Quizzing Kuitca

Argentine artist Guillermo Kuitca and singer Juana Molina met nearly 30 years ago and have followed each other's careers fitfully ever since. While she shot to fame as the star of an Argentine TV sitcom, he attracted international attention with diaristic drawings, manipulated objects and paintings that map architectural and psychological spaces. Then about 15 years ago she jettisoned her show to launch a new career in music, a move that has made her "a force to be reckoned with in contemporary Latin music," according to the Chicago Tribune.

The two will be in Minneapolis this week for the opening of a 30-year retrospective of Kuitca's work at Walker Art Center. In an opening-night concert, Molina will bring to the Walker stage her eclectic mix of poetic pop, ambient murmuring and bird songs.

Organized in part by Walker director Olga Viso, the Kuitca show is the most expansive survey of his art in decades. Among its exotica is a sculpture composed of 20 painted bed mattresses and "The Ring," a five-panel work inspired by Richard Wagner's opera.

We listened in recently as the two talked for an hour -- she from her home outside Buenos Aires and he from New York, where he was preparing for the Walker show. Spanish is the native tongue of both artists, but they chatted in English for the benefit of Star Tribune readers.

Molina: You remember the first time we met, in 1981 or '82? We went to a small party and danced all night, you and I.

Kuitca: I used to dance a lot.

Molina: Most people don't have a sense of rhythm when they dance, but I thought you were the best dancer I'd met until then. So what is the rhythm in painting?

Kuitca: I think I lost my rhythm in dancing. Maybe it's one of those things you have or don't have. I don't know if I still have that sense of rhythm.

Molina: I'm sure you can still move a finger ...

Kuitca: I admire people whose destiny, or careers, at some point take them in a totally different direction and they have a second life. Obviously I'm referring to how great you were as an actress and were able to give that up and start a career as a musician. I always envy you and think if I could do something else I would. I'm not saying I'm tired of what I'm doing, but if I could have such determination to start from a different point, I would do it. How was that for you?

Molina: The answer is easy. I've always wanted to be a musician. I remember when I was 5 or 6 laying in bed and having this waking dream. It was always this same image of being at a party where the Beatles were and I was singing along. ... And Paul came up to me and said, "What is your name? You sing very well. Hey, guys, come listen. She could be part of our band." I had that dream many times and really thought it was true and possible. But when it came to sing in real life, I was totally paralyzed and shaking.

Kuitca: But you managed to do it?

Molina: I had to wait and wait until I thought I would die if I had not done it. I would have been a horrible old woman lying in her bed watching MTV and saying I could have done it better. So I thought: It's now or never. It took me 10 years at least to be able to sing comfortably on stage.

Kuitca: It's incredible courage you have. ... I remember that first record. It's terrific.

Molina: The problem with that record is I didn't feel it myself. My grandfather used to say it is better to get red once than green all your life.

Kuitca: I think the Spanish makes more sense.

Molina: It means it's better to be embarrassed once and not bitter the rest of your life. ... I'm going to get serious and ask you about a painting. Why did you for the first time staple a painting to a table?

Kuitca: I had these round tables like people in Argentina use for barbecues. Brushes were falling all the time between the wooden slats. I was sick of that happening, so I put a piece of cardboard over it and started making doodles and drawings, writing down messages, things to do. I thought it was so visually rich that I wanted to put it over something. That's how I started to place a canvas. I had a lot of rejected canvases that I'd tried too hard on and didn't succeed. So I used those as background for what I call my diaries.

Molina: It looks like one work.

Kuitca: I started them in 1994 and already I'm working on the third group of these diaries. I've somehow never abandoned the spontaneity that comes from sitting there writing things that are meant for me, even though I know they're going to be public and maybe even sold. I like the fact that I've found a way to work with the rejected pieces. They have a chance to be something else. ...

Molina: Do you feel when you start a painting that you have an idea, or do you just start and go for it?

Kuitca: I think I have a clue. I know the work will be a theater plan or maybe a map or maybe a house plan or that it's going to be yellow.

