Nicolás Domínguez Nacif

San Juan, 1980

How to modify our awareness and perception? Nicolás Domínguez Nacif has studied astrology, anthroposophy, and other ancient and esoteric forms of knowledge. Crucial points of reference and companions throughout Domínguez Nacif’s life include Florencia Bohtlingk and Alfredo Londaibere, artists for whom spirituality and nature are pillars. Like much of Domínguez Nacif’s work, his hypnotic Aurora acts as a fractal gateway to the experience of ecstasy. While in a trance, the artist made paintings using inks from autochthonous jungle vegetation. The maker of complex geometric constructions, he has investigated the therapeutic properties of color. He is also a serious interpreter of occult tales and symbols that have been overlooked or even annihilated by the Western narrative. A mystic as well as an artist, he studies the subtle worlds of the animal kingdom and their revelatory power.

Nicolás Domínguez Nacif Aurora, 2014 Maitena collection

Bruno Dubner Buenos Aires, 1978

Bruno Dubner photographs images of last names displayed on plaques, shop windows, and signs in Buenos Aires neighborhoods (Balvanera, Barrio Norte, and Once). Due to his interest in the abstract nature of the image, the photographic language in these works is rife with questions of a spiritual order.

Regarding this series, the artist states, “It is evident, but unspoken, that all the last names are Jewish. In these photographs, the word comes before the image. Without visual representation, the spiritual lies in the abstraction that surrounds everything. We live in an image-less space. Everything that there is bears a question about why it is— nothing is taken for granted. The spiritual is here. What lies beyond cannot be photographed.”

Bruno Dubner

From the serie “Untitled”, 2012-2013

Colección del artista

Carlos Herrera Rosario, 1976

After turning his back on the religion into which he was born, Carlos Herrera devised his own scene of faith that revolves around dedication, the serenity of ecstasy, sexual fervor, and the body of another, a body that oscillates between life and death.

The pieces on exhibit here make reference to the crown, a Catholic symbol of physical loss. To make these works, Herrera, son of a floriculturist, used Ikebana, a Japanese flower-arranging technique that dates back to the advent of Buddhism in Japan. Starting then, flower offerings were placed at altars in Japan to represent harmony between the heavens, the earth, and the human.

Herrera brings together an array of traditions to engage the relationship between physical and spiritual dimensions, between the mundane world and the great beyond. He finds the precise spot where spirituality and sexuality intersect.

Carlos Herrera

Untitled, 2016

6 pieces from the serie "Destitution Bird"

The artist’s collection