The exhibition took place from 5-22 April 2019 and opened with a reception on 5 April 2019.
Participating artists were from Colombia, Belgium and the UK.
ARTISTS
The following texts of the exhibition are a mix of the own words of the artists and the words of Parce. Therefore, they include individual appreciations of every artist and the perspective, thoughts and dialogues that the Parce Director found while organizing and creating this exhibtion.
Leyla Cárdenas (COL)
Title: Interpretation of Deep Time. (first try)
Year: 2017
Technique: Mono-canal projection. Blue ray, sound. 6 min.
Format: Variable
Credits:
Sound Composition: Melissa Vargas
Camera: Juan Carlos Pilonieta, Bárbara Santos
Post-production: Bárbara Santos, Laura Imery
Thanks to: Clemencia Echeverri, Andrés Gaitán, Guillermo Santos, Ramón Villamarín, Ingrid Raymond.
The notion of deep time confirms that it is in the space where the value of time is stored. The beautiful quote: “In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds” attributed to Ralph Ingersoll, well known public speaker of the 1930’s. The essence of this quote is found in the Qur’an, (Sura 27, Aya 88). Using the antipode as a geographical metaphor the camera "reads" slowly through the stratigraphy of an eroded mountain, making a parallel between a "geological construction" and a "human construction". What you see upside down is a rammed earth wall found in a state of ruin near the outskirts of Bogotá. The second text as we go across the ground: "this world with all its details has been elaborated and annihilated, and will be elaborated and annihilated: infinitely" comes from Borges quoting Hume.
Title: Re:weave (white ghost)
Year: 2017
Technique: Unweaved dye-sublimated polyester silk
Format: variable
The images on the fabrics, document some of the traces left by old buildings that the artists documents from different places she visits, in this case there are some details of the quarry of Maastricht. The intention is to un-weave a specific space which depicts as well different temporalities and states of the matter. The process pretends to unweave or unravel accumulated layers of time in a non-linear way. Somehow the image and its ghostly materiality becomes a palimpsest that superimposes and blends past, present and future of that space transferred in to the veil.
Cárdenas installation, sculpture, mixed-media work delves into urban ruins and cities landscapes as indications of social transformation, loss and historical memory. Remains, fragments, discarded structures, are used as material for her work, with a sculptural strategy that is as much destructive as constructive.
Recent projects include: Cuenca Bienal in Ecuador: Estructuras Vivientes in 2018. In 2017 her work Excision was part of the exhibition Home-So different, So appealing; shown at LACMA as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA del Getty and at Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH). As well in 2017 she participated in the California Pacific Trienal -Building as Ever- at OCMA (Orange County Museum of Art).
Cárdenas work can be found in public and private collections in Colombia, South America , Europe and throughout the States.
Sonja Geens (BEL)
Title: Frozen Memory
Year: 2019
Technique: 7 Painted portraits cast in resin
Format: A4
The painted portraits are cast in resin, as if they were frozen. The work originated from a desire to save, to preserve. To not forget. The inspiration for the paintings came from weathered and faded gravestone photos.
Sonja is a visual artist. She paints with acrylic paint and adapts skinny paint layers with water, sandpaper and resin. She also works with fragile materials such as beeswax, old paper, gauze and antique textiles.
She finds her inspiration in the small and in coincidence, from which she filters images of a shaky reality or of a place in the memory. Her work is sober, monochrome ,vulnerable and dubitable.
Gert van Dessel (BEL)
Title: Kodak Track
Year: 2019
Technique: Series of manipulated photos from 1879, conserved in 12 units
Format: multiple
Series of manipulated photos from 1879, seemingly frozen and conserved in 12 units
Title: Melting Project
Year: 2019
Technique: Wax object melting by warmth, on statue Format: Multiple
Wax object melting by warmth
Gert is a lighting designer and visual artist. He works with synthetic resin and found objects. His nomadic search provides an archive of weathered materials. He manipulates the old findings and combines them with new materials through which he connects past and present. His traditional method of working and extensive material research gives unexpected textures and connections.
Lía García (COL)
Title: Rhizomes
Year: 2016
Technique: Drawings on stone
Format: Multiple
Between the debris of torn down architecture, the artist discovers remains of previously inhabited places. The artist appropriates these pieces and by stripping them from the pattern of the geometric module to which they belonged, she participates in an exercise which tries to give sense to the dissected architecture, disposing them as small fragments of memory.
Title: Drawing Object
Year: 2014
Technique: Drawings on paper
Format: 50 x 50 cm
Lia’s work is a reflection on the city, in which she approaches ruins as a result of the eager expansion of cities. Drawings have allowed the artist to approach to the city: the ruin is the starting point of the drawings, because it contains and is contained in the landscape.
