A program of Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá
A cultural program of:
A program of Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá
A cultural program of:
This 2022 Lorena Espitia & Tupac Cruz invite the visitors of the fair to rethink ideological issues linked to models of representation of the reality and the expansive possibilities of drawing and painting. By exploring heterogeneous representational strategies—those of advertising and graphic design, of the early Russian avant-gardes and popularized paleontological knowledge, of Godard's early films and vernacular science fiction—and by researching the possibilities of unfamiliar materials they confront the viewers by inducing them to `look and ´connect´. This 2022 Lorena Espitia and Tupac Cruz propose a large installation made up of drawings, sculptures and paintings on paper. The images we included in this application are a mere mouth opener of what we will show this year at ARTBO.
SKETCH gallery opened its doors in San Felipe Art District, acting as a platform and exhibition space for emerging contemporary art. Today all forms of art have expanded and drawing has become a fundamental and autonomous art form. Our interest lies in investigating the relationship(s) that can be constructed between drawing and other media and so think about the expanded nature of a SKETCH. The count with more than 200 square meters of exhibition space as well as a rooftop designed for site-specific works and outdoor activities.
Tupac Cruz holds a PhD in Philosophy of Religions from the University of Chicago and has taught philosophy of action at the Universidad del Rosario and art theory at the Universidad de los Andes (both in Bogota, Colombia). Cruz has also recently published a facsimile risograph edition of a manuscript essay on speculative morphology (Rocío en formación, commissioned by the curators of the 44SNA Aún biennial held in Pereira, Colombia) and a comic book (Esfera roja I: Rompemos Ramas, published by Jardín). His work as an artist has been exhibited at SKETCH (Bogotá, 2021), The Box (Los Angeles, 2017), Greta (Zagreb, 2015), Museo de Arte La Tertulia (Cali, 2014) and Valenzuela Klenner Galería (Bogotá, 2012), among others. He is part of the musical groups Montón Volador and Aurora Rampante and produces instrumental music as Argamas Romo. "I see that there are, among the sensitive objects, some that give help or orders and others that are given to be read, like diagrams or riddles; others that mark a bearer and others that pretend to absorb him. I suppose they are all objects of use, although the use we make of some of them is strange: we use them to introduce disorder into our mind, which in using them abdicates in favor of the useful. In recent years I have tried, when I produce sensitive objects, to make them lend themselves to several of these forms of use at the same time. I make no difference between drawing and learning to draw, and at the moment I am trying to learn something from objects that fulfill relatively crude tasks: badges, emblems, shields, diagrams and other illustrative resources, mascots. To organize these efforts I imagine that a militant society exists and that I work as an illustrator of their pamphlets and designer of their paraphernalia. The Semper Simplex Society seeks to reduce to simple forms the constitution of individual and shared life. I suppose this defines a thematic field: I'm interested in something like "wilderness" theory, the acts of thought that a mind projects against culture and its defenders, at the risk of not being sure that what it is doing is "thinking." And I imagine that the illustrations I make and put on embroidered patches, flags and banners illustrate theories about plant life, the lives of the useful, simple living, stupidity, anarchic coexistence, fidelity, emotion without object."
