THE LANDSCAPES
There are not many contemporary artists who have painted landscapes, but those who have, have been exceptional. The Mondongo(s) have found their own way of approaching this genre; they do not aim to deal with nostalgia or memory, nor to compete with photographic reality, nor to question how to represent nature, nor to be associated with a broader "ism": realism, symbolism, or impressionism. They do not return to the overwhelming presences of the Northern romantics, nor to the ordered worlds of Claude Lorrain or Nicolas Poussin, nor to the comfortable decor of the bourgeoisie in the work of the Impressionists, nor to the rich tradition of Argentine landscape painters of the 19th century. They do what they have always done: react and act. They have always strived to defend their freedom not to tie themselves to a language or style; they engage with the world through ideas, opportunities, and images that have temporarily provided energy to their own experiences. Their versions overwhelm us with that striking, immediate presence that they themselves, as artists and as people, must have felt. They convey a sense of dread and awe, of mystery and spirituality: a sense of surprise at the complex fabric of tensions in the world.
The origin of this series lies in a trip that Laffitte and Mendanha made to a friend’s estate in Entre Ríos to spend a long weekend. This is a relatively depressed, underdeveloped province, yet rich in resources, and as such, it offers a somewhat discouraging image, marked by the Argentine economic crisis. It speaks to us about ordinary people, where and how they live, and who they are.
Manuel and Juliana took a large number of photographs during that trip but, above all, they were struck by the drama of that landscape, soaked and overwhelming; by the fertile decay of plant life and by the signs of death and rebirth after the devastating and frequent floods. They were excited about the project of painting landscapes and intrigued by the results. Little by little, they found themselves trapped by it, like flies in a spider's web. They realized that these images could be transferable or applicable to the social situation of the moment. Argentina was once again trapped in an economic cycle; falling freely and disoriented amid flagrant corruption and the absence of political vision. The rich, of course, had already stashed their money safely in Swiss banks or Caribbean tax havens, or converted it into U.S. dollars. The middle class, for its part, was in the process of losing everything it had saved: devaluation and inflation were slowly eroding it. And there, in the landscapes of Entre Ríos, one could perceive a symbolic situation similar to ground zero: a sense of sinking from nothing to less than nothing.
Although it is also worth noting that our conversation developed over the course of the realization of the series, and, over time, it became evident that the social or political dimensions of the works weighed less, in this case, than the allegorical, metaphorical, and poetic connotations, in which the viewer would find their own subjective interpretations.
—Kevin Power, 2013