Untitled (0010)

In the 1990s a number of artists in Buenos Aires were looking back to Argentina's mid-century Constructivist tradition and began to reintroduce abstract forms into the country's largely figurative contemporary art. Pablo Siquier was one of the key figures in this movement. His striking black-and-white abstract compositions suggest architectural spaces, organic structures, and even circuit boards. Unlike the earlier abstract artists, Siquier seems to encourage multiple readings and connotations in his works by skillfully exploiting the ambiguities of positive and negative space. Works like this untitled painting suggest that abstraction is meaningful in art not as pure or absolute language, but as the generator of several different, even contradictory interpretations.