It was not the devil,” the niece replied, “but a magician who came on a cloud one night after the day Your Grace left; and dismounting from the serpent he was riding on, he entered the bedchamber. And what he did there I know not, but after a little while he made off, flying through the roof, leaving the house full of smoke. And when we went to see what he had done, we saw neither book nor bedchamber. We only recall, very well –the housekeeper and I– that, on leaving, the old villain said out loud that, due to a secret grudge he owed the owner of the books and the bedchamber, he had done mischief in that house that would be discovered by-and-by. He said too that his name was ‘Sage Muñatón’.“He must have said ‘Frestón’,” said Don Quixote.

(Miguel de Cervantes, The Ingenious Nobleman Sir (Don) Quixote of La Mancha Chapter VII)

In his exhibit entitled “Dibujo e Instalación” (Drawing and Installation), shown at Xippas Gallery in Montevideo, Ricardo Lanzarini combines the two main creative expressions that have ruled his work throughout twenty-five years in the activity. Installation, as a direct and striking language of political action, and drawing, as an unfiltered expression of everyday reality that, from the outside, permeates the artist inwards.

Lanzarini’s masterful drawings have undergone three stages. The first one, prior to the year 2000, showing evocative characters associated with an ideological purism that suggested certain degree of cynicism. The second stage, up to the year 2010, included characters meandering an innocuous universe with neither motivation nor destination; and a later stage where the artist expands his brimful energy in small-scale drawings on which he does an in-depth detailed work, as well as in pure line drawings or murals. Those characters, recognizable at once, are powerful political figures who shamelessly show-off right before our eyes, while enjoying their exacerbate exhibition. Nevertheless, we must admit that they do so in a very graceful and sensual manner.

This time, the installation presented retrieves objects from his 1994 exhibit “EN EL BAILE” (At the Dance), presenting them in relation to a sculpture from the series entitled “Artefactos” (Artifacts), on which he has been working in recent years. The Artifacts are metal objects made of bicycle parts with which the public may generate light. By allowing the public to light up the pieces themselves, the artist invites each spectator to view the art from an individual perspective and his or her own experience and memory. In a way, he is withdrawing the content initially conferred to the piece, so that the spectator may apprehend it.

The “Artifacts” intervene and revitalize the transformed old family furniture from that installation of 1994; and for some reason bring to the present those pieces of furniture that conceal a mystery that we will not be able to unveil.