Loyola 32, [C1414AUB] Buenos Aires, Argentina +5411 4856 8787 info@hachegaleria.com www.hachegaleria.com
ECSTASY IN SUSPENSE To be a voyeur in Alfred Hitchcock s films is one of the perversions that can justify not only the History of Film but also the history of entire twentieth century. When in The Lodger (1927), the first film in which the director makes what would become his characteristic cameo, Hitchcock turns the ceiling of a house to glass so that we can spy on its tenant, the director s eye turns into camera without limits. It pierces everything to be able to create that ideal vision that founds a strain of film at the height of the scopic drive (if you let me put it in Lacanian jargon which, according to Žižek, is the language that Hitchcock s films speak). Like a virtuoso spy, like an ultra-fetishistic film buff, Martín Sichetti doubles that voyeuristic wager: his art is a kaleidoscope of remakes of Hitchcockian framings and objects re-projected by a microscopic spy. The first wonder of Sichetti s drawings and videos is the ability to capture and to magnify the visual quality of the distinctive Hitchcockian mark: each work partakes of that magnetic and deceitful elegance that takes to the extreme of nightmare, or even of hypnosis, that inclination for the dreamlike glam found in films like Dial M for Murder (1954) and Vertigo (1958). But if, as François Truffaut said, Hitchcock was the first filmmaker to really include the viewer in the cinematographic game thanks to the use of the rules of suspense, Sichetti s paintings place drawings like squares on a chessboard. The playful finds its way in as optical illusion in a visual exploration where the gaze is split between reminiscence and strangeness like the eye cut by a pair of scissors that Salvador Dalí created for Spellbound (1945). Hitchcock hallucinated that fusion of psychoanalysis and surrealism with Pop-modernist clarity. Microfilms also formulates a return to a seminal moment in the Hitchcockian sensibility, one largely forgotten by critics and historians. In his youth, the future filmmaker studied fine art at the University of London to learn how to draw. One of his first jobs was in the advertising department of an electric company, drawing ads for electrical wires. That job, the director recalled, took me to film or, rather, to what film would soon become. He offered his drawings as illustrations for captions in silent films, which is how his career in the film industry began. Later, thanks to his connection to the storyboard and to graphic thought, drawing continued to be fundamental to the art of the master of suspense, reaching its height in two nightmare scenes, the one created by Dalí mentioned above and the one drawn by John Ferren (perhaps with the help of Saul Bass, a designer of title sequences) in Vertigo. Sichetti s serial drawings could be the dreams or hallucinations of Hitchcock s characters or, even, the mental images of any viewer bewitched by Suspicion (1941), To Catch a Thief (1955) or Marnie (1964). And, as if those operations were not intervention enough in Hitchcock s world, Sichetti s work digs the knife into the queer wound of films like Rope (1948), with its homosexual lover-killers, and Psycho (1960), with its cross-dressed schizophrenia. Though once denounced by organizations that uphold sexual diversity because of negative depictions on non-hegemonic sexualities, Hitchcock s film, with its queer pleasure, has been vindicated in recent decades by works like Gus Van Sant s remake of Psycho and Camille Paglia s post-feminist essay on The Birds and now by Sichetti s reframings. In the blond swirl of a hairdo, in the glistening of a blade, in the hallucinated glass of poisoned milk, or in the perfect fake window of a set, there is always a flash of glam and drag resistance. In those flashes, the invraisemblable is understood as the reverse of the identical (or of identity) and the imaginary a new trap for the voyeuristic eye. The same feat that constructs Hitchcock s films gives Sichetti s vision its powerful charge: turning the image into desire in a state of tension for suspended ecstasy. MICROFILMS Martín Sichetti Text: Diego Trerotola 1 November thru 17 December 2016 Opening hours: Monday thru Saturday from 2pm to 7pm Loyola 32, C1414AUB, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina info@hachegaleria.com I hachegaleria.com
Exhibition view
Exhibition view
Rope. Serie Retratos de familia, 2016 Pencil and pastel on paper mounted on passepartout 80 x 120 cm
Marnie. Serie Retratos de familia, 2016 Pencil and pastel on paper mounted on passepartout 80 x 120 cm
Vertigo. Serie Retratos de familia, 2016 Pencil and pastel on paper mounted on passepartout 80 x 120 cm
MARTÍN SICHETTI Psycho. Serie Retratos de familia, 2016 Pencil and pastel on paper mounted on passepartout 80 x 120 cm Premio Klemm, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2017
Sexual Aberrations of the Criminal Female. Serie Stills, 2016 Collage, pencil, pastel and golden leaf on paper 18,5 x 34,5 cm
CHKN. Serie Queer Noir, 2016 Video. Duration 43 Edition of 3
Egg. Serie Microfilms, 2016 Videol. Duration 15 Edition of 3
Milk. Serie Microfilms, 2016 Video. Duration 10 Edition of 3
Key. Serie Microfilms, 2016 Video. Duration 15 Edition of 3
Ring. Serie Microfilms, 2016 Video. Duration 15 Edition of 3
The Shower. Serie Queer Noir, 2016 Video. Duration 2 53 Edition of 3
BIOGRAPHY Martín Sichetti was born in Buenos Aires, in 1973. As a self taught artist, he has been related to drawing since childhood. It is also during his childhood that he develops his passion for films, influenced by his mother who used to go to see movies to the neighbourhood theatre every day and collected articles about her favourite movies. Late at the 90s, his main activity is digital photograph retouching and in 2008 he founds and runs Mardepartment, a studio specialized in photograph retouching and digital illustration. Being in touch with this culture makes him an American film fan: he becomes a collector of Alfred Hitchcock films in VHS, and his favourite star is Marilyn Monroe. His first performances were under the spell of Marilyn Monroe, her everlasting and bright sadness. These experiences are merged with his studies as a young teen: he learns to design fashion sketches at Fego and attends costume design workshops at Teatro Colón and Teatro San Martín, education that gives him access to many different jobs, designing costumes for plays and contemporary dance shows. He specializes in Hitchcock his movies are inspirations to produce most of his work : he studies Hitchcock s movies, goes deep into their scenes, stills and frames; he shoots pictures of them and translates them into drawings, creating a brand new universe. This film passion is also reflected in his producing a video based on a scene of the classic Sunset Boulevard: a short film called Darling Pet Monkey. In 2013 his piece The Key is selected to illustrate the cover of the book Rancho Nostalgia by James Cihlar, Dream Horse Press. He attended different courses and workshops with teachers and tutors such as Norma Cirigliano, Peter Richter, Ezequiel García, Fabiana Barreda, Valeria Iglesias, María Onetto, Catalina Schliebener, among others. Individual exhibitions: Microfilms, Hache Galería, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2016); Suspensa, Fundación Esteban Lisa, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2014); Darling Pet Monkey, Espacio Cabina, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2013); Number 13, Musetta Caffé, Buenos Aires (2010); Recuerdos cinemascope, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Buenos Aires, Argentina (2009). Collective exhibitions and/or performances: En papel, Del Infinito Galería, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2016); Has llorado, en silencio, Hache Galería, curated by Carlos Herrera, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2016); Vértigo, el cine desde las artes visuales, Praxis, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2015); Páramo, HACHE Galería-Guerrero Art Station, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2014); Room Service, Gira, La ira de Dios, Buenos Aires (2014); The Eclectic Tomorrow, The Clubhouse, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2013), MO Espacio de oficios y arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2011); Faber-Castell 250 anniversary, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2011); HotelBabel, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2010); Mark Morgan Perez Garage, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2009); among others.