Fri Oct 02, 2015 19:00 - Thu Nov 05, 2015

Bogota DC, Colombia

Non-Organic Life brings together artists addressing creative processes which denature the origin of the materials used or contradict the properties of its constituent references.

PERMANENTE’s architecture requires artists to establish a dialogue between space and their procedures, therefore the works displayed at this exhibition project were generated in situ. This gesture not only includes an appropriation of site-specific intervention concept, it also becomes a fundamental aspect of the artworks exhibited in here, which also allows artists to text experimenting methods towards spatial interaction, this initiative aims to propose a waiver against figuration.

“All life on Earth is based on organic biology; e.g. carbon as amino acids "instead Non-Organic Life, considers the inorganic world as a nurturing playground of configurations, we do believe that residual materials and inert substrates can express content regardless their original sources. Non-Organic Life exhibition brings together a group of art practitioners, who by their works explore the possibilities of inanimate life, using both installation resources and non-monumental materials. “

The residual material found in a city generates a vast range of clusters. Looking at these masses as isolated segments, we can understand them as assemblages of microenvironments, that were determined from the accumulation of different volumes that coalesce forming Substratum, that in the majority of cases are incompatible materials, but due to the corrosive effect of weathering and neglect are compacted as solids. In turn, these clusters delocalized from its urban context, resemble Terran formations, for this reason, in some of these installations we can distinguish surfaces that by their morphological structure, approach to images captured by satellite photographic devices.

The way we propose -site-specific intervention in this project to the artists give them a chance to perform an action of dissection and removing non-organic forms. This becomes a feature that provides a set of possibilities to explore the physical properties of each of these segments and configure a new cartography of inert landscapes.

Working with non-organic materials for experimentation was an early initiative during the second world war, known as the Manhattan Project (Los Alamos laboratories, New Mexico, USA,1942). These facilities at the beginning were devoted to research and development of nuclear weapons. The laboratory work culminated in the creation of different atomic devices, for instance, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the result of collaborative work of several scientists into this center of research and innovation. After the Cold War the Laboratory changed its orientation and diversified into new policy needs, requiring no more the creation of mass destruction weapons, consequently their efforts migrated towards the research of anti-war technologies. Nuclear research was reduced to computer simulations, nevertheless the atmosphere and the memories of the experiments developed in this area, aroused various activists initiatives, claiming over the environmental damages executed and side effects caused to the population living there.

Non-Organic Life observes the accumulation of non-organic materials thrown in different coordinates of our urban landscape as an environmental setback. The damages caused by these materials deposited along the streets, can not be compared with the nuclear experiments performed at Los Alamos Laboratories, however, each cluster of non-recyclable substances and non-biological cumulus contributes to the environmental imbalance of the urban environment.

The artists gathered inside this exhibition rescue, backed out and sometimes denatured the origin of these materials, some do from the syntactic poetics of matter and others hope to revitalize these substrates by configuring immersive installations.

Invited artists:

Verónica Lehner

Carlos Bonil

Juan Melo

Federico Ovalles-Ar

Víctor David Garces

Laura Ceballos

Nicolás Cardenas

Luz Angela Lizarazo

Gabriel Zea + Camilo Martinez

Rafael Gómez Barros

Angélica Teuta

Andrés Matías Pinilla

Caroline Bray

Andrés Londoño

Curator: John Angel Rodriguez

PERMANENTE

Address:

Kr. 22 # 75-08

Bogota-Colombia

Thu Mar 12, 2015 17:00 - Tue Mar 31, 2015

Bogota DC, Colombia

The exhibition Transparency, Fluidity and Mediation addresses the three terms of its title as the catalyzers of artworks. The pieces assembled for the show are crystallized in audiovisual and digital formats that may have been created or reformatted through the implementation of digital devices.

The platforms of New Media Art have contributed to the widespread distribution of artworks in both intangible formats of those that lack a face-to-face component. In this respect, "Telematics" enables both works and performers to interact with the audience (which in this environment can be called users). The telematic dynamic of artist-user-viewer has expanded the range of beneficiaries and consumers of contemporary art, bringing the work of differing artists from various latitudes into cultural spheres that are no longer the exclusive circuits of high and intellectual culture.

In the specific case of this exhibition, the pieces on display could perhaps be mistaken for commercial products (advertising images, banners, screensavers, etc.) due to the production formats through which they have been generated. Although these works share an element of digitization and the implementation of technological resources, this commonality reflects only a format and nothing more.

Mediatic platforms approach their audiences differently from those of traditional exhibition spaces (art galleries and museums). Recently, institutions have had to rethink their display formats and interactions with their audiences due the imminent and unavoidable immersion of our contemporary world in digital technologies and platforms. In-situ installations have reached levels of immersion and interactivity where experiences of and explorations within virtual worlds are possible without the interventions of technology or digital devices. In this category we find several analogue extensions of our senses, including glasses, headphones and prosthetics that have become everyday objects.

