Steganography (masked landscape). Various objects such as: cars, cars, bicycles, tricycles, skates, tables, etc., masking tape. Variable dimensions, in the room 17 mt x 15 mt x 4.50 mt (255 square meters approximately). 2011. CCU Art Gallery.
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By way of description
This piece consists of a large number of objects, which have been covered with masking tape, just like the walls and floor of the gallery. The Project is articulated on the basis of a series of mobile objects bearing other objects that exceed the physical logic of their own structure, which means that the only thing that touches the ground are wheels of, for example: cars, skates, skateboards, tricycles, bicycles, etc.
This Project is in itself an eminently sculptural Project that assumes the exhibition space (gallery) as the largest object to be masked.
Steganography is a Project that establishes a direct relationship with the Project titled “The Two-Cycle City or the Pocoyo syndrome (according to Juliette)” Project that was exhibited in the framework of the Santa Cruz de la Sierra Biennial in Bolivia in 2010. Steganography gathers in it all that constructive experience and settles down excessively and obsessively at the CCU Art Gallery in order to construct a “landscape” that silences its own components and attempts, also, to silence the semantic charge of the objects.
A visual and material levity occurs within the gallery that affects the viewer, who then becomes an accomplice, forced to circulate through the work as in a kind of immersion piece (like standing in an empty swimming pool), because the only way to see the project is entering the piece itself, because the entire gallery (walls and floor) have been covered with masking tape as have, also, all the objects inside it.
The emotional impact that is felt upon entering the room is given by the empirical relationship that each one of us has with the objects on display in this “landscape”. However, each one of them establishes their own reading which, together with the others, construct a visual and emotional language that is very similar to what we experience when we enter a cathedral.
Everything is still. Trapped by the masking tape, disturbingly still, like when we face a catastrophe. The instant portrayed is precisely the moment following the dramatic event.
Text by: Javier González Pesce
Photo Credits: Álvaro Mardones