César Baracca

The Argentine-born London-based artist, César Baracca explores in his art a myriad of materials and techniques to address intersecting issues of finance, circulation, and appropriation, and, more recently, environmental concerns and interpersonal desire. In his ongoing series of mosaics, which he began producing in 2003, Baracca recycled expired credit cards that he collected from family members and friends. For this project, the artist resorted to a meticulous and repetitive process of cutting and pasting pieces of credit cards adapting similar procedures used in Roman mosaic technology, replacing stones and other durable materials with plastic. Baracca revised the monochromatic or colourful floral designs distinctive to the classical tradition, often used in the decoration of walls and floors, by appropriating images from the historical vanguards. More recently, beginning in 2020, Baracca continued to reassess the possibilities of appropriation in order to respond to the Covid-19 crisis. His series Priorities consists of a constellation of twenty toilet cardboard paper rolls that the artist intervened and then attached by means of their respective holders to the gallery wall. The exhibition Priorities was held at the Galería Subsuelo in Rosario between 11.11.22 and 30.12.22. As the artist has stated, Priorities connects, to one end, relationships between desire and need, and to the other, issues regarding technology, crafts, and poetics. In two other projects, Baracca transformed mass-produced objects and cultural signs into highly crafted original works. Alluding to the work of the Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles, in a series entitled, OPUS COCA-COLA, Baracca returns to previous experiments with ornamentation by engraving empty bottles of Coca-Cola. In his Bills Series, Baracca defaces, obscures, and decorates bills from currencies from around the globe. In this way, he rendered these bills obsolete attributing to them other kinds of value, at time preserving only pictures of animals that risk extinction, and others inscribing political slogan, and even Argentine art movements from the 1960s.
Baracca is a founding member of two art collectives that emerged during the reinstatement of Argentine democracy in 1983, La vaca (1988) and Rozarte (1989). His work is on display at the Castagnino-MACRO Museum in Rosario, Argentina and the Centro Internazionale d’Arte Contemporanea Rome, Italy. He is also completing his degree in Art Practice (known in Argentina as Licenciatura en Bellas Artes) at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de la Universidad de Rosario.