Installations and experimental exhibition formats have rethought the notion of the white cube, thus contributing to perceptions of art and its adaptive functions in relation to the senses. Although these formats for displaying art have contributed to conceptual debates about contemporary art, we must recognize that the distribution methods offered by the digital environment are different from those provided through a physical appreciation of art. Discussions between the tangible and the virtual are distinctive of the digital dimension, yet the works presented in this exhibition have been created as unique pieces of art that can be seen using digital display devices.

The expansion of networks within digital environments has enabled new audiences to experience artworks in innovative ways. This is made possible due to different sources of access: interactive websites, apps, video games and virtual reality interfaces, or in a more simple way still digital works and motion pieces. It is within this spectrum that the Transparency, Fluidity and Mediation exhibition is conceived. The works gathered here were either made or compiled digitally. Thanks to this feature we can appreciate digital sculptures, impossible objects, performances and actions in installation formats and through video projections inside the exhibition space of Gallery ASAB.

To borrow a concept from Henri Bergson, the virtual can be understood as the possibility of becoming, and the virtuality and immateriality of the pieces herein can be tangible as far as they can be apprehended by the interactions of our senses: vision and hearing. This measure may be tangible within our sensorial experience. We also have to take into consideration the fact that light occupies a physical space, traveling alongside different paths, finally touching our ocular cells. If we look at this phenomenon from the perspective of physics, the tangible nature of these works lies in the way that they are conceived by their creators and experienced by their viewers-users.

Discussions between the tangible and the virtual are typical of the digital dimension, yet this exhibition focuses our gaze so that we contemplate the works as unique pieces of art. This situation has been discussed from different points of artistic exercise and intellectual creation. Still, the exhibition does not attempt to allude to the critical debates that address the emergence of digital technologies in the arts. This show intends to introduce the viewer to a group of artworks that proposes the three characteristics of the digital display devices referred to in the title of the exhibition: Transparency, Fluidity and Mediation.

In this exhibition these terms are proposed as catalyzers, rather than as univocal determinants. The fluidity of the plasma screen, the transparency of the surfaces on which the video projections are made and the mediating capacity of graphic manipulation software, all of this allows us to appreciate how some of the works are located in an intermediate range between virtual conception and artistic mediation using technological devices. Moreover, these technological tools may well be mediators in the service of the arts or any other field of knowledge.

One things that has enabled the incursion of digital technology into contemporary artistic practice is the simulation of traditional mediums that can be emulated using digital applications. Software generates high-resolution images as impeccable as a painting on a canvas. Today works can be created through a wide range of digital devices; liquid, plasma and LED screens can serve as a substitute for the canvas. Display devices such as smartphones, tablets and micro-screens that circulate in our personal and work environments fulfill the role that was once carried out by the monitor; today, this action is fulfilled by mobile and video projection devices.

These devices not only offer the qualities of sharpness and immediacy in user perception. They also offer expanded horizons for artistic exploration, allowing creators to find in these media tools conceptual physical properties that allow them to reinvent their practices of imaging and visualizing.

The transparency of digital media provides creators with a new way of understanding the physical environment, and therefore screens and projectors confront both the artist and the viewer in a new perceptual dimension. Images appear on surfaces of a different nature, where the role of light can be understood as an action of mapping. Through projections images come to us in a different way. Various works appear through digital simulation devices and digital paintings, while sculptures exist as avatars. When we enter into the digital both objects and landscapes are sometimes created exclusively for such a dimension.

Digital resources also serve as mediators, not only is the digitally generated image configured as an immaterial work, for some artists it is a form of mediation between different actions. This is the case for Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa, who mixes real-time images and sound in a single piece, through which he tries to change our perceptions of our everyday environments. The result is a performance that can only be witnessed in the space where his work is performed. However, thanks to digital technologies this performative work can be extracted and displayed outside the time and space in which the work was created. In the context of this exhibition his work syn_mod.2 is on display and is characterized by the orchestration of various abstract designs that are defined by the artist as an asymmetrical assembly of organized patterns.

Works by the following artists are presented in the exhibition:

Quayola & Sinigaglia

Jenny Holzer

Universal Everything

Ryoichi Kurokaga,

Scanner

Yoko Ono

Jake & Dinos Chapman

AES+F

Field

Herman Kolgen

Sophie Kahn

Marion Tampon-Lajarriette

Memo Akten

Shu Lea Cheang

Zimoun

Mitch Stratten

Angelo Plessas.

Curated by: John Angel Rodriguez

Fri Jul 04, 2014 18:00 - Wed Jul 30, 2014

London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Vanishing Points

Curated by John Angel Rodriguez

What is a vanishing point?
It is the apparent convergence of parallel lines as they fade into the distance. It is also a concept inherited from the practice of perspectival drawing.

