La noche agranda su silencio

A l e j a n d r o C e s a r c o

Madrid 0 4 . 0 6 . 1 3 – 3 0 . 0 7 . 1 3

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 1)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 2)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 3)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 4)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 5)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 6)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 7)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 8)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 9)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 10)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 11)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 12)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 13)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 14)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 15)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 16)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 17)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 18)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 19)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: La noche agranda su silencio (fig. 20)

@parraromero i n f o @ p a r r a - r o m e r o . c o m

P a r r a & R o m e r o © 2 0 2 6 A L L R I G H T S R E S E R V E D

Throughout Cesarco’s practice, the notion of influence and the possibilities of retelling the past are two interconnected central concerns. In this exhibition, the methodological approach taken to negotiate these two concerns is perhaps as close to home as possible. For his first show at Parra & Romero, Cesarco has selected a group of works that references not only a selected genealogy but an inherited one as the show, through different formats and in different ways, portrays three generations of his family. The show weaves together a tight web of associations, including the tradition of language-based Conceptualism of the 60’s and 70’s and addresses questions of reading, narration, authorship as well as the relationship between the producer and the viewer.

In the video Zeide Isaac (2009), the artist’s grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, performs a script Cesarco wrote based on his personal story. The work explicitly address the possibilities, limitations and responsibilities of testimony. The layering of narrative voices and the passage of time between the event and it’s retelling, from first hand experience to third generation, is allegorically implied in the grandfather’s passage from witness to actor.

Present Memory (2010), originally commissioned by Tate Modern, London, is a portrait of Cesarco’s father shortly after he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. The portrait was filmed in his medical practice using 16mm film, this film was later projected onto the same scene and documented using video. The projection was meant as a literal projection of fears and anxieties, a way of rehearsing his mourning. The work documents a constructed and anticipated memory.

Where I’m Calling From (2012), a self-portrait of sorts, is an imagined book laid out in four prints that compiles a series of photographs and texts that reflects on and exorcise early influences and work. The compiled references are an unveiling of methodologies that act as a direct confrontation with the past, perhaps as a way to lay it to rest and to start anew.

Footnote #11 and Footnote #12 (2013) are part of an ongoing series of footnotes where marginally positioned vinyl texts on the wall attempt to frame a central text that is somehow absent or escaping. The wall itself is made to resemble a page that further spatializes the process of reading, and self-consciously acknowledges Cesarco’s practice as being primarily referential. In this particular case the two footnotes included are quotes from different stories by Silvina Ocampo.

Alejandro Cesarco was born in 1975 in Montevideo, Uruguay. His most recent solo exhibitions include A Portrait, A Story, And An Ending, Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland (2013), Alejandro Cesarco, MuMOK, Vienna (2012), Words Applied to Wounds, Murray Guy, New York (2012) The Early Years, Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2012), and A Common Ground, Uruguayan Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennial (2011). Recent group exhibitions include The Imminence of Poetics, the 30th Bienal de São Paulo (2012), Found in Translation, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2012), Short Stories, Sculpture Center, New York (2011)...