The main axis of Lia's work is to name, number and classify the world starting from a drawing in order to understand it, know it and project it.
Through different series of drawings that she has made, she tries to create relationships that encourage the viewer to read the work not as individual pieces but as a collective that generates a certain concept, and that allows the viewer to organize and reorganize the information and charge it with meaning taking into account their point of view and relating to their own experience.
Her work constitutes a reflection on the landscape, both urban and private. Her drawings allude to that other landscape that does not appear on postcards, that is not portrayed, and that sometimes wants to be ignored and replaced by other more traditional configurations of it.
In this sense, the periphery in her work is a place of exchange that breaks the physical delimitation of "form" or "morphology" and that reconfigures her perspective on her surroundings out of fragments.
Camilo Bojaca (COL)
Title: No title
Year: 2018
Technique: Stone and models out of wood.
Format: 63 x 29 x 11 cm
In this project, the artists focus on conceptual exploration, experimentation with the materials; their tensions, fragility, hardness, weight and support. Similar to the basic concepts constructions of our society, such as the square as a computer element.
Camilo explores different techniques of drawing, animation and video from which he builds a relationship with the world. In his work, the landscape of the city is a recurring theme. He draws elements attending to the problems of the city: to make a comment, a remark or simply to question the image as such. Another element he works with is the image of scale and power. He is interested in the drawing as a work space as well as a mental space and the material of which this is composed. In his last intervention projects like “errors that are consumed by the time” and “Garden of weeds” he approaches the relation between nature and architecture to explore new political notions and landscape.
Marcela Varela (COL)
Title: Series Sustratos II (Mexico fall to red pieces, Mexico fall to yellow pieces, Mexico fall to green pieces, Mexico fall to blue pieces)
Year: 2019
Technique: Painting made out of wall pieces from Mexico and Argentina
Format: 35 x 50 cm
A substrate is the substance of things, is a surface that covers something. Also, it´s a terrain or layer that is below another, or simply an interior aspect that can emerge. For the artist, constructions are living organisms maintained in time. The facades, tell stories and like us, have changes over time. Because time passes for everyone and corrodes them, disintegrates them, turns them into ruin; However, through painting they are reborn, flourish and become eternal. Color transforms them and allows us to see how much history they have to tell, how many lives they have lived.
Marcela's work has focused mainly on drawing, which is a tool that allows the creation of multidisciplinary proposals. During the last years she has developed installation projects, ceramics and video, departing from topics such as the everyday life, trivial things that draw her attention, and particular stories of the places where she carries out projects. These stories are narrated in series of line drawings, ceramics and fiction stories transposed to video, where she exposes fantasy mixed with reality. In all her work the color, the detail and the material play an important role for the development of each piece.
Joan Casas (COL)
Title: Series Fragments of Time ("Carrera 10 con calle 17", "Torre Colseguros", "San Bernardo neighborhood", "Electrician’s Street")
Year: 2016
Technique: Oil and Pencil on Canvas
Format: 35 x 50 cm
The Carrera Décima in Bogota City is a historical symbol of continuous transformation. Since its inception until today it has been one of the most important roads. It began its architectural transformation at the beginning of 20th century: moving away from the Colonial and Republican styles and pointing towards a modernity in which the most important avant-garde architectural patterns were adopted.
Prijs: 878,85 EUR
The Colseguros tower, founded in 1974 and located in Las Nieves, Bogotá, hosted in its early years “Radio Sutatenza (1946 – 1990)”, one of the first broadcasters of Colombia that maintained an educational and cultural line aimed at farmers in order to eradicate illiteracy under this population.
Prijs: 1171,80 EUR
San Bernardo neighborhood in Bogota City, founded in 1810, was one of the first neighborhoods of the Santafereña bourgeoisie. Families usually gathered in the evenings to drink chocolate and play cards or parquet. The city until 1930 or 40 had no bars or nightclubs.
The electronic goods area in Bogotá, is located in the neighborhood Las Nieves, founded in 1585. Warehouses of the old colonial and republican time were modified or stripped from their interior, without permits of the state or under authorization of corrupt politicians which allowed modification of the architecture and history which is being eliminated in great steps.
