“There was no money.” Gallerist Nora Fisch recalls the Argentine art scene back in the early 2000s, in the aftermath of the biggest economical and social crisis in the country, with record figures for unemployment, poverty and destitution. “At the time, there were very few galleries and very little support for contemporary art,” Fisch told the Herald .
Her Nora Fisch Gallery in San Telmo, Buenos Aires, recently premiered the exhibit Alejandro Ikonicoff Collection – Works and Documents from the 2000s based on Ikonicoff’s collection, a private set of artwork from that turbulent period in the country. This exhibition, which closes on July 20, comes after several prior exhibits the gallery showcased over the last four years, which displayed art from the 1990s. “As far as I know, there hasn’t been any institutional or private collection focusing broadly on that first decade of the century, so for us, it was important to start to cast an art-historical light on those years,” said Fisch.
A well established gallerist in the local scene, she stresses the need to foster local contemporary art while keeping an eye on its recent history. The exhibition serves as a time capsule of that era, representing attitudes and activities of the contemporary art scene ushered by a time of financial crisis and social unrest and hardships. Many of the artists who began their careers around this time, and whose early works are part of the collection, are now among the most prominent A.
