Solo project, Art Basel Miami Beach
Cut and chiseled bronze pendants
2021

Valentín Demarco was born—not too long ago—in Olavarría, a small city in the province of Buenos Aires, a five hour drive away from Argentina’s capital. This fact alone set him on a path towards creation, one very grounded in the specific geography, history and community of his hometown: silver-smithing, specifically, the highly ornate style of platería olavarriense . Demarco was brought into this trade encouraged by his family as a teen and found in it a devotion for manual competency which would later enrich his critical practice as a contemporary artist.

Demarco’s work pulls from a set of defined components: He is a trained silversmith who continues to participate in the competitions of his trade. He is an artist who graduated from the National University of Art. And he has been invested in the languages of minimalism and conceptual art, discursively framing and installing his pieces in ways that are reminiscent of Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd. He is also acutely aware of the logic behind contemporary art: a particular aesthetic sphere that defines and rarefies itself by leaving out that which does not fit its globalized, deterritorialized taste—thus relegating the traditional and the local to the peripheries of craft-work and primitive expressions.

Demarco is critical of this and clever at evincing it in his pieces. For the installation Mi puñado de Esplín año 3001 (My Handful of Melancholy year 3001) he takes ex-votos , a type of votive offering characteristic of Catholic territories in which a person extends a gift in the form of a painting or object as a way of thanking their chosen saintly figure for granting them their prayed-for wish. Not too long ago in many places in Latin America this was a very popular custom: A person would ask Virgin Mary or St. Jude for a favor—the curing of an illness, the protection of a family member, help with paying the mortgage—and when granted, the blessed would bring back a token of their gratitude to adorn the saintly’s chapel. Something like a small painting depicting the hardships, or, more commonly in the region of Olavarría, a tiny pendant made of silver, gold or bronze, in the shape of that which was saved: a heart, a leg, a baby, a house.

What would the desires and experiences of Demarco’s millennial cohort look like in ex-voto form? What could young artists today be thankful for? A myriad of things, including: Nicki Minaj, a marijuana leaf, Krusty the clown from the Simpsons, a Jeff Koons balloon dog, the poop emoji, the Instagram logo, the Snapchat logo, a fit torso holding a phone, a long closed Buenos Aires club, Grace Jones’s album cover, an Artforum magazine, and a can of Merde D’artist. These are all as disparate as they are recognizable, actual icons that together form a detailed portrait of someone living inside the contemporary, of the eclecticism of today’s cultural consumption.
While bringing his own generation’s references to an old tradition, he too keeps some of the old-timey allure for himself. The pendants are made by Demarco laboriously by hand, the traces of the meticulous metalwork still noticeable on them. And they also include some time-honored Argentinian iconography, like mate-drinking gourd, chorizo links, gaucho knives and beef. These contrast with Demarco’s nod to a much more sanitized and already mentioned tradition: minimalism. The tiny pendants line up the walls in a fastidious grid that would make Frank Stella or Carl Andre proud. With this irreverent mixing of images and traditions, Demarco demonstrates the arbitrariness of Western cultural hierarchies and the instability, the productive capriciousness, that is inevitably at the heart of artistic creation.

Gaby Cepeda

Photo credit: Santiago Orti

Solo project, Art Basel Miami Beach
Cut and chiseled bronze pendants
2021

Valentín Demarco was born—not too long ago—in Olavarría, a small city in the province of Buenos Aires, a five hour drive away from Argentina’s capital. This fact alone set him on a path towards creation, one very grounded in the specific geography, history and community of his hometown: silver-smithing, specifically, the highly ornate style of platería olavarriense . Demarco was brought into this trade encouraged by his family as a teen and found in it a devotion for manual competency which would later enrich his critical practice as a contemporary artist.

Demarco’s work pulls from a set of defined components: He is a trained silversmith who continues to participate in the competitions of his trade. He is an artist who graduated from the National University of Art. And he has been invested in the languages of minimalism and conceptual art, discursively framing and installing his pieces in ways that are reminiscent of Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd. He is also acutely aware of the logic behind contemporary art: a particular aesthetic sphere that defines and rarefies itself by leaving out that which does not fit its globalized, deterritorialized taste—thus relegating the traditional and the local to the peripheries of craft-work and primitive expressions.

Demarco is critical of this and clever at evincing it in his pieces. For the installation Mi puñado de Esplín año 3001 (My Handful of Melancholy year 3001) he takes ex-votos , a type of votive offering characteristic of Catholic territories in which a person extends a gift in the form of a painting or object as a way of thanking their chosen saintly figure for granting them their prayed-for wish. Not too long ago in many places in Latin America this was a very popular custom: A person would ask Virgin Mary or St. Jude for a favor—the curing of an illness, the protection of a family member, help with paying the mortgage—and when granted, the blessed would bring back a token of their gratitude to adorn the saintly’s chapel. Something like a small painting depicting the hardships, or, more commonly in the region of Olavarría, a tiny pendant made of silver, gold or bronze, in the shape of that which was saved: a heart, a leg, a baby, a house.

What would the desires and experiences of Demarco’s millennial cohort look like in ex-voto form? What could young artists today be thankful for? A myriad of things, including: Nicki Minaj, a marijuana leaf, Krusty the clown from the Simpsons, a Jeff Koons balloon dog, the poop emoji, the Instagram logo, the Snapchat logo, a fit torso holding a phone, a long closed Buenos Aires club, Grace Jones’s album cover, an Artforum magazine, and a can of Merde D’artist. These are all as disparate as they are recognizable, actual icons that together form a detailed portrait of someone living inside the contemporary, of the eclecticism of today’s cultural consumption.

While bringing his own generation’s references to an old tradition, he too keeps some of the old-timey allure for himself. The pendants are made by Demarco laboriously by hand, the traces of the meticulous metalwork still noticeable on them. And they also include some time-honored Argentinian iconography, like mate-drinking gourd, chorizo links, gaucho knives and beef. These contrast with Demarco’s nod to a much more sanitized and already mentioned tradition: minimalism. The tiny pendants line up the walls in a fastidious grid that would make Frank Stella or Carl Andre proud. With this irreverent mixing of images and traditions, Demarco demonstrates the arbitrariness of Western cultural hierarchies and the instability, the productive capriciousness, that is inevitably at the heart of artistic creation.

Gaby Cepeda