Between Nightfall and Daybreak

gr_fader_vista_general

Installation. 3 mts. x 2,5 mts. x 2,5 mts.

Hipótesis del paisaje perdido (Lost Landscape Hypothesis) for the series “La vida de un día” (A Day’s Life) by Fernando Fader. Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan B. Castagnino. First Acquisition Prize.
December 2010

The series La vida de un día by Fernando Fader (Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan B. Castagnino Collection) is comprised by 8 pieces: La mañanita (Daybreak), La mañana (Morning), Mediodía (Midday), La nube Blanca (The White Cloud), La tarde (The Afternoon), La puesta de sol (Sunset), Crepúsculo (Dusk) and Anochecer (Nightfall). True to the interests of Impressionism, the same landscape composition mutates under different effects of light. It is a delicious, candid series. Nevertheless, there is something that perturbs me. What happens between nightfall and daybreak? What happens when the dense night looms over the hamlet and the hills, when the villagers go to sleep? What color are their dreams and nightmares? Might their dreams still carry traces of the light from midday? Or do they dream fluorescent landscapes and goats with polka-dots?
Fader told us what happens between La mañanita and Anochecer, but we do not know what happens during the night. We can only speculate. The truth is that F.F. took the secret with him to the grave. So, then, I try to imagine that lost landscape. I bring my papers and sketches, my Diary of investigations. I spread them out on my work table. There I have a lamp that illuminates tools for working and scraps of writing. Facing the table are Fernando Fader’s original paintings (Anochecer and La mañanita) where the missing link, the unknown painting that comes between one and the next, obsesses me. My Diary tells of my prowlings in that hypothetical landscape.