LOCUS, 2016
Museo de Artes Visuales (MAVI), Santiago, Chile

Images courtesy the artist

Through six videographic works, Gianfranco Foschino gives an account of a long-term work that he has been carrying out, discreetly and inadvertently, in Austral Chile for several years.

In these works, water is the element that supports poetic projections between whose conditions of runoff and misty suspension are configured mental states that determine the title of this exhibition: LOCUS.

In this exhibition, the centerpiece - “Ojos de Agua” (2016) - projects the icy and turbulent waters of the Futaleufú River in real-time. The retention of the flow is a case that warns of other so many disturbances to the geography that is today determining the destiny of the water resources of the planet.

In the Aysén region, in the tragic beauty of the canal landscapes, Foschino set foot on land, contravening archaic prohibitions imposed by intrepid navigators who were true pioneers when facing the extreme hostility of the southern territory.

However, in the South Shetland (bordering Antarctica) it recovered the limitless condition of the sea as a totally overwhelming element. In this way, he observes the "immobile mobility" of ice masses that, in their constant drift, retain the age of the earth. This disturbing stability of the icebergs precedes the irruption of the non-visible face of a kind of original silence.

From this uncertainty, Gianfranco Foschino understands that landscape is culture projected by the desire to be present, condensed through a retracted camera, without ostentation of dominance.

—Justo Pastor Mellado, Curator