Questions in a state of creation

Silvio Fischbein’s work speaks in a multitude of languages. The words and his graphic elements protagonize some of the art pieces in languages from all over the world, but also universal are his pieces of textile art and 3D collages that he creates with children’s toys or with ceramics. The artist is fully submerged in his labor, thinking of the shape, color, composition, but not in the thematic storyline: the work speaks in the language in which the spectator wants to understand it. Therefore, it is universal.

The composition, color, but also the pattern and texture are the main elements in his pieces. There is a way to paint without a gesture, without a brush, through the disposition of the elements which Fischbein treasures and organizes. His hands go straight to the material. He speaks and in his fingers two little acrylic bead bracelets move around, with that sound of moving pieces, a cheerful and light tinkling. The same with which resound in his palette the plastic pieces, bright, lightweight: the dazzling trinket for which any child throws himself onto the ground when a piñata bursts in a cheerful bang. In his choice of materials he enjoys a freedom without regards.

He enjoys creating. In his weavings, his laborious configurations, in the careful finish, the patient wait of every piece, there is his expression. In the love with which he gathers, classifies and displays, cuts and sets, protects, frames. Cares for. Knows how to care for. And in this way, with accumulations of diminutive chosen figures, Fischbein has delineated a language with which he speaks in his own style. His work is recognizable and undoubtedly his. It is the result of his constant questions more so than certainties. He paints essays with answers, incorporating objects, that are nothing more than colors, where geometry contains and organizes.

Each one has and irreducible viewpoint. The reception, the perception, is unique, in a determined time and space. Inwardly personally his pieces resound like rhythmic compositions, and somewhat abysmal: Fischbein portrays something of the anonymous multitude we all are in this era. A mass of insignificant beings, a bit alone, in the virtual tide of relationships woven into the webs. Like his characters, we are all naked and helpless in this machinery.

Fischbein does not speak of inspiration but of the state of creation: a condition thatnever fades, which he maintains alert 24 hours a day. Each piece is the result of an ever-flowing creative process. This book gathers his first piece, textiles and ceramics -lithic but at the same time organic- with the most recent configurations of toy babies and towers made of newspaper cubes from around the world. Decades have passed, but they are united by a celular issue transformed in texture. And that conviction which impregnates his productions: we are all equal.

Another key may be that primal phrase written by his teacher Batlle Planas for the catalogue of one of his first exhibits, in the Rubbers gallery, at sixteen years old: When Cleopatra’s breasts appeared in your window I felt dispossessed, my son. He only recalls that line, that shocked his parents. And even though he tries, yearns, he cannot remember more. He could not conserve the text, because when he asked his teacher to cut that line, Batlle took the article from his hands, enraged. “All of my work is inspired in that text”, says Fischbein today.

Silvio grew up quickly, rushed by parents who were children of Russian immigrants who saw in their rapid progresses guarantees for the future. At fifteen he had already finished school and was signing up for Architecture, because being an artist was not -for them- a plausible profession. The arts accompanied him from the beginning. Life led him through two parallel courses: the formal, where he developed as an architect, a moviemaker, a fundamental professor in the University of Buenos Aires, founder of a career, president of associations and director of cultural entities; and in the workshop, where he breathes a different air and gives in to creating. Perhaps there he reunites with that desired box of little soldiers that disappeared one day, when it was too soon, at fifteen years old, because he became a man without being able to look back. Again, the tinkling of the tiny toys moving in his hands to shape a world and, this way, finding answers.

María Paula Zacharías – October 2019