step forward from the comfortable, naughty attitude denoted by my absence in previous works to the discomfort of my tacit presence and excessive productivity, this work will be the strongest argument to prove that my visual absence is not, in fact, my absence. My blue box will be the last veil that communicates me as an artist in the world. The last conjuring trick before the naked revelation of truth. I associate this work with the "ivory tower" of an artist that has come down ; from the ground, the tower feels and is perceived as alien. Amid this funny, absurd position, I insist on the dramatic, positive action of producing a possibility (not a certainty) to reach the Other on the other side. I prefer to keep the deaf-and dumb gesture of art. It makes sense to me to produce, in an obsessive act, the "sound" coming from work. That's where all my energy goes.

Pablo Guiot Born in Tucumán in 1972. Graduated from the School of Fine Arts at Tucumán National University. Since 2000, he and Sandro Pereira have coordinated an artistic group project named "El Ingenio." He is currently attending the last course to become a Licenciate in Plastic Arts at the School of Art, T.N.U., where he is also an assistant teacher at Worshop "C". Among his individual exhibitions are "Cualquier parecido con la realidad es pura coincidencia", Casa Club Cultural Centre, Tucumán (1999), and "95/96", E.F. Virla Cultural Centre, Tucumán, 1997. He also participated in collective exhibitions , like "Colectivos y asociados" with "El Ingenio" group, Casa de Amèrica, Madrid, Spain (2002); "Dispositivos", Ernesto Ballesteros-Pablo Guiot, Provincial Museum of Fine Arts, Tucumán (2001); "Pablo Guiot-Juliana Iriart", Espacio Duplus Contemporary Art, Buenos Aires, (2001). In Salons, Contests and Scholarships he was granted honours at the following, among others: "Encuentros de Producción y Análisis de Obra para Jóvenes Artistas del N.O.A. (an agreement between Fundación Antorchas and Workshop "C") run by Pablo Siquier and Graciela Sacco (2001); Second Purchase Prize at "Xº Salón Carlos Navarro" (1999); Scholarship: "Encuentros de análisis de obra," organized by Trama in Rosario City (2000); First Object Prize, "VIIIº Salón Carlos Navarro" (1999); "Encuentros de Producción y Crítica para Jóvenes Artistas del N.O.A." (an agreement between Fundación Antorchas and Workshop "C" run by Gumier Maier, Claudia Fontes, Marcelo Pacheco and Laura Batkis (1998); First Object Prize "Vº Salón Carlos Navarro" (1996). email palguiot@hotmail.com