Espacio represivo

Horacio Zabala, Espacio represivo, 1973 / 2015 © Stadtkuratorin Hamburg. Foto / Photo: Frank Egel

Horacio Zabala, Espacio represivo, 1973 / 2015 © Stadtkuratorin Hamburg. Foto / Photo: Frank Egel

Horacio Zabala, Arquitectura Represiva, 1973

Employing a minimal visual idiom and heterogeneous media, Horacio Zabala critical examines social contexts and aesthetic forms of information and fiction. His design for the sculpture Espacio Represivo (1976) for the exhibition Anteproyectos (Drafts) was influenced by a right-wing, conservative military dictatorship in Argentina. Zabala’s theme was the prison as part of a modern panoptic power relationship. In Hamburg, the work is being shown in an urban space for the first time. In its contemporaneity, it symbolizes the modern state under rule of law as a successor to dictatorship and its mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion.