Salta

El jardín interior

PAREDES /

Curator
Sandra Juárez

Dic. 13, 2024 — Mar. 04, 2025

About exhibition

In Andrés Paredes’ visual work, the impact of the imposing nature of his native Misiones jungle and his recent journey to the Atacama Desert unfolds. The artist reveals an insatiable curiosity for the processes and transformations experienced by living beings. Since childhood, he has examined insects, plants, and fluids under the microscope. According to Nietzsche, maturity is having rediscovered the seriousness with which one played as a child. Paredes intertwines his creative experiences with rigorous scientific research. His alchemical experiments allow him to create synthetic rocks and quartz. Butterflies in his works are a signature of the artist, symbolizing metamorphosis.

The cicadas merge their roots from Misiones with those of the artist’s godfather from Salta, creator of the musical piece La chicharra cantora. In the hybridization of biology, sculpture, and music, they find their unique artistic expression. The installation El Laboratorio invites us to explore the objects and interests that shape his works and to revisit his childhood in his father’s medical office in the city of Apóstoles. The exhibition proposes a journey through both the artist’s and the viewer’s inner garden. Starting from the idea that every work of art is inherently metaphorical, it prompts us to ask: What images, sensations, and feelings inhabit this space? What do we care to cultivate? Are we capable of pruning what no longer serves or harms us?
The works displayed in the museum’s windows confront us: to cut, prune, and weed so the good may thrive. To illuminate with fireflies, to savor beauty. To give new life to butterflies in a work of art. To honor the sweat of labor through sculptures filled with yerba mate, to paint with blood and earth. Attempting to encompass everything is an impossible task, even in this sweeping retrospective of Paredes’ work. Yet those who love a garden know this: the garden is rest, for time there is more genuine. The garden is the earth, and everything within it is alive.
The landscape exists outside individuals, though it is shaped by their gaze. The garden demands human activity, care, and cultivation. Returning to nature is now imperative; Paredes carries it within himself and helps us see it.
Sandra Juárez
Curator