BUENOS AIRES, Argentina— Oscar McLennan, ArtInfos globe-trotting correspondent, takes on a tour of five of the Argentine capitals most interesting exhibitions, including animal-themed installation work at an artist-run gallery and work by a 21-year-old artist that has amazing powers to make viewers fell good.

 

GALLERY EXHIBITIONS

 

Appetite Gallery
Veronica Gomez: El ConejoEstudios Preliminares (The RabbitPreliminary Studies) and
Nicamor Artoz: Cepillarse Bien los Dientes (Brush Your Teeth Well)
Through Oct. 15

 

What's exciting about the arts scene in Buenos Aires is the amount of genuinely talented younger artists to be found, and there is no better place to see their work than Appetite Gallery, an artist-run venue. It's a funky, alternative little space, covering painting, installation, video, performanceyou name itand much of the work has a youthful, edgy exuberance.

 

Downstairs, two content-related exhibitions are currently running side by side. Brush Your Teeth Well, by Nicamor Artoz, has a theme about how we treat animals, and as a consequence, how we treat and are treated ourselves.

 

In one work, a toy rabbit sits poking out of a cannon, facing a wall where other furry creatures lie embedded, along with the outline of one that couldn't even stay up there.

 

In another, a duck stands on a table with a resolute expression on its face, a mouse on its head and a pair of missiles strapped to its wingsthe duck is ready to go where no duck has gone before. The background is wallpaper featuring the heads of royalty.

 

The humor in this show has bite: The rabbit is mere cannon fodder; the duck is ready to die for his country.

 

The other exhibition, Veronica Gomezs The RabbitPreliminary Studies, creates as an installation a mock laboratory, Laboratorios Baigorria S.A., which is ostensibly involved in exhaustive research to discover whether rabbits make suitable domestic pets.

 

The first thing I picked up in the installation was a magazine, El Gazapo, Argentina's first magazine only about rabbits. At first I thought it was a spoof, but it turns out to be the real thing.

 

Next I thought El Gazapo must be a magazine about keeping rabbits as pets (for a logo, there is a grinning, Bugs Bunny-type creature and a pair of cuddly little cuties on the front cover). But then I noticed that the leading article was all about how good rabbit meat is for you, and there was all kind of helpful advice on how to skin and cook your furry friend.

 

The exhibition contains genuine letters of correspondence between the Laboratory and rabbit-breeding companies; and a video of a rabbit being put through all manner of bizarre tests to see if it makes a fit and able human companion (footage includes a colander moving across the table with a bunny underneath and a deadpan dreadlock bunny, with a pair of clothespins attached to its ears).

 

The sense of detail in the installation is particularly impressive, right down to a little bottle on a shelf, with an eyedropper-stopper labeled Tears from the waiting room. Laughter and tears are to be had with both of these shows allusions to the human condition: the dignity we all try to maintain as life makes us go running on its little wheels and jumping through its little hoops.

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Ostinatto Buenos Aires Hostel
Victoria Musotto
Through Oct. 15

 

The Ostinatto Buenos Aires Hostel, around the corner from Appetite, also has a commercial gallery space downstairs, which Appetite is currently using to show one of its members works.

 

The 21-year-old Victoria Musotto is a stunning artist. If I had the money, and somewhere to keep them, I would buy every one of these paintings and have them as my private stash. You wouldn't need booze or drugs to pick you up if you had one of these at home.

 

I don't think I've ever seen paintings that made me feel so good, so happy: like getting sucked into one of those electric-blue cocktails that spits you back out feeling light-headed and light-hearted. So full of color and spirit and energy, if you were to hang these in an old folk's home, you would have them throwing away their walkers and getting down to some House music.