Iván Cardona
I am interested in creating works with critical and political significance. I work with different media and materials, though in my latest projects I have focused on installations and collages using local newspapers as raw material. I use fragments of these publications from a chromatic and volumetric perspective. I subscribe to several newspapers which I read every day. The publications, their texts and contents are important inputs for my projects. I also cut out and file images, texts, and opinion columns. I am captivated by the front pages of newspapers. My daily routine is to search them out and to compare their headlines, layout, size, colors and advertising. Every day I extract the information I am interested in, including the predominant colors, which are later reflected in my works.
I take the language used in the fields of law, journalism and politics, and translate it into a visual language that
speaks of their underlying structures and dynamics. My creative process can be sparked by a headline, a politician’s sound bite, an image of a public personality, or an advertising spot. I am trained and have experience as a lawyer. I question what is underlying, consciously and unconsciously, in the justice, communications, power and economic systems, and I seek to reveal or highlight these mechanisms in my artistic work.
As a lawyer, I am used to arranging and accumulating documents in folders, as in the case of the dockets used for legal proceedings or documents held in files for some reason. This is also a form of crafting (arguments, ideas, texts). This craft also refers to what it implies to write and debate, or the manner in which legal proceedings physically develop and grow. As an artist, accumulating and filing are also the raw materials for my work. I enjoy exploring the possibilities of combining and recombining information in order to obtain new contents that appeal to the visual language, in order to conceptually highlight or explore certain topics.
FOR ME ART IS NOT A FORM OF PROTEST OR A MEANS TO TRY TO CHANGE THE WORLD, BUT IT DOES HAVE TO DO WITH IDEOLOGY AND IT CAN BE A MEANS FOR IDEOLOGICAL ACTION. THROUGH OPPOSITES; BY FINDING LINKS BETWEEN ELEMENTS THAT ARE APPARENTLY INCOMPATIBLE; BY MAKING VISIBLE, HIGHLIGHTING, POINTING OUT, SWITCHING, DISLOCATING AND CHANGING MEANINGS THROUGH IMAGES; AND FINDING NEW MEANINGS WITH OTHER USES, ART ENABLES ME TO BEAR WITNESS OF MY TIMES AND MY CONDITION.
EXHIBITIONS:
- Proyecto Retórica [y] Cromática [Primera Plana] (Rhetoric and Chromatic Project [Front Page]) – Feria del Millón – Centro Creativo Textura – 2015 – More
- “La Piedra en el Zapato” (The Stone in the Shoe) – Universidad de Los Andes – Graduation Thesis Exhibition – 2015 – More
Graduation Thesis named “Retórica [y] Cromática” (Rhetoric and Chromatic) declared meritorious and selected by the tenured faculty of the Art Department of the University to participate in the TESIS project of the Contemporary Art Museum of Bogotá of the best Art graduation theses in the country in the latest year.
- “Wet Paint” – Galería Salón Comunal – 2014 – More
- Salón Séneca – Universidad de los Andes – 2014 – More
SEE CURRICULUM VITAE