Bajo el signo del arrepentimiento

138 x 210 mm
152 pages (includes 17 illustrations)
Design: Setanta
Translation: Teresa Arijón

Is regret a form of memory? A way of narrating ourselves? An act of imagination? Alejandro Cesarco has developed an unorthodox artistic practice drawing on repetition, narrative, reading, and translation. In this book, Bajo el signo del arrepentimiento, where he questions an art trajectory governed by the principle of production and aimed at success, he explores regret as both an aesthetic mode and a methodological tool. He views it as a creative force, positioned between who we are and who we aspire to be, or between what we do and our shortcomings. With the help of thinkers and artists such as Louise Lawler, Sturtevant, Lauren Berlant, Jorge Luis Borges, and Macedonio Fernández, he traces the dual function of this feeling: not only a way of looking back, but also a means of projecting ourselves forward, of (re)evaluating what drives us. Bajo el signo del arrepentimiento reflects a particular tone through which we imagine and construct our history as we recount it.

Alejandro Cesarco (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1975) is an artist, editor, and curator. His work employs strategies of translation and appropriation, which involve narrating and re-narrating, interpreting, misinterpreting, quoting, and mediating. His work investigates the book as a technology, delving into the construction and preservation of memory, and addresses the limits and opacity of language. Through various media and strategies, he uses secrecy, indexicality, and fragmentation as narrative modes. Although deeply rooted in art history and influenced by literature and theory, Cesarco’s work, while not confessional, is also profoundly personal.