Buenos Aires' buzzing art scene, meanwhile, is being touted as the next big thing. Or that's the hope, anyway, of the city's eager artists and wide-eyed gallerists. "This city reminds me a lot of Berlin," said Elisa Freudenreich, 27, a gallery manager who recently moved from Berlin and sees parallels in the profusion of street artists and graffiti-splattered spaces. "The scene is very fresh, very underground."
Scruffy galleries have gone up along the city's edges, most notably Appetite, an irreverent, punk-inflected gallery in San Telmo started by Daniela Luna, a feisty 30-year-old known for her shrewd eye and cool parties. On a steamy Thursday afternoon, as office workers were climbing aboard buses back home, Luna was flitting through her grungy gallery in a brown miniskirt and sparkly pink T-shirt, like a teenager in a vintage clothing store.
"My first gallery was so messy that when people came to my parties, they didn't know if the stuff was art or trash," Luna said, as she showed off works by Santiago Iturralde, a local artist who paints portraits of narcissistic young men based on their Facebook-like Web profiles. "We're growing fast and furious." So fast, in fact, that she is exporting her cheeky blend of trash art to the real Brooklyn, where she just opened a small gallery.
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