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Gestures and Diagrams for a Real Economy: regarding works by Phillipe Schmitter.

Far from the implications of the services revolution and the apex of the financial speculation economy in recent decades, capitalism has returned to problematize and focus on the relevance of durable goods production, one of the most classic elements in this production model. In response to the crisis in the so-called “welfare state”, different approaches seek some kind of repair or at least a patch, even including a return to corporatism (Schmitter). 
Returning to take up earlier works that dealt with business management and standardizing behavior in the workplace once again, these new diagrams show iconographic characters from the “real” world of production: oil workers, cultivators, shop workers, factory school workers, etc.
The icons themselves are based primarily on representations of the world of labor in art history and the applied arts from the mid-20th Century, a historical moment at which agro-industrial development and the creation of welfare state intersect. The imagery on display shows characters that have lost the heroic air from their original allegories, retaining only poses and bodily gestures. They are contour drawings, empty silhouettes that nevertheless continue to reverberate in the present.        

Hernán Marina
Buenos Aires, May, 2013