Nicanor Araoz

The tension between desire, destruction, and salvation animates the drawings and sculptures by Nicanor Araoz presented at the Emily Harvey Foundation in Because I Am Never What I Have. The energy of his work comes from the intention to inhabit the liminal space in which an individual mutates between two states: a divine and a diabolic. Within the tension of these diverging forces, ecstasy coexists with pain, torture with celebration, vulnerability with fear. Araoz’s work attempts to reunite the most violent and hallucinatory elements from mystical and religious experiences.

Araoz is interested in those situations where the skin becomes thin and porous, like the moment when a crab abandons his shell, and adventures into the open sky to look for a new one. In the plaster figure of a fallen angel modeled after the artist himself, Araoz takes this idea to an almost irreverent degree by assuming a retracted position, as if he were ashamed of his nudity after losing the skin that protected him. Without that skin, there is nothing threatening left in the figure. Seminal to portray the state evoked by Araoz’s angel, Pablo Maurette writes in his book The Forgotten Sense (2015): “The skin is the impassable border that at the same time separates and connects us to the world. It is the bundle that protects our loins, too fragile for the outside world, and the channel of all extraception, included the perceptions of temperature, pleasure, and pain.”

For this exhibition, Araoz revisited the collection of the Emily Harvey Foundation and selected works and documentation to present in dialogue with his own pieces. The selected works, by Albert M. Fine, Orlan, Jeff Perkins, and Carolee Schneemann, account for the historical richness of the institution, reflecting the affective and social network that Emily Harvey wove around her gallery. The quote “because I am never what I have”— from the book The Dress (1983) by Eugénie Lemoine-Luccioni–gives the name to this exhibition, and can be read in regards to the collection: the identity of the space exceeds its legacy.

- Veronica Flom, 2017

Nicanor Araoz (b. 1981) is currently an Artist in Residence at International Studios and Curatorial Programs (ISCP), New York. He attended the National University of La Plata and the Beca Kuitca. In his practice, Araoz attempts to push the boundaries of materials in search of intermediate emotional states. His work explores themes related to spiritism, monstrosity, sculpture techniques during the last Argentinian military dictatorship, materials of industrial consumption, and negative feelings as spaces of political enunciation. Araoz most recent solo shows include Glotica (Barro Arte Contemporáneo, 2015) and Antología Genética (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, 2016). He lives and works in Buenos Aires.

Veronica Flom is an Argentinian curator based in New York. She received an M.A. in Museum Studies at New York University. She is currently the Public Programs Coordinator of Visual Arts at Americas Society, and previously worked at the Art Department of Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. She co-authored the publication David Wojnarowiczand Luis Frangella in Argentina (2017) with Ian Erickson-Kery.