José R. Llanos
In the 20th Century there have been major innovations in art in terms of its pretentions and dreams of agelessness. This century features a novelty, which is to place more value on the process of creation and originality of the proposal than oN the durability of the work. It consists in a transient creation of ephemeral contemplation, in the impression it leaveS IN THE SPECTATOR, IN THE TEXTS AND PHOTOS DEVELOPED BY ART CRITICS AND IN THE MEMORY AND AWARENESS OF THOSE WHO CONTEMPLATE IT.
Iván Cardona at the gallery La Piedra en el Zapato, of Universidad de Los Andes, with the exhibition of his art graduation project, demonstrates that an artist was born who cultivates the ephemeral, and who given the quality of what was exhibited, is a highly promising creator who, without doubt, will contribute to the enrichment of Colombian contemporary ephemeral and conceptual art.
His work is of such a nature and arranged in such a manner that he has managed to get spectators to intervene in the re-conceptualization, re-signification and re-ordering of some of the exhibited works. This was the case with Methylene Blue, which ended up being renamed the Shroud of the Attorney General, and of Mechanical Press, which was formally changed by the visitors.
We had the opportunity to interview the artist Iván Cardona Restrepo and here we share with the readers of VOZ his reflections.
–WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE PROGRESSIVE AND CRITICAL CONTENT OF YOUR WORK?
– The project is called Retórica [y] Cromática (Rhetoric [and] Chromatics). This exhibition is in the framework of the art school graduation projects. I decided to work on the mass media, starting out with the personal files of my father, who is a person involved in leftist politics and who has been a member of Unión Patriótica and the Communist Party and who also reads all the newspapers he can get his hands on every day: El Tiempo, VOZ, El Espectador. My ideology is also leftist because of the influence I have received and also because I have read his books and followed his militancy.
–AT ANY TIME DID YOU VISUALIZE THAT THE WORK YOU HAD DONE ON THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (PROCURADOR) ORDÓÑEZ IMMEDIATELY RECALLS THE SHROUD OF CHRIST?
–I initially conceived the work as a very traditional portrait, perfectly rectangular of 170 by 130. When I had already begun the knitting work, I began to notice that the cloth had become highly disfigured. We could no longer hang it up the way we had intended, which was as a picture, and instead I had to hang it up as if it were a rag, and that is a type of situation that comes up in the process and ends up being very fortunate. The people began to arrive at the exhibition, and commented on it, and one of the teachers said the minute he saw it: that is the shroud of Ordóñez. My intention was precisely to highlight his conservative ideology. – See Work
–HOW DO YOU PERCEIVE THE FACT THAT ONE OF YOUR WORKS WAS INTERVENED BY THE SPECTATORS TO THE POINT THAT THEY INTRODUCED FORMAL CHANGES TO ITS CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS?
–That was very interesting. In the case of the stamps, it is a white shelf; the red stamps have never been used but they were stained to give the impression that they had been. On the opening day I noticed that one person went crazy with the stamps and stamped them all over the wall. I confess that the next day I came back and painted over the shelf, because that was not the way my work was, but as the exhibition continued I began to notice that the people did the same thing over and over again. So at that point you have to give up and accept that the work had moved on to a different level, which is very interesting – See Work
–IS ONE OF YOUR INFLUENCES DORIS SALCEDO?
–She is located in the spectrum of political art, where I am also located. But she works with other types of materials, which have additional charges. I work with newspapers, which are something people throw away, that is trash after they have been read. The work of Doris Salcedo is very well resolved, and that is what one takes as reference.
Taken from: http://www.semanariovoz.com/2015/07/03/ivan-cardona-arte-efimero/ (spanish)
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