Two years ago in Venice Argentina presented one of its youngest artists, Nicola Costantino, with a show about Eva Perón; in 2015 it is fielding one of the leading sculptors of the 20th century, Juan Carlos Distéfano. But while Distéfano draws on Argentinian dictatorship for some of his polyester-resin figures, the theme is universal: the tortured figures are not just desaparecidos but the oppressed everywhere: the kneeling, praying figures facing backwards refer not only to the oppressive authorities of 1970s Argentina, but to torturers and their apologists around the world.
Agony, therefore, but also in the sense of the Greek word’s etymology: the daily struggle of all humans in the face of forces they cannot control. We are presented with common man facing social, political or mythological violence: the work Icarus, punished for the arrogance of wishing to fly as high as the gods, the illusion of youth punished for defying the limits imposed by power; Naughty Emma, snatched, powerless, by death from behind in a 3-D image recalling a 15th-century woodcut; the figure in Spider web, trapped in a cling-film-like mesh. Not heroes, therefore, but ordinary people trapped by destiny, like the young woman in Floating II, trapped beneath the waves by a coil of rope around her ankle. The inclusive theme is taken to the point that that the public is encouraged to walk around the sculptures and even touch them in order to become more deeply engaged with them. “This could be you or I”, the artist seems to say.
But there is hope here too: a man climbs a lamppost to cut wires impeding the flight of a kite. He is aware of the risk of electrocution yet chooses to take it to allow the kite, bearing a poem by Oliverio Girondo, to fly free.