Galeria Vermelho presents Somos, Iván Argote’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, on view from September 5 to October 7, 2017. In parallel, the Sala Antonio screening room shows Reddishblue Memories (2017), also by Argote.
Born in 1983 in Bogotá, Colombia, Iván Argote has been based in Paris since 2006. His work explores human behavior, the ways people relate to their environment, and our inexplicable bonds with history, tradition, art, politics, and power. Argote creates public installations, videos, photographs, and sculptures. Public monuments and statuary are recurring themes in his practice, as he questions the mechanisms of power and authority. He treats the city as a place of transformation and possibilities.
In his film As far as we could get, Argote digs an imaginary tunnel between Indonesia and Colombia, specifically between the cities of Palembang and Neiva. These two municipalities are located at diametrically opposite points of the Earth. Argote engaged with inhabitants of similar social conditions in both countries, focusing on young people born on the very day the Berlin Wall fell. By connecting them, the artist dissolves geopolitical and emotional boundaries to portray those who came of age in the wake of the collapse of a physical barrier that had divided one people, separated by beliefs, traditions, principles, and myths. Feelings, memory, and history circulate and converge at the farthest ends of the planet.
Another device in the film is a series of billboards installed by Argote in both cities, announcing the film La Venganza del Amor [The Revenge of Love]. The film-within-the-film might seem ominous, but it is in fact benevolent, a response to a time in which hostility towards the other, the foreigner, or the different prevails in many places. The “revenge of love” foretells that, in collision with barriers, love will prevail.
This clash between the sensitive and the stone-like sets the tone for the other works in the exhibition, which also interact with the film. Structured in seven chapters, the film causes the exhibition space to brighten and darken at intervals, setting the rhythm of the visitor’s experience: while a chapter is projected, the room falls into darkness, and vice versa. Sharing the space with As far as we could get is a group of sculptures made of carbon steel plates, laser-cut and perforated, titled Sombras [Shadows]. Each sculpture is composed of overlapping steel sheets carrying different texts, which together form layered hymns. Phrases that could appear on protest banners are interwoven with declarations of intimacy, once again dissolving the boundary between sensibility and rationality—as in No Site is Innocent (2017), which fuses its title phrase with a term of affection: “My Dear.”
On the ground floor, Argote reworks the idea of the monument, traditionally conceived as a construction intended to perpetuate the memory of a person or event important to a community. In Arco [Arch], the artist disassembles an imposing concrete circle into six parts leaning against the walls and floor, as if deprived of the bases needed to define them as self-supporting monuments. Argote’s monuments are ruptured and celebrate the interruption of a circular history that might otherwise repeat itself tragically. In Sírvete de mi, Sírveme de ti [Help yourself to me, I’ll help myself to you] (2017), he proposes another “form” of monument: a large chain made of interlaced human hands.
The idea of the monument has been consistently questioned in Argote’s practice, as in Strengthlessness (2016). The title of the sculpture refers to a state of powerlessness or impotence, and the work depicts a drooping obelisk, softened and slumped against the floor.
More recently, Argote presented Sweet Potato (2017) in the exhibition Future Generation Art Prize @ Venice. This large-scale sculpture elevates the sweet potato to the status of icon. The tuber supposedly crossed the seas as early as 700 A.D., traveling from the mouth of the Orinoco River in Venezuela to Polynesia, where it has been cultivated and consumed ever since—an instance of successful cultural transmission. Presented as a golden meteorite, Argote’s sweet potato questions who or what monuments serve in contemporary times.
