Borges Cultural Center – 2013
THE LINE THINKS has, almost imperceptibly, reached over 60 exhibitions, which implies that seven uninterrupted years of exhibitions at the Borges Cultural Center have gone by since Armando Sapia inaugurated the first one on May 2006. It is well known that it is not easy in our circle to hold a project during such a long time and, in fact, it would not have been possible if not for the generosity and interest of the Borges Cultural Center, the team that, in one way or another, has been involved in this series, and especially the project’s director, Roger Haloua. We would not have gone far without the talent, the sensitivity and the professional efficiency of the coordinators of the project, Laura Spivak, who was involved from the beginning until 2008, and from then on, Valeria Traversa. When LA LINEA PIENSA was inaugurated, we said that our intention was giving back to drawing its leading role as autonomous language, independently of the tributary boundaries that connect it to the representative tradition –a tradition which, in Argentina, is more developed than the avant-garde – and that we would lay emphasis upon the autonomy of the line and the work of those artists who are concerned more with the semantic richness of drawings than with the content or referential traits. Going through the 61 exhibitions that have been organized so far, we may see that our aim was far exceeded and that the variety and the quality of the artists that were selected justified and enriched the intentions that were presented in our manifesto. Precisely that initial document was, in a way, a declaration of principles; we were convinced that the art of drawing was usually pushed into the background as it was considered a subordinate phenomenon, not only in relation to the presumed disciplinary hegemony of painting but also due to its limited uses. We must now admit that that declaration of principles is outdated, and that is good news. (…) If Leonardo –according to Martin Kemp– got desperate about words as means of description of complex phenomena, and only his drawings could offer adequate visual descriptions, and if years later Klee, under the concept that “art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible”, came to the conclusion that the line is a period that walks, and that drawing is taking that line for a walk, we might draw the conclusion that in our age drawing is description and a journey to the ignored as well. This implies a wide range of teachings from the past and adventures in the future. Our project intended to take over that panorama, as both Leonardo’s and Klee’s definitions coincide in asserting that drawing is autonomous in formulating thoughts. For that reason, we have chosen the name THE LINE THINKS. We then invite you to join us in celebrating the survival of THE LINE THINKS experience by viewing this popular and retrospective exhibition, sharing the conviction that it is not only a concise sample of a journey but also the reaffirmation of a working hypothesis for the future.