Our represented artist Carlos Gallardo presents his performance The Color Is Not Right in the Salón Blanco of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago on Friday 17 December at 12.00h.
Taking as inspiration the grand exhibition that the American artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) presented in 1985 in Santiago, Carlos Gallardo reflects on the tension between national art and the art produced in the great metropolitan centres of culture.
The Color Is Not Right is a mise-en-scène that transits ideas about authorship in which Gallardo, in a simple and unique act, will create an object generated in Rauschenberg's pop art that ends up nesting in the current affairs of 2021.
The name of Carlos Gallardo's project comes from an anecdote that tells that while standing on the sidewalk opposite to the Museum, and observing the building, Robert Rauschenberg commented to the person in charge of the artwork transport: "The colour is not right." Subsequently, the Museum was painted with the colour that the artist did think was right: a variation of Naples yellow, which the building retained for years until it returned to its original façade.
A couple of weeks after the opening of the 1985 exhibition, the Museum's management and the US Embassy organised a clinic for art students and young artists with the master. Carlos Gallardo recalls: "Once the clinic was over, and after having answered several questions from the attendees, I approached him and told him that I was very interested in his work, regretting to know that an original of his would never be within my reach."
"Then Rauschenberg took the magazine I had in my hands, and looking at me without much attention, stamped a large signature on its cover. When he handed it back to me, he said: 'Make your own Rauschenberg'. Without really understanding the real scope of his phrase, I left that day happy with my little treasure and kept it until now," the artist adds.
Carlos Gallardo's The Color Is Not Right is presented with the support of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, in collaboration with the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage of Chile, Isabel Croxatto Galería and ProChile.
Date: Friday 17 December, 12.00h.
Limited capacity.
National Museum of Fine Arts of Chile
José Miguel de la Barra 650. Santiago, Chile.
