The Venezuelan sculptor Oscar Machado (b. 1953) presented individual exhibitions in Caracas at the Sala RG in 1989 and in 1990. On both occasions, the critic identified him as one of the artists who would revive the art of sculpture in Venezuela. In this catalogue preface, the architect and curator William Niño Araque offers his opinion, analyzing the work as an exception to the rule and in radical opposition to most of the sculptors of the 1980s. Regarding Machado’s work, the critic sets forth ideas that clarify it, based on a reading of architectural forms. His observations about the ambiguity of codes in today’s world are interesting. To Niño Araque, this ambiguity makes it more difficult to interpret “content and mysteries” in such forms, as opposed to the symbolic codes used by sculptors in earlier times. Referring to Machado’s “apparently” fantastic and medieval architecture, he proposes that “the appropriate response is to allow a tower to have as many different meanings as the artist has given it.” In this open reading, it becomes clear that in terms of context, the critic has a polarized perspective that can make him reductive. Moreover, his criticism is implacable on the subject of contemporary sculpture in Venezuela. Although he is not argumentative, he has strong opinions; for example, that most sculptors work “at the margins of feelings,” and that their works are often result from “a manual ability to organize and compose volumes, in keeping with the general principles of modern art.” Against this negative backdrop, Niño Araque opposes the image of the young Machado and his work as something exceptional and almost unique. In his opinion, work of this kind shows the “sculptural art recovered to its maximum integrity.” This is a reference, albeit general, to the qualities that define a “masterwork;” they include that of “growing in its own eternity” and therefore, always being “equal to itself.”
This text is reproduced in Guía Catálogo/Guía de Estudio No. 136. Exposición CCS-10. Arte venezolano actual (Caracas: Fundación Galería de Arte Nacional, 1993).