Title: German Drugstore
Year: 2018
Technique: Acrylic and Pencil on Concrete and Building Block
Format: 15,5 X 20 x 11 cm
The German Drugstore, founded in 1963, is located in the neighborhood San Diego (1606). The building was built in 1920 and belongs to the Santafereño republican style and as such is part of the cultural heritage (or dismantling) of the country. Like many of the buildings from this style period, the drugstore is now in restoration. Which means, basically: first expropriation, eliminating meeting places of the Bogotans, second dismantling, solely leaving a flat facade which is used to adorn the estates of wealthy people on the outskirts of the city. As such, there is no sense of restoration, because the end result is nothing to what it was originally. The history of the city, including its cafés of poetry and tango, chess or billiard clubs, bookstores, cake or chocolate shops disappears. A city built on ruins, gradually forgetting its history and customs.
Joan's work consists of installations, photographs, drawings and paintings. It proposes in an effective way how to present the concrete contents of each work, which will determine the medium that the artist will ultimately select. The scale can vary from the size of a small drawing, painting or of a large installation that will surround the largest space available. The artist not only uses a wide variety of media but also uses multiple aesthetic forms, ranging from an economic language, minimalist visual overload, exaggerated designs, always with the aim of articulating the content of the work as accurately as possible.
Lee Cutter (UK)
Title: Let’s Eat
Year: 2018
Technique: Carvings in soaps
Format: 22 X 15 x 5 cm
Time is imperative to the structure and daily functioning of prison and yet time can also begin to dissimulate when locked away in a small cell. He reflects on his own experience of isolation by using prison soap and prison bedsheets to explore time, and the timelessness, of dreams and memory.
Prijs: 1348,76 EUR
Title: Playing Pool
Year: 2018
Technique: Carvings in soaps
Format: 22 X 15 x 4 cm
Time is imperative to the structure and daily functioning of prison and yet time can also begin to dissimulate when locked away in a small cell. He reflects on his own experience of isolation by using prison soap and prison bedsheets to explore time, and the timelessness, of dreams and memory.
Title: Dream Scape
Year: 2018-2019
Technique: Spray paint on bed sheets
Format: 200 x 112 cm
Time is imperative to the structure and daily functioning of prison and yet time can also begin to dissimulate when locked away in a small cell. He reflects on his own experience of isolation by using prison soap and prison bedsheets to explore time, and the timelessness, of dreams and memory.
Lee is a curator, self-published writer, events producer and a visual artist working with drawing, sculpture and installation.
His work is about social reform and raising awareness to the hidden, and often unheard voices, of those from marginalised groups. Recent projects draw attention to the everyday of prison culture in Britain.
Time is imperative to the structure and daily functioning of prison and yet time can also begin to dissimulate when locked away in a small cell. He reflects on his own experience of isolation by using prison soap and prison bedsheets to explore time, and the timelessness, of dreams and memory.
Laura Peña Murcia (COL)
Title: Layers of time in dust
Year: 2019
Technique: Glass jar with fabric
Format: 30 x 11 cm
Extracting several layers of paint, wallpaper, plaster, and brick, among other materials that reveal the spaces, creates a dialogue with the history and features of the place through the action. By seeing the characteristics of each layer of wall and reflecting on its history and materiality, one gives identity to the space. The bottle preserves and in some way becomes a continuation of the wall that has been scraped. The result and the action reveal that this (giving identity, knowing and / or appropriating) is nothing more than an idea. The same thing happens in the action as with the tourist recording a memory: it is impossible to actually maintain a travel experience by just bringing a souvenir. The reality seems inaccessible.
Title: Portrait of a found wall… in agony
Year: 2019
Technique: Composition of wallpaper in wooden frame
Format: 50 x 70 cm
The person who visits a placed and takes a reminder of it, extracts part of it, tries to capture, lock up, acquire and preserve the memory of that space. Because of that appropriation of objects and / or memories, the individual in turn imposes his specific view of that space and experience.
Title: Trying to grab dust
Year: 2019
Technique: cross made out of dust
Format: multiple
After the scraping, the artist tries to keep a place like someone trying to keep the memory of a person whose materiality has changed. A souvenir is then the result of a dialogue and thus of an affection, because this idea of reality is also influenced by the person who makes the gesture. Likewise, this is the result of an attempt to appropriate and an impossibility, because materiality survives the intended action which, once consumed, reveals a reality that transcends action and the being.
Laura's work is an approach to how our existence is modeled and defined throughout life by notions of meaning that decide what is considered "reality". She is interested in the way in which subjectivity and our perceptions have been conditioned by instructions, knowledge, prejudices, rites and myths that are rehearsed and apprehended throughout our lives. This is reflected in her work as a poetic in which revelations and concealments make it possible to believe that reality is not as we see it, leading to the consciousness of a reality that does not exist as determined by that consciousness.
