Untitled

Roberto Elía emerged as a conceptual artist in Buenos Aires during the 1970s and developed a singular career path grounded in interdisciplinary practices including painting, sculpture, poetry, and music. Early on he adopted visual motifs that became a lasting part of his artistic vocabulary. Among them is rayuela [hopscotch], both a playground game popular around the world and the title of a famous book by Argentine writer Julio Cortazar. In its many variations, players hop one-footed between earth and heaven, or between earth and hell, moving back and forth among these realms.  

The game’s structure appealed to Elía, who saw a work of art as a material and narrative space in which a transformation takes place. He adopted the rudimentary symbol of the hopscotch to signify such transformation and used it often in his practice. Here, the jumping grid on the left seems to become the lid of a niche. Outlined in the center of the work, this niche contains burnt matches, perhaps a symbol for the dead. The progression from left to right suggests that once the niche is covered, all traces of the game—and the spent lives—will disappear. Although this is a late work by Elía, it summarizes his complex combination of linguistics and everyday materials with a conceptual approach to art.