The other day while I was sipping whisky with the artist Liam Gillick in a bar we talked about car factories. Some movie with Antonio Banderas in it was playing in the background.
Depression is often caused by the feeling that the weight of the universe is too heavy on us. Or sometimes it's simply caused by boredom. When patterns become too defining they can force us into depression or boredom or both. Opening little doors to small bits of in-comprehensive information, or information that we somehow feel passionate about seems to me like a positive thing. This sounds like some pseudo-new-age advice that my older brother would post on his new spiritual facebook page but in a way I think it's true.
Another sensation I like is when something makes you feel less important compared to bigger picture of the planet, history, the world or whatever. Things that make feel small like moutains and big animals (a big cow for example).
Ryan Rivadeneyra
Ricardo Trigo
Mimosa Echard
These three artist kind of do both things at once. Make you feel lost in a bottomless well of information, stories and mystery and at the same time spit bits of interesting information or beauty that stimulate your brain like a sour and sweet lemon candy.
Ryan Rivadeneyra makes power point presentations that talk about love and stuff he does on vacation. Ricardo Trigo makes mostly videos about the stupidity and complexity of language while talking with scientist and his motorcylcist friends. Mimosa Echard does installations with sticks and painted over pictures of her sisters and french mountain hippy villages.
The images Ryan uses in his presentation are pretty amazing. The kind of simple honesty about things he thinks about is completely abducting like a nice google hole on some juicy train of thoughts.
Mimosa's pieces remind you how really simple things can be incredibly beautiful and intriguing (or sometime scary). Like the simpleness of making mud paties or painting rocks. Or eating a home made yogurt.
Ricardo's work in the other hand transmits the kind of nice feeling you would get as a kid while listening to Donatelo from the ninja turtles explaining how one of his machines worked. You knew it didn't make any sense but that was part of the magic and wonder.
To finish I'll cite a fragment of Ricardo Trigo's Statement. I hope you enjoy it.
“Complexity is a concept which different fields of knowledge deal with to describe and explain reality through nonlinear coordinates. This term opens up a new nominal context formed by interactions, blurs, turbulences, whirlwinds, junctions and strange attractors. This idea is inserted into the script of my works in order to dynamite them from within. I understand complexity in art as a question that addresses the work’s potential multiplicity of meanings. It is from this complexity that a schizophrenic scenario is being created, with its inevitable saturation effect, and in which the difficulty of drawing a kind of art with a relevant role, and a socially validated and strategically functional value – for the cognitive and emotional development of society –, is being doubted.”
Quim Packard
Quim Packard (Reus,Spain,1985) is an artist and curator who lives in-between Barcelona and Grenoble where he coordinates the curatorial programme the École du Magasin. Through drawings, music, teaching and curatorial projects he investigates the political-social aspects of institutional dynamics and certain myths and philosophical traits of western pop culture. Some of his most recent projects include: “Wild Spirit”, an investigation around the construction of the idea of nature by western society through out history and popular references; “The Last Institution”, a para-curatorial project that formed a framework and communication structure of a possible post-apocaliptic cultural institution and “A Place No Cars Go”, an exhibition of works, films and music that investigated certain “back to basics” mythologies.
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