How may we define our vanishing point when the starting point is already diffuse? Especially when we take into consideration the fact that in today’s climate the stable rules that we used to rely on, such as mathematics, no longer constitute a trustworthy science.

Looking at the works of the artists gathered here, I began to reflect upon the notion that the concept or the creation of a vanishing point is that which offers us a reinterpretation of the exercise of drawing. Accordingly, I subscribe to Gilles Deleuze’s argument that,

We are moving continuously on parallel lines, while interacting with the surrounding environment. Although those lines may not have been connected from the starting point, they could eventually merge in the expansion of their coordinates. The fluxus between those lines is what generates a constant set of indeterminate possibilities.

I identify the artworks by these creators as belonging to the following dynamic. In light of a particular phenomenon that has emerged in Colombia during the last ten years, these artists have all been developing their research and creative practices in a manner that seeks to engage Colombian art with the international art scene, rather than emphasizing the artists’ own local and Colombian experiences. As part of this process concepts are continuously evolving and a new narrative surrounding their native social circumstances has arisen. Consequently, they are moving towards an aesthetic that can be assimilated into varying contexts. Colombian art is thus emerging from its principal struggle and point of interest, namely the depiction of political conflicts that exist within its social contexts.

The Vanishing Points exhibition brings together a selection of artists that have made significant and indeed pioneering progress within the Colombian contemporary art scene. Therefore, the exhibition unites a generation of art practitioners who explore the visual and conceptual possibilities of drawing, ranging from site-specific installations to participatory education projects.

Most of the artworks presented here are the result of various types of practice.

Rodrigo Echeverri creates mediatic paintings that generate differing rhythmic and geometric compositions that expand beyond the limits of the surface. Alberto Lezaca presents Concrete Irregularity, a project that takes as its reference the work Living Cells (1991-93) by the Israeli artist Meir Eshel, also known as Absalon. In this particular piece the original geometric austerity of housing is transformed into a new structure. Carlos Franklin works actively in multidisciplinary projects. Bringing together his varied multimedia skills, his experiences have granted him considerable knowledge of documentary work and opera. Here he presents a stereoscopic video that offers a very specific choreography, while a signer for deaf persons recreates the movements of the dancer. Nicolás Paris’ principal medium is that of drawing as an exercise, which itself might be understood in terms of the creative workshop. Correspondingly, the workshop space might be considered a drawing process in itself. Esteban Sánchez highlights a range of situations hidden behind curious objects while playing with the notion of invisible relations. For example, one of his current installation pieces unveils the measurements of a handcrafted wrap and presents a set of drawings entitled Upraises (2010). Miler Lagos works with a range of mediums, using the materiality of the works to establish a relationship with the temporality of the creation of the artwork itself; here he displays The Rings of Time (2014). María Fernanda Plata’s practice is shaped by her interest in architecture, providing her with a setting through which she is able to investigate numerous aspects of the human condition, such as transience, fragility and the terminal. Widy Ortiz has created a series of drawings that utilise fragments of photographs. Approaching advertising through science fiction he questions the value (or vanity and impotence) of imaging and the corresponding yet coincidental relationship between subject and object. His images form part of the Pop spectrum of our present iconography.

A programme of supporting activities will encourage a wide range of visitors.
A creative workshop led by artist and university lecturer Nicolás Cardenas will encourage participants to experience the tactile nature of his installation. Nicolás analyses biological structures for the creation of his sculptures, the result of these pieces being a fractal disposition when they are displayed in the space.

Andres Londoño has created Kunstomerservice, a helpdesk designed to register and respond to the opinions of the general public. It is a platform that provides a space or point of encounter for all those who are accidentally, incidentally or premeditatedly affected by the visual arts. Andres will deliver a performance that aims to engage the local community in his artistic initiatives.

Artist and university lecturer Alberto Lezaca de Paz will be expose the themes that have inspired his installations by performing his industrial sonic compositions and projecting his interactive videos, both of which address the functions of technology within the context of art.

Felipe Sepulveda will conduct a series of walks through London with the purpose of recreating his participatory project Tracks in the Earth, an artist-led initiative that gathers and joins displaced communities located on the outskirts of Bogotá, Colombia. The project aims to help the city’s peripheral inhabitants to recover their collective identity through a process of revalorising loss through the recognition of and engagement with memory. Sepulveda is currently working in partnership with Casa Daros to deliver education workshops in different South American cities and train primary school teachers in education, while also employing his art practice as a methodology of social engagement.

Guest Projects is an initiative conceived by Shonibare Studio to offer the opportunity for artistic practitioners, of any artistic discipline, to have access to a free project space for one month. As a laboratory of ideas it is a testing ground for new thoughts and actions, it provides an alternative universe and playground for artists.

Partner and collaborator:

http://www.openvizor.com/

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