Fifteen years after the passing of Argentine artist Kenneth Kemble (Buenos Aires, 1923-1998) Malba-Costantini Foundation opens Kemble x Kemble, an anthological exhibition with about 30 pieces made between 1953 and 1995, which aims to recover the decisions and selections that Kemble himself made about his output from the study of his writings.

It includes unseen paintings and collages- historical pieces that were never exhibited until this day- assamblages, objects and a video with a documentary record of the Destructive Art exhibition, a collective endeavour held at the Lirolay Gallery in 1961.

The works come from the personal collection of the artist and from private and public collections, like the paintings Totempicololo (1993) of the Palais de Glace, great prize acquisition of the 83^rd of the National Salon in 1994 y La autentica esencia de la naranja (The authentic orange essence) of 1995 of the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts Dr. Pedro E. Martínez, Entre Rios.

The exhibition is part of a editorial project about Kemble´s work, which put focus on the outlook, the positioning and the varied ways of invervention of the artist, present both in his art critic articles, and the prologues, explanations and texts he wrote about his work.

Considering as background for this project previous exhibitions like the Retrospective 1950-1995 held in 1995 at the Palais de Glace and The Great Breakthrough, Works 1956-1963, curated by Marcelo E. Pachecho at the Recoleta Cultural Center, the especific goal of this exhibition is to re-draft a new hypothesis of showing built on the study of the writings of Kemble himself. To this end, a work platform has been established which underscore the Kemble´s habit of group his work by periods, making constant “mappings” that involve a historiografic stance strongly signed by a distintictive polemical interest.

In words of Florencia Battiti: “Kemble expressed in his plastic language some of the premises that his readings suggested him to increase the creative development : appeal to unexpected links, look for the conjunction of disjointed realities, implement sudden interruptions to the usual logic of thinking, destroy the alleged naturalness of a reasoning sequence.

A conceptual project

The Kemble by Kemble project consists of three stages that work as pieces within the same conceptual gears: the publishing of two books that collect writings of Kemble and this exhibition. Thus, in April 2012, werepublished Between the paintbrush and the Underwood, Kenneth Kemble, Art Critic for the Buenos Aires Herald by Florencia Battiti and Writings: Prologues, articles,interviews 1961-1998 compiled by Justo Pastor Mellado. The latter had the support of the Malba editorial fund.

“The exhibition is part of a set of editorial actions; understood as an expanded editorial sphere, and just carrying it out means the inversion of a whole new theoretical possibility to approach his work”, explains Battiti.

In the context of the exhibition, Malba published a catalogue written by Florencia Battiti and Justo Pastor Mellado, that adresses various graphic, methodological and aesthetic dimensions around Kemble´s oeuvre. The book will include all the works exhibited at the showing.