Ricardo Lanzarini
Centro de Exposiciones Subte
ArtNexus, #124 (June-November 2025)

Ricardo Lanzarini has been drawing for more than thirty years. His work is distinctive and identifiable by surface and format. Nevertheless, when Lanzarini combines illustration with the sculptural artifacts he has created since the 1990s, their unique encounters result in new meanings. As we delve into one of his site-specific exhibitions, we don’t exactly know what awaits us, as Lanzarini explores, invades, and transgresses all possible materials and boundaries by means of draftsmanship.

 

In Lanzarini’s work, illustration reaches a new level. His lines, fast and unequivocal, generate curious figurines that are loaded with irony and sarcasm. Like the drawing itself, which overtakes the walls and the Kraft paper, these characters appear exposed in their overflowing corporeality. They are chubby and have delicate hands and feet; some are nude while others are clad in swimsuits or colorful, flowery underwear, and sport characteristic elements or expressions such as a cap or a pair of glasses. The figures can be surrealistic in tone; some are inspired by public figures [priests or military officers] and others are rooted in memory or in pure invention. All of them are connected in one way or another with Lanzarini’s own life story. Recognizable or otherwise, they always carry an element of political and social critique, infused with humor. Presented by their creator in situations and scenes from daily life, such as the kitchen or the bathroom, the figures are revealed in their privacy and their everyday existence.

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In this large, 600 m2 installation at the Subte’s main exhibition space, Lanzarini’s illustrations criss-cross and dominate walls and columns. Almost empty, intervened only in its white walls and with a station containing sculptural artifacts set up in the central area, the exhibition space is rendered diaphanous, and its dimensions expand. The only boundary is our visual horizon. Indeed, Lanzarini’s work has been interrogating the very concept of boundary for a number of years now; for him, any surface can be drawn on and intervened, from the tiniest sheets of smoking paper to an entire room, or public space: the line covers it all. This is an art of contingencies, the artist says. There are no preparatory sketches; rather, figures and situations emerge spontaneously, which sometimes produces peculiar encounters with a vertex, a power outlet, or a baseboard.

 

In the middle of the room, under a skylight, a number of artifacts built by modifying and adapting old bicycles are raised in the air, as though in suspension, waiting for a passer-by to activate them. These metal structures are presented as possible insects, large and with long extremities, or as old-style film projectors. The mechanical pedaling motion generates energy, which in turn activates a group of light bulbs by means of extensive cabling and a system of pulleys. The resulting yellow light guides our attention to some of the many illustrated moments. In that way, different accents are produced on the drawing and the space as visitors interact with the work.

 

This mechano-electrical station, it must be noted, also functions as a tridimensional drawing; the metal structures and the cable network generate many curvilinear gestures, just like the drawing’s, that intervene in the space. A dialog is thus established between the drawing and the sculptural artifacts, as well as between the artwork and the public. This rudimentary, jerry-rigged electrical grid is literally capable of shedding light on the drawing. In this way, light becomes a key component in the creation of meaning, illuminating characters and scenes with a masterful display of irony and polysemy. Lanzarini’s recourse to light generates an interplay of accents and echoes, lights and shadows, voices and silences.

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Lanzarini has been making site-specific installations of this kind, based on the interaction between his artifacts and his drawings, since his participation in the 5th Moscow Biennial in 2013. The work changes in each iteration and context because the building and the specific conditions impact the result. In this type of art, the creative process is of vital importance, given that the artist inhabits the exhibition space for weeks while creating the work. In consequence, an environment and a moment of great intimacy and alienation emerge, with no room for error or correction: everything becomes part of the process.

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Electrocardiograma escultórico [Sculptural Electrocardiogram], Lanzarini’s exhibition curated by the renowned Paraguayan critic Ticio Escobar, acquires meaning from divergence. It is not a linear, univocal proposition, but one that rejoices in uncertainty and in its manual, artisanal, mechanical character, which reminds us of our humanity.