César Baracca
Bio
Born Rosario, Argentina, Baracca studied Fine Arts at National University Rosario, went on to become Founder of the Argentine art group 'LA VACA' and 'ROZARTE,' achieving renown for being the first group formed and to exhibit at the beginning of the new Argentinean democracy. Travelling throughout Europe and America, he contributed to over fifty exhibitions, worked as part of Christo and Jeanne-Claude REICHSTAG PROJECT in Berlin and assisted designer Rob Miller producing murals in Hollywood, USA. Based in the City of London since 1999, works on projects with multiple techniques and materials that explore the themes of finance, power and value. His work is part of the collection of the Castagnino-MACRO Museum (2007) in Rosario, Argentina and the Centro Internazionale d’Arte Contemporanea (2015) in Rome, Italy.
Statement
The Argentine-born London-based artist, César Baracca explores in his art a myriad of materials and techniques to address intersecting issues of finance, circulation, and appropriation, and, more recently, environmental concerns and interpersonal desire. In his ongoing series of mosaics, which he began producing in 2003, Baracca recycled expired credit cards that he collected from family members and friends. For this project, the artist resorted to a meticulous and repetitive process of cutting and pasting pieces of credit cards adapting similar procedures used in Roman mosaic technology, replacing stones and other durable materials with plastic. Baracca revised the monochromatic or colourful floral designs distinctive to the classical tradition, often used in the decoration of walls and floors, by appropriating images from the historical vanguards. More recently, beginning in 2020, Baracca continued to reassess the possibilities of appropriation in order to respond to the Covid-19 crisis. His series Priorities consists of a constellation of twenty toilet cardboard paper rolls that the artist intervened and then attached by means of their respective holders to the gallery wall. The exhibition Priorities was held at the Galería Subsuelo in Rosario between 11.11.22 and 30.12.22. As the artist has stated, Priorities connects, to one end, relationships between desire and need, and to the other, issues regarding technology, crafts, and poetics. In two other projects, Baracca transformed mass-produced objects and cultural signs into highly crafted original works. Alluding to the work of the Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles, in a series entitled, OPUS COCA-COLA, Baracca returns to previous experiments with ornamentation by engraving empty bottles of Coca-Cola. In his Bills Series, Baracca defaces, obscures, and decorates bills from currencies from around the globe. In this way, he rendered these bills obsolete attributing to them other kinds of value, at time preserving only pictures of animals that risk extinction, and others inscribing political slogan, and even Argentine art movements from the 1960s.
Baracca is a founding member of two art collectives that emerged during the reinstatement of Argentine democracy in 1983, La vaca (1988) and Rozarte (1989). His work is on display at the Castagnino-MACRO Museum in Rosario, Argentina and the Centro Internazionale d’Arte Contemporanea Rome, Italy. He is also completing his degree in Art Practice (known in Argentina as Licenciatura en Bellas Artes) at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de la Universidad de Rosario.
