Fiere of Lights
Texts of the catalogue, Fuegos de Luces, at Espacio YPF, Buenos Aires, 2009.
It is a fire Lord, and all fires are bad
Steve McQueen in “Hell in the tower”
Light a fire in the Tower YPF and do it with small Neon tubes. Why they set fire to it all? Why do it now? And in this way!
I remember years ago, when Esteban Álvarez did a gigantic cloud of plastic bottles. He spoke of the future, survival but also of the image that we will have in the pupil, the last recorded image.
Followed with the lights, the Fireworks that were watching us astonished info, and that usually last little, very little, too little… and now the lights that painted a space although they shut down, we all know that the walls will be contaminated forever.
There is a constant, something nostalgic for what will disappear, and also by what will survive us. A question about the weather, which is also a question mark over the things that resist oblivion, to die, either a cockroach or the work of a craftsman, a trade of men, who do things that seem doomed to extinction and that should soon be found in antique shops or who knows what Museum…
I wonder if there is a desire to domain. I think that these neon tubes are also musical, that the decision to give you a time, combine colors, soak the walls, beyond the crystals at a pace intended, thought, imagined, flashing is to become a conductor. Times stops and are shaken and cut us breathing. But I also think that it is the possibility of putting on the fire place to observe carefully, from there, to the other who is watching it.
And keep those lights, those images, perhaps to preserve that fire in some way, to hypnotize everyone, to hypnotize someone, in order to save something that can not be forgotten. That is the impression of this fire that apparently does not burn.
Not all fires are bad.
Fernando Farina, curator of the Espacio de Arte, YPF.
Am I crazy or is it hot in here?
Charles Manson
No one knows how it will end all this. The flames are not repeated, even when they are scheduled. Fire lights up and warms up, lights shine and project everywhere, it seems that it is fire, but it is gas. And is gas, but neon. As the avenues of the ancient modern cities, the of the postcards that was coming to the future before going past.
I don’t know if I would have thought of fire having not seen sitting on the floor with your glass of wine and the glow on the face, as before the fire of an imaginary home, long watching such twisted lights and zumbantes. They could be a Christmas tree swaying in thousand spasms or a cockroach of neon dying forever. She wouldn’t look at the lights, and I kept looking at it to her.
I see a few ways braided in a monstrous lights. Pipes, shapes, bodies and lights that reveal only a part of what you can see. Changes in the light offer mirages, like clouds passing at full speed on a windy day, or a spot of moisture in a night of Moon and insomnia.
Then I thought about the fire, flame that changes all the time and I want to keep forever. It could save it to a photo or in thousands, so it were multiplied and once again passed. But fire can happen once and then does not return more. Fire transforms, invades, illuminates and dazzles, heats and also fire, winds and crazy. You can not know how it will end. I have a small hell in a box. And now I no longer know if I‘m crazy or it gets really hot here.
Esteban Alvarez

See video of the installation at Espacio Fundación Osde, 2011:

View of the exhibition in the Hall of the space of the Fundación YPF in Buenos Aires. The installation was composed of seven sculptures by neon and wood. The sculptures evoke flaming fire through a sequencer specially programmed.