Curated by Ariel Authier, the exhibition Doble de cuerpo (Body Double) sets a dialogue between the photographic works of Alberto Goldenstein and Raúl Flores.

Alberto Goldenstein (Bs. As. 1951) is one of the seminal figures of contemporary photography in Argentina. He introduced an approach to the medium consisting tin capturing a sense of estrangement towards the everyday, the surrounding urbanscapes and people, avoiding postproduction and relying on the camera as an extension of his subjectivity. In the nineties he was at the center of the art scene which emerged in Buenos Aires around the Centro Cultural Rojas (the Rojas) —a milestone moment in the development of local art— which relied on the spontaneous, the emotional, the richness and beauty found in everyday culture. Goldenstein has had an influential role as a teacher and curator at the Rojas for over two decades. He currently has a retrospective exhibition curated by Carla Barbero at the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (MAMBA), on view until May 27th.

Raúl Flores (Cordoba, 1965) first emerged with his raw and iconoclastic photographic work in the late nineties. In 2010 he founded Proyectos Yunga, a platform for fostering the development of young artists in the provinces of Argentina. His works have been exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA), Fundación Proa; Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, among other venues.

Since its invention, photography has given us portraits. Poses, gestures and gazes are combined to set in motion the sort of theater of the personality that arises each time a body faces a camera. A play of masks which actually reveals more than it hides.

If a body double is a person who is a substitute for an actor in the film scenes in which the actor does not wish to perform, the kind of Body Double proposed by this exhibition explores the possibilities that bodies DO wish to experience —as in Brian de Palma’s film. The desire to become our own double through the doubling that photography is in itself.

In the series Mundo del Arte (Artworld, 1988-2000), Alberto Goldenstein made portraits of his inner circle, the artists and friends who hung out at the Rojas. The spontaneous yet formally uncompromising gaze of the photographer got mixed with the complicity of his subjects to become what today amounts to a social documentation about a tribe of friends, young artists producing and living in a very intense moment. About 150 photographs from this series are shown in his retrospective at MAMBA in the format of a digital slide show, the selection in the gallery portray some of the most emblematic artists from that period.

Raul Flores’ most recent works are radically different in their approach to portraiture. These are his first photographs made in a studio and the first time he focuses on people. His previous work looked at the most banal aspects of contemporary life: the inside of refrigerators and kitchen sinks, thematic parks, trash bins, transforming them in almost sculptural monuments thanks to his brazen gaze. In his new series he has decided to redo through photography the works from the eighties of Argentinean painter Ricardo Garabito. Those works were an exercise in studying typologies and corporal attitudes. Flores’ irony, humor and desire for those “original” works make for hyper real mise-en-scènes. These are portraits as well, not of people but of artworks. Paintings confronting photography through interpretation, translation. And since the models are all young artists who are friends, they become portraits of another tribe.

In Goldenstein’s images of monuments the models are historical figures anchored in their bodies of bronze. They have been immersed in the chaotic urban jungle with its lights, shapes, colors. Everything around them conspires against their already lost fame or reputation. It is only through Goldenstein’s lens that both universes can merge and those figures can recover their gestures and become image.