A ruin is only a ruin if in the eyes of someone something fell, decayed... There is only a ruin if it is observed, but, independent of the observer, the matter exists.
Widy Ortiz and
Daniela Carreño
(COL)
Title: Poetic Acts
Year: 2019
Technique: White pencil frottage on white paper, print on typewriter keys without ink on paper, transfer of image with graphite pencil on paper and black ballpoint pen on black cardboard.
Format: Triptych, 27, 94 cm x 21.59 cm each.
Time, life, patience, anguish and hopes are intertwined by things of life as a couple and as a collective. The pieces were built with the intention of unity and to work with each other, at conceptual levels. In the same line, the wear and tear and the manipulation of the materials are articulated with the sense of transience of time.
Carreño & Ortiz, is a duo of artists, composed by Daniela Carreño Reina and Widy Ortiz, which was created in 2018 from the idea of gestating artistic projects, where it predominates more than the interest in the techniques, the ideas of sharing personal experiences of each one with respect to their lives, arriving at the concretion of two thoughts, that are intertwined in compound works. Note: for the moment the duo is paused.
JOLIEN VERDOODT
ART HISTORIAN
Master in the Arts (Ghent University, 2019); Bachelor in the Arts (Ghent University, 2017)
Intern and volunteer at SMAK Ghent (Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art Ghent)
Débris (time contingencies)
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T.S. Eliot. The Waste Land. 1922.
Débris exists out of broken or torn pieces of something larger that at some point in time was complete (more or less). One can think of the ruins of old buildings, sculptures or even whole cities. A century ago, T.S. Eliot already saw in the remnants of great civilisations the possibility to make visible the fear and doubt of his time. In summoning fragments of old greatness, now turned into dust, he expresses the bitter taste of time passing as well as the beauty in it.
Today, still, the artist finds in the débris of things a way to give form to inner doubts and fears. The effect of time on the material, a random process, provides a background where the artist can work with and build her or his own story on.
What remains
Débris (time contingencies) tells the story of materials enduring the effect of time. What remains carries the memory of things and people it has outlived. It exists out of things that are left behind. It’s no different for whoever keeps the object and gives meaning to it. We are filled with memories, and it is never easy to remember what is lost.
Architecture takes a central role in the exhibition. It is the artform that surrounds us, defines us and survives us. It is witness to an endless stream of human life and tells its stories. These are the buildings we live in and that are made from the most resistant materials and structures we can think of and yet they are just as fragile as we are, given enough time passes.
The exterior of a building has very clear signs of wearing down. One only needs to look around to see the diverse changes the materials go through. Every place ages in a unique way because no place exists under the exact same conditions. This can be said of humans as well, albeit less visible on the outside.
Débris is an obvious image of the passing of time. One can see (or investigate) what is broken, what remains and what is lost. The artist finds in the débris of things a way and a material of representing the less obvious.
What changes
Nothing, I feel sure, lasts long under same appearance.Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8 B.C.
The exhibit revolves around the idea of the passage of time affecting materials and objects but also around the human action that takes place in this process. This action includes finding, collecting, forming and changing materials. Human, artistic involvement in the life of the object gives meaning to it. When the individual decides to work with the material, he/she gives it a life, a story.Nothing stays and nothing really leaves either. Ovid already had this wisdom centuries ago. In his lifework “metamorphoses”, by telling the ancient stories, he gives form to the changing nature of things. He focuses on transformation as an intrinsic part of human life. Nature is in constant change and so is everything that stems from it.
Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2003.
The artist, having the creative opportunity to do so, transforms as well. By collecting something, working with a material or even making something from scratch the artist decides what and how something is “metamorphized” into “art”.
It is the decision, the idea and the person (the character) that changes the object or material. This is not only a formal, exterior change but an interior transformation as well. The object changes in meaning, in purpose and in how the spectator sees and perceives it.
Flesh and stones
Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been.
José Ortega y Gasset, El Quehacer del Hombre, 1933.
Ovid tells the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha. They survive a flood and remain as the only two humans left in existence. Distraught by sadness they call upon the gods and are told to walk on the stones of the (mother) earth. By doing this, the stones slowly turn into humanlike figures and finally into people of flesh and blood. People are strong and can endure a lot, Ovid says, not unlike the material we once came from.
Project direction and art works selection by
LAURA PEÑA
PARCE DIRECTOR
THE COLOMBIAN EMBASSY FOR THE KINGDOM OF BELGIUM
realising the participation of our specially invited artist Leyla Cárdenas from Colombia and attending and supporting our opening reception
For this project we thankfully received support of:
News item by Canal SimiTV
