BOOKS
Reviews
The Next Thing: Art in the Twenty-First Century is an illustrated anthology of essays, manifestos, personal diaries, pieces of fiction and roundtables written by a group of artists and thinkers from all around the world. The premise of this collection is to anticipate the aesthetic sensibility that will define our times.
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press / Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Maryland, US, 2013
Reviews
"Stop searching: in this book you will find answers to those questions you have never managed to ask, and questions to those answers bereft of sense. If you rather find nothing and are willing to just perpetuate your search, then you will find here the most fertile land where to fruitlessly search until you're completely worn out. Now, in case you have come to the conclusion that all search is in vain you will not find another book that, like this one, will reassert those sentiments with deeper commitment or greater self-renunciation."
In Spanish.
Editorial Lumme, San Paulo, 2013.
Reviews
Los sentidos de la distorsión examines figures of distortion (anamorphosis, contrapposto, twisted metaphors, perspectivism, etc.) as a way to approach the epistemic crises of Modernity and Postmodernity. Through this concept of distortion, this essay explores the continuities linking the warped, decentered dynamics of the 17th century to the logic of instability that permeates 20th century artistic production: from Cervantes’ vertiginous perspectivism and Quevedo’s puzzling retruécanos to the plastic, modular universes of Jorge Luis Borges and Xul Solar; from Góngora ́s perverse syntax to the monstrosities of Severo Sarduy and Ana Mendieta ́s metamorphic characters.
In Spanish
Ediciones Corregidor, Buenos Aires, 2009
"This novel inaugurates a rare genre of unexpected turns where detectivesque suspense coincides, point-by-point, with the most formidable metaphysical uncertainties. (...) With flawless creative fastness, with a singular sense of humor and a delirious imagination, Pablo Baler secures, in this superb and unique book, his irrevocable allegiance to that battered tradition of good literature."
Enrique Medina
Editorial Galerna, Buenos Aires, 1999
Primer Premio Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación, 2001/ Segundo Premio Fondo Nacional de las Artes 1998
Misko Suvakovic
The Next Thing performs the much-needed task of mapping the art of this new century. Pablo Baler covers a variety of critical and theoretical modalities of contemporary and future states of art, theory of art, cultural theory and science. This will be essential reading for artists, curators, art historians and cultural theorists. New and brave anthology.
Misko Suvakovic, Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Art, Belgrade
On Latin American Neo-Baroque
Replete with detailed readings, this book makes its theoretical claims concrete and its analyses theoretically relevant. Both baroque moments come to life.
David W. Foster
With Latin American Neo-Baroque: Senses of Distortion Baler contributes a view of soaring theoretical originality and expansive poetic range to the constantly renewed problematic of the appropriations of the Spanish baroque in Latin America.
Paul Nelson
Radio interview about Latin American Neo-Baroque conducted by poet Paul Nelson on November 14, 2016.