Catálogo de la exposición - Fundación César Manrique

Barcala recomposed reality by articulating heterogeneous fragments from former realities
no longer in use, applying the logic of the do-it-yourself enthusiast who, according to Lévi-
Strauss, is someone who “works with their hands, using waste products”.
The sewing machine as a drawing instrument
The sewing machine has a history of its own in the world of art. The first artist to vest it
with artistic status was the Franco-Uruguayan Isidore Ducasse, Count of Lautréamont,
when he wrote in his Les Chants de Maldoror: “As beautiful as the chance encounter, on a
dissection table, of a sewing machine and an umbrella”. The obvious sexual symbolism
underlying this pairing of totally dissimilar objects in the same visual field sets the machine
into symbolic operation.
Around 1913, Picabia introduced the “machinist” tendency in painting (subjecting it to the
scrutiny of desire), placing it, at times, inside gigantic, organically mechanical complexes,
such as in La máquina de coser electro-sexual, (The electro-sexual sewing machine, 1934).
Much later, pursuing the anthropomorphic metaphor even further, Konrad Klapheck would
discover a “mortified bride” or a “dangerous mate” in the sewing machine, through which
he seemed to take his revenge for the extreme precision with which he painted it,
converting it into an “unusual monster, both strange and familiar, a rather unbecoming
portrait of myself”.
Barcala, in turn, instead of converting the sewing machine into a painting, set it into
operation, as if he were a modern day Lautréamont. He used the machine itself as a tool:
sewing was his means of drawing. As far as I know, Barcala was the first artist to draw with
a sewing machine. The stitching on the seams, from which he drew enormous plastic
advantage, lends a very peculiar brand of sensitivity to his work. He used the sewing
machine to help him extract (perhaps secret) promises and desires from unknown worlds.
Two generations later, the Uruguayan Gerardo Goldwasser would pursue this line of work,
using ready-made tailor’s patterns he found in his father’s shop to do drawings and collages
that allude to the body through clothing, humanity’s shell.
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