“Monte”: Wood from the Santiago mountain range interacts with contemporary art at Herlitzka&Co.

Two four-meter-long wooden tables made from a single piece found in the Santiago de Compostela forest . They serve as the backbone of Monte , the recent exhibition that opened at Herlitzka&Co ., in which Ricardo Paz's furniture is displayed in dialogue with works by Juan Sorrentino, Alicia Herrera, Alejandro Puente, Hernán Salamanco, Nicolás García Uriburu, Noemí Gerstein, and Candelaria Traverso, among others.

Mauro Herlitzka , at the helm of his gallery, has been able to interpret the changes in the post-pandemic market . In addition to his reputation as a gallery owner of modern artists—those who have passed through the Di Tella Institute—last year, he has added designers such as Martín Churba and the Tsufwelej Collective to his staff. This time, he is presenting Paz's virgin wood furniture alongside other works in textiles, wool, and leather.

“We rethought what we're doing in the gallery: what to present, what to include, what dialogue, what other intersections we can present within the artistic field . Not only the visual field, but also the installations, how you present the idea of ​​other creative spaces, something that isn't just, strictly, what we define as fine art,” he says.

Herlitzka detected that after the pandemic , new collectors and new art buyers emerged who connected in a particular way with the works: art was incorporated into their habitats , their homes, their offices. At this intersection, design emerged almost naturally, increasingly accepted as an art discipline.

“The design exhibition that Malba recently held, From Heaven to Home: Connections and Intermittences in Culture , was the third most-attended exhibition in Malba's history. Here We Are - Women in Design 1900 - Today, when we saw Proa, had record attendance and interest,” he reflected.

With all this in mind, the gallery owner called Paz, a design artisan who has lived in Santiago del Estero for 30 years . After years of traveling the world, he returned to the country in the early 1980s. A fascination with art and history led him to investigate the antiques trade, and he discovered in Santiago del Estero traits of national identity, but above all, of provincial identity , the cradle of the Creoles and the "mother of cities."

“Forty years after arriving at this mountain, Mauro invites me to show this work. It's composed, as always, of the elements of that land: wood, wool, and leather . There's no stone, of course, no metal, no plastic. And that's what we live with. That's the world of the mountain,” Paz explains.

The artist works with wood he finds lying around in the woods. (Editor's note: "wood" refers both to an elevation of land and to a portion of land covered with vegetation similar to a forest.) Since 2002, he has directed the Los Silencios Natural and Cultural Reserve , dedicated to restoring native forests: more than 500 hectares of protected nature in the Sumampa Mountains, south of Santiago del Estero.

There, in addition to his environmental work, Paz set up his workshop , where he produces his pieces and develops Land Art projects. He creates furniture that respects the porosity of the material, which he then sells in his studio in Palermo Viejo, where he also restores and creates new pieces. At the same time, he has become an amateur weaving researcher.

Herlitzka described Paz as "a creator, a cultural mobilizer, a trainer of people, of work, of taste" and commented that "many great Argentine collections abroad, extremely refined and with very different themes, have his furniture."

Its four-meter tables, its lower surfaces, the wooden bowls, the wooden structures that reproduce grid shapes, dialogue in the room with an early work in the informalist style of García Uriburu , historical works by Puente - an artist who was linked to the forms of composition and the colors used by the Andean native peoples - a canvas by Churba and even a transparent acrylic cube, a conceptual work by Margarita Paksa .

“ The mountain is the space the exhibition evokes, in a meeting of materials and forms, of old and new objects, in a crossroads of configurations as diverse as paintings, installations, furniture, and textiles. From piece to piece, we follow the murmuring dialogue established between the paintings of established artists and the blankets woven by unknown hands a hundred years ago, and between traditional textiles and contemporary ones,” writes Marta Penhos, art historian and vice president of the National Academy of Fine Arts, in the curatorial text.

In a secluded room, Juan Sorrentino, the Chaco artist who has become synonymous with sound art, exhibits some of his sculptures made from discarded wooden boxes, placed on iron legs. Inside, they conceal a mechanism that reproduces a sound, a musical composition, linked to the environment that the wood once formed before becoming a work of art.

" Before becoming an instrument, the guitar was a tree , and birds sang within it. Wood knew music long before becoming an instrument," said Atahualpa Yupanqui, a phrase that inspired the artist.

Next to Sorrentino's hangs another installation, but one by Paz. A curtain of boleadoras hangs from a branch on the wall. The ropes reveal the artist's interest in weaving; the tips of the ropes reflect the balls carved from wood.

Herlitzka's Room E is a space separated from the rest of the gallery, with low ceilings, a small footprint, and an invitation to experimentation. Paz exhibits a more intimate look at his work and interests: the mountains and spirituality.

Taking advantage of the room's layout and dimensions, the artist creates a small, intimate world , a home, where he hangs looms, ropes, a cot, and an altar on the walls. This is the space the artist chose to focus on the women who master the looms.

“Here we find wool, wood, and leather, in their ancient form, from before, and now in their contemporary form. What women are doing now with wool is changing its function because it's no longer for shelter or a reminder of the land for those who go to work or get married in the province of Buenos Aires. It's now a trade; being a weaver is a trade . Women weavers rarely make looms for coats, just as men rarely make chairs from the remains of the forest,” Paz says.

Lucía Paz, the artist's daughter, was in charge of the small oratory, which she placed in a corner of the room, in the most remote part of the gallery, away from the hustle and bustle and at its back. Spirituality in the forest manifests itself in various ways, from holy cards of Gauchito Gil and Mamá Antula to scraps of thread dyed with natural dyes.

Monte , at Herlitzka & Co (Libertad 1630), Monday to Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Until October 8, with free admission.