Tupac Cruz holds a PhD in Philosophy of Religions from the University of Chicago and has taught philosophy of action at the Universidad del Rosario and art theory at the Universidad de los Andes (both in Bogota, Colombia). Cruz has also recently published a facsimile risograph edition of a manuscript essay on speculative morphology (Rocío en formación, commissioned by the curators of the 44SNA Aún biennial held in Pereira, Colombia) and a comic book (Esfera roja I: Rompemos Ramas, published by Jardín). His work as an artist has been exhibited at SKETCH (Bogotá, 2021), The Box (Los Angeles, 2017), Greta (Zagreb, 2015), Museo de Arte La Tertulia (Cali, 2014) and Valenzuela Klenner Galería (Bogotá, 2012), among others. He is part of the musical groups Montón Volador and Aurora Rampante and produces instrumental music as Argamas Romo. "I see that there are, among the sensitive objects, some that give help or orders and others that are given to be read, like diagrams or riddles; others that mark a bearer and others that pretend to absorb him. I suppose they are all objects of use, although the use we make of some of them is strange: we use them to introduce disorder into our mind, which in using them abdicates in favor of the useful. In recent years I have tried, when I produce sensitive objects, to make them lend themselves to several of these forms of use at the same time. I make no difference between drawing and learning to draw, and at the moment I am trying to learn something from objects that fulfill relatively crude tasks: badges, emblems, shields, diagrams and other illustrative resources, mascots. To organize these efforts I imagine that a militant society exists and that I work as an illustrator of their pamphlets and designer of their paraphernalia. The Semper Simplex Society seeks to reduce to simple forms the constitution of individual and shared life. I suppose this defines a thematic field: I'm interested in something like "wilderness" theory, the acts of thought that a mind projects against culture and its defenders, at the risk of not being sure that what it is doing is "thinking." And I imagine that the illustrations I make and put on embroidered patches, flags and banners illustrate theories about plant life, the lives of the useful, simple living, stupidity, anarchic coexistence, fidelity, emotion without object."
Tupac Cruz holds a PhD in Philosophy of Religions from the University of Chicago and has taught philosophy of action at the Universidad del Rosario and art theory at the Universidad de los Andes (both in Bogota, Colombia). Cruz has also recently published a facsimile risograph edition of a manuscript essay on speculative morphology (Rocío en formación, commissioned by the curators of the 44SNA Aún biennial held in Pereira, Colombia) and a comic book (Esfera roja I: Rompemos Ramas, published by Jardín). His work as an artist has been exhibited at SKETCH (Bogotá, 2021), The Box (Los Angeles, 2017), Greta (Zagreb, 2015), Museo de Arte La Tertulia (Cali, 2014) and Valenzuela Klenner Galería (Bogotá, 2012), among others. He is part of the musical groups Montón Volador and Aurora Rampante and produces instrumental music as Argamas Romo. "I see that there are, among the sensitive objects, some that give help or orders and others that are given to be read, like diagrams or riddles; others that mark a bearer and others that pretend to absorb him. I suppose they are all objects of use, although the use we make of some of them is strange: we use them to introduce disorder into our mind, which in using them abdicates in favor of the useful. In recent years I have tried, when I produce sensitive objects, to make them lend themselves to several of these forms of use at the same time. I make no difference between drawing and learning to draw, and at the moment I am trying to learn something from objects that fulfill relatively crude tasks: badges, emblems, shields, diagrams and other illustrative resources, mascots. To organize these efforts I imagine that a militant society exists and that I work as an illustrator of their pamphlets and designer of their paraphernalia. The Semper Simplex Society seeks to reduce to simple forms the constitution of individual and shared life. I suppose this defines a thematic field: I'm interested in something like "wilderness" theory, the acts of thought that a mind projects against culture and its defenders, at the risk of not being sure that what it is doing is "thinking." And I imagine that the illustrations I make and put on embroidered patches, flags and banners illustrate theories about plant life, the lives of the useful, simple living, stupidity, anarchic coexistence, fidelity, emotion without object."