Molina: And the title?

Kuitca: No, the title comes later. I have a few titles held on the side that I know may be something. How is that for you when you start a song?

Molina: I know nothing. That comes later. ... Sometimes when I work on something I don't feel connected to it at all. You know, when you're reading a book and the book disappears and you're in the story and see the room they're in and you don't see the words or even yourself changing pages. I record in a computer so it's very visual. You see the links, the colors. Then when I'm totally starting to like it, the screen disappears and I start to see the images and the music.

Kuitca: When are your songs finished?

Molina: When I can listen and enjoy it. In general I stop when I need to work on the structure. I go back home into the studio because there's something that needs working.

Kuitca: I never knew that your songs were so involved.

Molina: If it's going to express thought, then it's not going to work. If I'm thinking, it's not going to work at all. What I like is that precious moment when I'm feeling led by the instrument at the same time I'm leading and I see an image -- a crow, or an angle going left. If I follow the form, then I'm going to have something at the end.

Kuitca: I go through the inverse. I believe in form before content, the security of the form that necessarily gives you the content.

Molina: What I see, listening to what I do, is very abstract. ... Unfortunately, I don't throw anything away and I'm afraid that when I die someone will get into my hard drive and publish all those horrible things that I'm not throwing away. Why don't we throw them away?

Kuitca: In my case, it's because I'm cheap. I hate to throw things away, but I do throw away drawings. I keep maybe one out of 30 and throw the rest away. But with the painting, I keep fighting a little bit more. . . . [When] the work feels overdone or forced, somehow it's purely an act of pride that you don't want to show it. But still I keep those works. When I came back to Buenos Aires, I should have destroyed a lot of things.

Molina: But you can paint over it with white.

Kuitca: But then they look horrible. It's like makeup, where you have somehow the ghost of the former painting. It's a painting with a past, but not an interesting past. That's why I paint the diaries. ... In this show I have retrospective works that cover almost from 1980 until now, so it's almost 30 years with only a few stops along the way.

Star Tribune: What is distinctively Argentine in your work?

Kuitca: That's a tough one. ... In [Molina's] case, you have the language and way you speak which is absolutely Argentinian, though you've softened down some of the "l's" and the "s." It's so absolutely local. In my work I've found more of a --

Molina: Universal language?

Kuitca: Yeah, without trying to cover too much.

Molina: I mean universal by being possible to be understood by anyone.

Kuitca: Or misunderstood. Through all the years I've been showing, especially in the United States, there is a curiosity and genuine interest in knowing what in your art is coming specifically from where you come from. What is local? I don't really know. I found shortcuts to say that Buenos Aires is a really big city and it's hard to paint one thing, so maybe my art is hybrid in that way. Hybridity is a little bit what we are as a country and what I do as an artist. But it's hard to define actually.

Molina: It's hard because you can't recognize what you are made of. You can't distinguish what you would be if you weren't born here. If I was born in France I would not be the same person, but it's hard to say what I would be. You can see it in others, but not in oneself.

Kuitca: People sometimes say, "Your art is so Argentinian; it couldn't be done any place but Buenos Aires." And I feel flattered, but I don't know what it means.

Molina: People from northern countries think Brazil and Argentina are the same thing. They talk about my bossa nova influences as if I were Brazilian. It's like for us to talk about Asian music and say "It's so Chinese," when maybe it's really Japanese or Korean and we can't hear the difference. ... I'd be very flattered if they said it is so Argentinian, but in general I don't know what they're talking about when they say "South American rhythms'."

Kuitca: It's a difficult subject. ... The biographical facts are going to affect the way we understand something, but it has to be built from the privacy of the moment. I like very much that it remains a private experience. You can say you like it or hate it or have fun with it, but still there is a nucleus of privacy. I don't know if people will see something in the show, but I would be very happy if something like that happens to some people. It sounds modest, but actually it's quite ambitious.

Mary Abbe • 612-673-443