Group of arms at Norberto Gómez’s workshop

His exhibition about weapons and instruments of torture in painted cardboard, synthetic glue and oil paint opens at the Vea gallery in Buenos Aires. Nails, swords, daggers, shackles, simple and double maces, axes, hammers, monstrances, and arches guarded by ancient serpents, all show complex designs bristling with edges, which reference, on the one hand, medieval war machines and their sharp architecture, and, on the other, a variety of decorative styles, from the nineteenth-century reinterpretations of classicism to the most eclectic repertoire of building styles found in Buenos Aires, including Art Deco and other futurisms. These objects, with all their colour and texture, appear as heavy as metal pieces. However, by holding them one discovers their unexpected lightness. As Gómez points out in a long interview with Miguel Briante, it’s just “painted cardboard”, a terse phrase that speaks of the fictional world of art and the multiple meanings it might create.

Some of these objects bear the inscription “Made in Argentina”, which plays on the historical significance of their place of origin,