The Provocation Column
By Regina de Con Cossío
Natural Interventions presents a solo show by Mexican artist Joshua Jobb. His pieces of art works around concepts such as chance, play, accident and the unexpected. His artworks use materials designed for a context that through his intervention suddenly become something else.
Photo Courtesy of Sybaris Collection
1/ The Project Casa Nakasone
Casa Nakasone is a collaboration project I did with Escobedo-Soliz architectural firm, in which I activated their new piece, a residential house “Casa Nakasone”, located in Mexico City, with art. For the project, pieces by Gabriela Salazar, Gustavo Artigas and Manuela Garcia were selected. The curatorial line was based on conceptual and material pieces., although a slight “brush” of minimalism was visible, both in the house and in the artworks. Roughly, the house and the pieces shared a tendency of doing the maximum out of the minimum, the use of very rough materials, and combining natural elements, like the air and the light to complete the pieces. We decided to present the exhibition to the public only through the records we did: videos and photography. The idea behind was to create a concept exhibition, that could match the works we were exhibiting.
There is a common belief that only things that can be seen, actually happened, as if there is no place for private memory. “To” witness and “a” witness are the key of history. Herodoto and Thucydides began the tradition many years ago. The importance of the trace, and the document have only grown in time: voices, notes, systematizing, catalogues, archives, photos, all resources that evidence that yes, something took place.
The rise of technology
With the raise of new mediums to produce artworks like digital arts, computer graphics, robotics, among others, comes a change as well in the ways of display and a challenge for the eyes of the observers to find new ways of interaction. Ways of seeing, like John Berger would say.
It was Aristotle who first developed, while theorizing about reality, that all was composed out of matter and form, being the first the possibility and the second, the reality. For many years this principle has been the foundation of the realistic defensors in the history of western philosophy.
Photo Courtesy of Sybaris Collection
I came across Manuela García, a Saturday afternoon, while I was visiting Salon Acme.
“She” wasn’t there. Her pieces where. Was she then?
