By Artishock

 

Outside, the objects of the world are collected and the materials are treasured. The first are privileged because they contain in their forms an aspiration. The materials, on the other hand, are in their crudest, truer state. Both are destined to meet, and from that collision will appear a hybrid image, unstable, difficult.

 

Looking for that which can shine among the rubble, Adrián Gaitán (Cali, 1983) warns of the finite possibilities of the useless. Treat what is broken or decomposed with the utmost consideration, for it recognizes that there is the substrate that will detonate that image. For him, the destruction, accident and catastrophe that a piece of furniture receives-a desk, a dresser, a bifé-is what gives it value, even virtue. And it is also what secures them a place in their particular collection.

 

Observe, collect, accumulate, classify, re-observe. An idea emerges and the operations on household furniture, building remains, and industrial equipment begin. Metamorphosis is always violent. You need to cut, twist and break so that the earth, branches and butter can penetrate these bodies made of wood and plastic. It is the trauma that initiates the final mutation. And Adrian tries to capture, in a frame, that moment before the last tension, or the complete dissolution of the object.

 

During sleep, there is a sense of strangeness that occurs when the familiar elements are distorted-in a mixture between the familiar and the alien-an experience that allows the unconscious to explore emotions that the mind represses during wakefulness. Sometimes the strange appears in the form of temporal distortions, loved ones in unknown bodies or inert things that come to life.

 

As if it were a scene in a film by David Lynch, one of Adrian’s favorite directors, this exhibition reads on a level that is not entirely conscious, in a state closer to the porosity produced by night. In the darkness, light is the connection with reality and who reveals the voluptuous and rough, almost incorrect qualities of the pieces.

 

In this revelation the natural and the manufactured, the organic and the artificial, the simulated and the true are confronted. There is the appearance against the material.

 

About the artist

 

Adrián Gaitán focuses on deconstructing and revising the symbols associated with high culture, the most representative images of the history of Western art and the aesthetic references imported from Europe to Latin America.

 

The materiality of his works is essential to understand his work, because through it there is a critique about the triviality of the objects that possess the most privileged and the fragility of the concepts and images that we associate with art and culture. Poor, recycled and abject materials such as earth, cardboard, motor oil, used plastic, wood, mattresses, among others, denote the interest of Gaitán for the ability that these have to make any concept, apparently rigid, enter into tension.

 

Adrián Gaitán shares his vision with which, under careful analysis, we make more complex readings that question the way in which we establish the criteria of value on things. The images you use, as well as your reflection, often occur around the home space. His sculptures repeatedly feature furniture such as grand pianos, Persian carpets and chandeliers built with materials collected from the streets and transformed to analyze the notion of "good taste".

 

Gaitán gives an entity to the symbolic potential of elements associated with "low culture" and manages that the image also functions as a devotional object and a critique towards the aspirational, since it questions the values that make up the modern cult of materialism.

 

ADRIAN GAITÁN: OUTSIDE THE DOGS GO CRAZY

La Cometa Gallery, Bogota

From 16 November 2024 to 1 February 2025