“Retratos de Mar de Ajó” (2001-2) are portraits taken in Mar de Ajó, a holiday resort area by the sea, where he spent his summers in a hotel managed by his family. There are small scenes where he explores the estrangement of everyday life. His photos had already distinctive features that reveal artificial composition, ad hoc, where he gestures towards advertising cliches. Time has been frozen and tourists, bathed in a peculiar light, pose for the camera. Argentina’s middle class is somehow portrayed in these photographs. What are we looking for in our yearly pilgrim to the sea side?, what do we recall and find there?, do we go just to worship sun once again?, our five minutes of stardom?

In: “Lugar Habitante” (2003-4) and “Ser Tierra” (2005) fantasy prevailed. The artist turned everything upside down. People were half buried, white helmets that look like gigantic eggs. It is in these works that Nicolás Trombetta manages to tie, reality and fiction, together. The need or possibility of a closer, more intimate link between man and nature is the theme. Empathy and brotherhood. There is a sort of primitive link between water, earth and people caressed by sand or sun rays.Were the sea with its sound and seductiveness makes nudity almost a possibility. Grown ups that agree to be buried by children, were the experience of water and warmth recalls the womb. Fear and pleasure of something ancestral, untamed, of getting trapped back to where we come from, of letting it out.

Nicolás Trombetta thus begins a surreal exploration and interpretation of nature and its kingdoms, mineral, plant and animal. The sky, earth and sea are the frame of his photographs and videos such as in “Ser Nube” (2006).

He outlines a story through a sequence of photographs (approximate 800 per video). Trombetta is costume designer, actor director of his model-actors and he collaborates with Oliverio, the musician and Ignacio Laxalde a movie maker.

With the fitful sharpness of a dream a cloud-creature moves back and forth. Is it fleeing or returning? A fluffy creature, that moves in a clumsily and heavy fashion, will it merge into its own shadow, burn up, re-born, die or give its first steps?

The message, that Nicolás Trombetta seems to convey, is his own state of mind. He says: “If I could I would change the shape of the sand dunes” Sometimes he even modifies the light so that his photographs and videos are shown as in a dream or nightmare.

Gabriela Francone