Artists: Jorge Caterbetti
In this work, the pages belonging to fifty years of issues of the Argentine law journal La Ley published between 1952 and 2002, were converted into confetti and bottled to be exhibited in specially made library shelves. The word bodega (wine warehouse) in the title indicates an association with pleasure: a wine warehouse is the place where cherished wines are kept to be enjoyed in a special occasion.
Caterbetti's library recalls those imposing shelves one sees in lawyer's offices exhibiting impeccable and ordered arrangements of volumes which demand respect from the overwhelming assumption of the truth that is contained in their pages.
All the words and sentences contained on those law periodicals have been crushed and bottled. The phrases and chapters that constitute the body of human law used to condemn and to condone become in this work no more than confetti. And that includes the authority of those who 'make' the law, which, after been applied, will change human lives forever.
From his background as a lawyer and with artist tools, Caterbetti expresses his tongue in cheek conviction that the supposed indisputability of law is only an illusion, so he applies himself to crushing it in an act of poetic vandalism.
He sees the law as a body of thought that is geared to benefit only a few and become merciless with the majority, oblivious of all nuances. In doing so, he reminds us that the law falls short of sense when it comes to an inevitable truth: that we are all equal when faced with death, and not with justice.
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Primera Bodega Jurisprudencial/First Jurisprudencial
Wine Warehouse 2002, Installation
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