Hechizo by Johan Samboni

Galería La Cometa in Bogotá presents the latest exhibition by Cali-based artist Johan Samboni—a show that weaves together painting, installation, and digital archives to construct a visual universe from the margins.

Hechizo: Error as Form

What does Hechizo, Johan Samboni’s newest exhibition, propose? An aesthetic that doesn’t conceal precariousness but instead embraces it as a structural principle. Through visual distortions, DIY construction materials, and surface interventions, Samboni articulates a poetics of interference.

On view at Galería La Cometa Bogotá from April 25 to June 13, 2025, the exhibition brings together over 40 works—including paintings, assemblages, and found objects—that shape a vibrant landscape of disruption. A visual manifesto rendered in low resolution, it offers no promises of clarity or closure, only a deep fidelity to lived experience.

A Low-Resolution World

Johan Samboni (Cali, 1995) works from the peripheries—geographical, social, and symbolic. In his paintings, the image never fully arrives; it appears fractured, like a corrupted file, a download interrupted, an archive weathered by time. Glitch aesthetics—the digital error as visual language—becomes a means of narrating marginality on its own terms.

In Hechizo, Samboni doesn’t romanticize scarcity nor denounce it. He inhabits it. His practice is rooted in rhythms of resistance, gestures of reinvention, and modes of survival. Many works are crafted from reclaimed wood and rudimentary pigments, forming a material language imbued with memory.

Objects as Archive and Spell

In the series Piratas, comprised of 49 paintings, Samboni reproduces bootleg DVD covers—but his selection is far from random. Each image alludes to video art by fellow Cali artists, early video games that pioneered digital metafiction, and films by local directors. There are also references to cinema that explores Afro, Indigenous, and working-class identities.

Together, the works chart a personal map of cultural influences, with music playing a vital role. The “spell” (hechizo) of the title doesn’t point to magic, but to residue—what endures despite decay. Each piece becomes a minor incantation against erasure, a visual microfiction composed of fragments excluded from the official record.

From Street Noise to Museum Space: A Sensory Translation

One of the most powerful aspects of Hechizo is its ability to translate the visual noise of the barrio into an immersive museum experience. This gesture is not merely aesthetic—it is also political. Samboni adopts the language of informal urban construction, where improvisation is not a style but a necessity, and nothing is truly discarded. His work critiques the market-driven systems that dominate Colombia’s contemporary art world.

Techo: A Symbolic Shelter

The centerpiece of the show is Techo—a monumental cap made from recycled zinc sheets, the same material used in self-built homes on the urban periphery. The piece creates a direct bridge to Samboni’s lived experience in Cali neighborhoods like Aguablanca.

The surface is painted with Looney Tunes characters—Bugs Bunny, Tweety, Daffy Duck, Sylvester, Taz, and Wile E. Coyote—icons of a pirated childhood consumed through informal media.

Visitors enter the space beneath the cap and are enveloped in a soundscape of salsa, reggaetón, and rap—genres deeply embedded in neighborhood culture. The “cachucha” becomes an emotional device, a symbolic refuge where a non-violent, identity-rich narrative unfolds.

Languages of Fragmentation

Samboni establishes a dialogue between the digital and the physical that transcends the notion of "new media." Each work resembles a corrupted file, a signal glitch, or incomplete download. By transferring glitch aesthetics into the material realm, he challenges hierarchies between technology and craft, offering a visual language where imperfection becomes meaning.

Social Bodies Without Heroic Narratives

Rather than replicating the violent narratives of video games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas or Age of Empires, Samboni hacks them. His figures are blurred, nameless silhouettes in unnamed neighborhoods—characters out of place.

Instead of closing narratives, he lets them leak. Instead of prescribing meaning, he opens the field to multiple interpretations. Hechizo becomes a platform for ambiguity, a visual space that refuses containment.

A Closing Spell as Collective Gesture

The exhibition will culminate in an expanded activation: a musical listening session within the Techo installation, featuring DJ Colmaje. Far from a conventional closing, it will extend the spell—reactivating the piece as a living archive, returning the work to the streets that inspired it, reframed through collective energy.

At this point, the show reaches its most political dimension. Johan Samboni doesn’t just make images—he creates conditions for new voices—urgent, emerging, and long-silenced—to be heard.

Art from Cali to the World

Hechizo also reflects a trajectory in full ascent. From independent spaces in Cali to major institutions like Museo La Tertulia, Galería Santa Fe, and Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Samboni has built a body of work that is coherent, critical, and uncompromising.

Galería La Cometa’s decision to host this show signals a commitment to decentralizing the Colombian art scene, challenging dominant narratives and expanding the map of contemporary practices.

At a time when art often swings between the spectacular and the decorative, Johan Samboni offers a different route: one made of fragments, glitches, discarded materials, and subversive memory. His work reminds us that imperfections can be more honest than perfection itself, that error carries memory, and that art—when it dares to be dissonant—can restore our capacity to look from the other side of the street.