Although my work engages in a sustained dialogue with painting, it is a dialogue that fosters tension in order to reconsider the varieties of what is called “painting” and to understand the reaches and limitations of the social definition of the “painter”. Often, my projects respond to specific circumstances that allow me to destabilize my own position as an artist by exploring heterogeneous representational strategies—those of advertising and graphic design, of the early Russian avant-gardes and popularized paleontological knowledge, of Godard's early films and vernacular science fiction—and by researching the possibilities of unfamiliar materials. My work is conceived as a medium for learning, and the characteristics of each project develop in light of an autodidactic urge to deal with topics such as the iconography of extinction, the cognitive potentialities of diagrams, the visual representation of social struggles or the connection between acts of vision and acts of motion. In 2012, during a residency in Mexico City, I produced "A Failed Calling", after working for three months in a traditional rotulero workshop, confronting the artisanal production of commercial imagery in public spaces with the aspirations of Siqueiros’s and Rivera’s Great Mexican Muralism. On another occasion, as a commentary on the abuses of an art dealer, I videotaped myself destroying one of my paintings with a hammer, which I then put back together out of the resulting small fragments. During another residency in Nürnberg I produced "Sentimental Journey", an exploration of tourism, and an attempt to use the patient work of embroidery as a way of weaving affects and the possibility of a counter-nationalist heraldry. In 2012, I won the prize Nuevas Propuestas, hosted by the Alliance Française, where I exhibited "Remake", an installation featuring sculptures, a mural in chalk and a video-homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise (1967), where I enact iconic sequences from the film, referencing the history of armed struggle in Colombia and its problematic usage by local artists. In 2013 I was invited to contribute to the biennial 43 Salón Nacional de Artistas, and in 2014 I produced The Fabrication of Facts, a solo show that, drawing from pedagogical materials from the Museum of Natural History in Paris, analyze the scientific representation of natural processes. For my solo exhibition "Unfollow Me, Morning Star" at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Medellin (2017) I produced a series of 5 motorized paintings based on video studios of road travel in the vicinity of Los Angeles, California and then I produced “still” copies of these paintings, installed in reverse order, allowing spectators to experience the divergence between both presentations of the “same” image and the unexpected motionless elegance of images composed to be perceived in motion. The exhibition also included a series of paintings in which I shift my interest in the visual representation of biological phenomena, from a historical to a speculative dimension, seeking to envision potential microscopical or cosmic phenomena through paintings and sculptures that undermine the semantics of scientific and visionary abstraction. Between 2005 and 2009 I was a member of El Bodegón, an independent artist-run space that produced more than a hundred exhibitions of Colombian and international artists along with other events. I am the bass player for the bands Las Ruinas Telepáticas, Montón Volador (since 2012) and Aurora Rampante (since 2015). I hold a BFA from the Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, California.
Although my work engages in a sustained dialogue with painting, it is a dialogue that fosters tension in order to reconsider the varieties of what is called “painting” and to understand the reaches and limitations of the social definition of the “painter”. Often, my projects respond to specific circumstances that allow me to destabilize my own position as an artist by exploring heterogeneous representational strategies—those of advertising and graphic design, of the early Russian avant-gardes and popularized paleontological knowledge, of Godard's early films and vernacular science fiction—and by researching the possibilities of unfamiliar materials. My work is conceived as a medium for learning, and the characteristics of each project develop in light of an autodidactic urge to deal with topics such as the iconography of extinction, the cognitive potentialities of diagrams, the visual representation of social struggles or the connection between acts of vision and acts of motion. In 2012, during a residency in Mexico City, I produced "A Failed Calling", after working for three months in a traditional rotulero workshop, confronting the artisanal production of commercial imagery in public spaces with the aspirations of Siqueiros’s and Rivera’s Great Mexican Muralism. On another occasion, as a commentary on the abuses of an art dealer, I videotaped myself destroying one of my paintings with a hammer, which I then put back together out of the resulting small fragments. During another residency in Nürnberg I produced "Sentimental Journey", an exploration of tourism, and an attempt to use the patient work of embroidery as a way of weaving affects and the possibility of a counter-nationalist heraldry. In 2012, I won the prize Nuevas Propuestas, hosted by the Alliance Française, where I exhibited "Remake", an installation featuring sculptures, a mural in chalk and a video-homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise (1967), where I enact iconic sequences from the film, referencing the history of armed struggle in Colombia and its problematic usage by local artists. In 2013 I was invited to contribute to the biennial 43 Salón Nacional de Artistas, and in 2014 I produced The Fabrication of Facts, a solo show that, drawing from pedagogical materials from the Museum of Natural History in Paris, analyze the scientific representation of natural processes. For my solo exhibition "Unfollow Me, Morning Star" at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Medellin (2017) I produced a series of 5 motorized paintings based on video studios of road travel in the vicinity of Los Angeles, California and then I produced “still” copies of these paintings, installed in reverse order, allowing spectators to experience the divergence between both presentations of the “same” image and the unexpected motionless elegance of images composed to be perceived in motion. The exhibition also included a series of paintings in which I shift my interest in the visual representation of biological phenomena, from a historical to a speculative dimension, seeking to envision potential microscopical or cosmic phenomena through paintings and sculptures that undermine the semantics of scientific and visionary abstraction. Between 2005 and 2009 I was a member of El Bodegón, an independent artist-run space that produced more than a hundred exhibitions of Colombian and international artists along with other events. I am the bass player for the bands Las Ruinas Telepáticas, Montón Volador (since 2012) and Aurora Rampante (since 2015). I hold a BFA from the Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, California.
