Caja de madera I (Woodbox I)

Rimer Cardillo (b. 1944, Montevideo, Uruguay) is one of the most prominent contemporary Uruguayan artists. His artworks are part of world-renowned collections, such as The Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura of Mexico. He has been guest lecturer at the Tate Modern (London, 2003) and has participated in solo and group exhibitions at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (New York, 2004), Art Museum of the Americas (Washington, D.C., 2005), and Nassau County Museum of Art (New York, 2011), amongst many others.
Boxes are a recurring element in Cardillo's work. In his "Ritual Box/White Box Series" (1982-83), Cardillo makes a combination of printings and engravings of open wooden boxes, each with the remains of a butterfly inside, while in "Tattooed Collection Boxes" (2014) he creates several boxes with drawings and small engraved bronze pieces in the shape of birds. This engraving belongs to the early series "Graphic-Ecological Objects" (made from 1974 to 1981), in which glass cases and wooden boxes display drawings of insects and botanical samples. This alludes to man's obsession with studying, cataloguing, and dominating nature, which has resulted in a global environmental menace.