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Installation view of "Liliana Porter: Drum Solo/Solo de Tambor," Blanton Museum of Art, The Uni…
Liliana Porter: Drum Solo/Solo de Tambor
Installation view of "Liliana Porter: Drum Solo/Solo de Tambor," Blanton Museum of Art, The Uni…
Installation view of "Liliana Porter: Drum Solo/Solo de Tambor," Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, December 8, 2018–February 24, 2019.

Liliana Porter: Drum Solo/Solo de Tambor

Saturday, December 8, 2018 - Sunday, February 24, 2019
In the video Drum Solo [Solo de Tambor] (2000; 19 min) Liliana Porter brings to life a cast of recurrent toy-like characters that have appeared in her artworks over the years. Through straight-forward animation and accompanied by a music score by Sylvia Meyer, vintage figurines perform in humorous, absurd, and sometimes moving vignettes. Porter’s installation Labor forzada [Forced Labor] (2005) will also be on view, featuring a tiny worker shoveling an impossibly large pile of mulch, a light-hearted but incisive comment about labor and social injustice.
Gallery Text
Liliana Porter explores the use of everyday objects in her prints, paintings, conceptual installations, and videos. Since the 1980s, she has favored toy-like objects, which she represented isolated or in groups in the midst of an empty, undefined background. Porter’s inanimate knick-knacks and figurines have, as she says, “a double existence. On the one hand they are mere appearance, insubstantial ornaments, but, at the same time, have a gaze that can be animated by the viewer, able to endow things with an interiority and identity.” Her cast of recurring characters comes to life in videos such as Solo de tambor, where they perform in humorous, absurd, and sometimes moving vignettes that reflect on the human condition.
Texto de Sala
Liliana Porter explora el uso de objetos cotidianos en sus grabados, pinturas, instalaciones conceptuales y videos. Desde la década de 1980, ella ha preferido objetos con aspecto de juguete, a los que representa aislados o en grupos en un espacio vacío e indefinido. Las pequeñas figuras y adornos inanimados de Porter tienen, como ella misma explica, “una doble existencia. Por un lado, son mera apariencia, adornos insustanciales, y al mismo tiempo tienen una mirada que puede estar animada por el espectador, capaz de dotar a las cosas de interioridad e identidad”. Su repertorio de personajes recurrentes cobra vida en videos como Solo de tambor, donde actúan en viñetas humorísticas, absurdas y a veces emocionantes para reflexionar sobre la condición humana.