Preface as a Pretext

by Iair Rosenkranz

It is the limited and unilateral approach to representation what
defines the crisis of art in the XX century, and only through a
comprehensive anthropological approach can art overcome its crisis."

from Journeys Into Visual Experiences
by O. Romberg / G. Breyer
Universidad de Tucumán, 1972

This preface is an excuse to establish some new relations between the subject of this installation and a few select metaphors. Reflections are offered before (pre) the face (figure/rostrum) and before (pre) the text (abstract/web). The saturation of dialectical discourse, itself transcended by the crisis of representation, has left in its wake an awareness of an in-between space-a space which is the realm of Osvaldo Romberg. Situated between art and architecture, +2000/-2000, even expresses the necessity of stepping aside at the end of the millennium and contemplating the universal history of mankind as viewed in Borgesian terms as a metaphor. As a Magister Ludi, Romberg combines historical metaphors through variations and permutations to produce a labyrinth where history fuses into an ensemble of philosophic paraphernalia that questions the myths and mysteries of art and art making, as well as history itself.

Romberg resists the quest of society to annihilate art and at the same time acts against the mystification of the artist as a demiurge or a vessel interpreting the will of God, or, in Utopian times, the will of the People. Romberg concentrates his work in its pure epistemological essence, manipulating and sensualizing knowledge. The aura is the visual content in relation to the viewer.

Romberg challenges the establishment of the art world by parodying its strategies and modi operandi as well. In a high tech culture, Romberg creates a low tech installation using scotch taped images and an inexpensive Xerox process of reproduction. Also, +2000/-2000, even, will open simultaneously at the same time on the same day at several venues around the world-thus defying the concepts of spatial hierarchy (center versus periphery), challenging the idea of art as a commodity committed only to the metropolis, and offering an alternative to the problems related to the power conferred today only to art organizers and curators. By making his installation materially transparent, Romberg, finally, disfigures the essence of architecture, unable now, in this scenario, to protect, or hide us-a startling development which epitomizes the impossibility of refuge in today's newly ordered cyberworld.

I. Rosenkranz,
New York, September 1995