Ritual of Bread and Ashes. In memoriam Victor Grippo. Alicia Chillida

When man created his first tool, he simultaneously created the first useful object and the first work of art. [...] Modification of matter and modification of the spirit, in an interaction between thought and the prolonged hand. There are perfect moments in man's work where it is impossible to define whether it is he who guides the tool or it is the tool that moves his hand. (Victor Grippo).

The Ritual of Bread and Ashes is the filmed diary of a curator who considers art in terms of everyday reality in order to interpret the work of one of the fathers of Latin American conceptual art. The project recounts objects, words, dialogues and ways of thinking. Alchemical gestures on primary gestures reveal the value of the everyday, turned into tools for social action.

The first action consists of building - according to precise plans of the author, provided by his wife, Nidia Olmos - an oven in the humble neighborhood of Romerillo, in the city of Havana, within the context of the XII Biennial, 2015. This event commemorates the work Construction of a popular bread baking oven which the Argentine artist Víctor Grippo, in collaboration with Gamarra and Rossi, carried out in 1972. The work was censored and destroyed the following day, in a central square in Buenos Aires.

Andrea Giunta affirms that Grippo sustains a resistance based on the most radical opposition. If the logic of the market requires serialized, quickly replaceable objects, he proposes poor, ephemeral materials. If neoliberalism destroys the dignity and ethics of work, his tools, marked by a specific destiny, become a sign of resistance.

The reflection on some panoramic images, with which the author documented the action, are in the look that gives rise to this film. In parallel to the construction of the oven, a second action was carried out, which consisted of placing a plaque in the pantheon where the remains of the artist rest, in the Colón cemetery in Havana. 

Our work will be more complete if we accept that "something" coexists with reason, that the symbol or the image contains more than what we can verify. [...] My proposal attempts to shorten the contradiction between art and science through an aesthetics arising from a complete chemical relationship between the objective-logical and the subjective-analogical, between the analytical and the synthetic, valuing imagination as an instrument of creative knowledge no less rigorous than that provided by science. (Victor Grippo).

As María Iovino argues: "In Grippo's case, the reflection on structure was channeled through the chemistry of the elements with which he constructed the metaphor of transmutation, as he also did with the symbolism to which he resorted. The frequent use of the plumb line and masonry tools in his works is related to the history and procedures of the alchemists. The plumb line is the basic instrument with which balance and geometric correctness are measured in construction and, as such, was used by the Knights Templar in the construction of churches, in which they inscribed the geometric knowledge of the alchemists in the physical world. Through the secret organizations, the knowledge of the alchemists was protected and preserved for centuries, which allowed it to become part of the language of the Masonic organizations from the 16th century onwards, to whose knowledge Grippo also alluded".

At the present time, the artist can play a more important role than his own work, by placing himself between the social force that nourishes him and the social force that can be derived from the creative imagination. He will take as a starting point a true ethical intention and progress, becoming an integrator of multiple experiences [...] to contribute to the conception of a more complete man. (Victor Grippo).

A human landscape of transitory communities, gathered by virtue of bread and ashes, crosses the political meanings of the society in which it takes place. Alchemical gestures on primary objects that reveal the value of the everyday, turned into tools for social action..