Although my work engages in a sustained dialogue with painting, it is a dialogue that fosters tension in order to reconsider the varieties of what is called “painting” and to understand the reaches and limitations of the social definition of the “painter”. Often, my projects respond to specific circumstances that allow me to destabilize my own position as an artist by exploring heterogeneous representational strategies—those of advertising and graphic design, of the early Russian avant-gardes and popularized paleontological knowledge, of Godard's early films and vernacular science fiction—and by researching the possibilities of unfamiliar materials. My work is conceived as a medium for learning, and the characteristics of each project develop in light of an autodidactic urge to deal with topics such as the iconography of extinction, the cognitive potentialities of diagrams, the visual representation of social struggles or the connection between acts of vision and acts of motion. In 2012, during a residency in Mexico City, I produced "A Failed Calling", after working for three months in a traditional rotulero workshop, confronting the artisanal production of commercial imagery in public spaces with the aspirations of Siqueiros’s and Rivera’s Great Mexican Muralism. On another occasion, as a commentary on the abuses of an art dealer, I videotaped myself destroying one of my paintings with a hammer, which I then put back together out of the resulting small fragments. During another residency in Nürnberg I produced "Sentimental Journey", an exploration of tourism, and an attempt to use the patient work of embroidery as a way of weaving affects and the possibility of a counter-nationalist heraldry. In 2012, I won the prize Nuevas Propuestas, hosted by the Alliance Française, where I exhibited "Remake", an installation featuring sculptures, a mural in chalk and a video-homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise (1967), where I enact iconic sequences from the film, referencing the history of armed struggle in Colombia and its problematic usage by local artists. In 2013 I was invited to contribute to the biennial 43 Salón Nacional de Artistas, and in 2014 I produced The Fabrication of Facts, a solo show that, drawing from pedagogical materials from the Museum of Natural History in Paris, analyze the scientific representation of natural processes. For my solo exhibition "Unfollow Me, Morning Star" at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Medellin (2017) I produced a series of 5 motorized paintings based on video studios of road travel in the vicinity of Los Angeles, California and then I produced “still” copies of these paintings, installed in reverse order, allowing spectators to experience the divergence between both presentations of the “same” image and the unexpected motionless elegance of images composed to be perceived in motion. The exhibition also included a series of paintings in which I shift my interest in the visual representation of biological phenomena, from a historical to a speculative dimension, seeking to envision potential microscopical or cosmic phenomena through paintings and sculptures that undermine the semantics of scientific and visionary abstraction. Between 2005 and 2009 I was a member of El Bodegón, an independent artist-run space that produced more than a hundred exhibitions of Colombian and international artists along with other events. I am the bass player for the bands Las Ruinas Telepáticas, Montón Volador (since 2012) and Aurora Rampante (since 2015). I hold a BFA from the Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, California.
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