During 1991 and 1992, Daniel Besoytaorube was part of an unprecedented experience: the program coordinated by Guillermo Kuitca sponsored by Fundación Antorchas. 15 grantees participated during the first year and the following year Madalena Jitrik joined them (a total of 16 grantees).
We had our own space, quite limited to be true, in a warehouse located in La Boca neighborhood (city of Buenos Aires). We each had a monthly grant for materials and other expenses.
Thus, Daniel used to travel often from his hometown, Mar del Plata, to work there and attend weekly meetings every Friday with Guillermo.
I remember he travelled the most, as Daniel García, Mauro Machado and Elisabeth Sánchez came from Rosario, which is almost around the corner.
I travelled from Colegiales neighborhood and I felt the daily trip was endless.
Gachi Hasper, Alfredo Londaibere and Fabián Burgos were closer, and I don’t remember where was Sergio Bazán travelling from.
“Vasco’s” workshop was next to mine, so I was really aware of him, mainly due to the fact that Daniel moves in a frantic way.
Since then, I have kept in mind the idea of the powerful relation he has with his paintings and with his passionate vocation. So much so that even when Daniel is not performing any activities, he still is a painter to me.
I recall a second important event in our longtime friendship. Daniel was the head of the so called Fondo Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo [International Fund of Contemporary Art] (co-created with Cecilia Gispert and Mario Gemin). As an enthusiastic manager, Daniel built in his backyard a venue that hosted several activities developed by this initiate and related to the programs fostered by the Fundación Antorchas in Mar del Plata with local and regional artists, as well as events connected with the TRAMA project. The latter was a collaboration and confrontation program carried out by artists that for 5 years contributed in a cherishable way to the development of links among groups of artists from all over the country and to the emergence and growth of a new way of producing, conceiving and establishing bonds in the field of Argentine art.
His painting has always been tragic. Fortunately, it has not been melodramatic, but it has always been tragic. Its climates, scenarios, colors and illustrations are all tragic. Eloquently, his doing is also tragic: painting is not easy for him but it could be. He has the skills, the knowledge and the experience to carry this task smoothly. But he does not want it that way.
He wants to sweep away the surface and tear it, to make the drop of accumulated pain appear. The pain caused by loneliness, by wide-eyed contemplation and by the knowledge of what happened, what is going on and what will occur. Maybe it is too fanciful, but if Romanticism had not existed, “Vasco” Besoytaorube could lay its foundations.
His exhibition at Museo MAR (his first one in a museum) implies an enormous task: a site-specific work that portrays his energy and passion. It shows that for him painting means taking risks (it is a risky hobby), and that he is always working under the threatening shadow of an all-or-nothing approach.
Daniel has an amazing career as manager and curator of hundreds of exhibitions, venues and projects, he has influenced the development of numerous renowned artists and he is a pillar of contemporary art in his beloved Mar del Plata being part of its history and consolidation.
In the exhibition “La noche es suficiente” [Night is enough], he takes up the challenge of producing with extreme rigor, giving it all, getting to the climax of confronting with the real, which is the secret world painting explores.
Here the painter is in the spotlight. Here the painter confesses the pain of bearing the world on his shoulders.
Tulio de Sagastizábal
July 2018