Exhibition "Oscilaciones" by Alejandro Sánchez at the Contemporary Art Museum in Bogotá (MAC)

It is very satisfying to analyse the variations, the evolution of the work of artists after a given period of time, a happy reason to do so has been the celebration of the twenty years of the TESIS project.

As the conceptual axis of this curatorship we have chosen the notion of oscillations, which allows us to reflect on the mutations and movements derived from an initial position. From a certain point and due to different factors, a system can oscillate in some of its parameters, be it tension, intensity, frequency or speed.

The works presented here are a reflection of social, cultural, economic, technological, political and even sanitary tensions due to the consequences of the pandemic. But they are also a testimony to the intensity with which we have lived in the 21st century, a period of time that is just beginning, but which, like every beginning of a new century, brings with it a mixture of uncertainties, hopes, certainties and doubts.

If we analyse the frequencies towards past times, we discover that each second decade has marked the essential axes of what was to come... The Second World War in the 20th century, the independence of the American countries in the 19th century, the rise of China in the 17th century, the end of the Thirty Years' War in the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation in the 15th century, the Inquisition in Spain in the 14th century, and so on and so forth.

The speed with which events occur does not give us time to analyse them in detail; only centuries later do we understand these sequences, these social oscillations that generate sine waves charged with meaning that bring with them vertiginous changes.

Of course, the impacts generated are amplified by resonating in the immeasurable curve of history and bounce back a decade, a lustrum, a century, a millennium later in a diaphanous way, sometimes veiled, sometimes metamorphosed and sometimes almost invisible.

We are facing the testimony of the 21st century, we can sense it, we must decipher it, commit ourselves to change, be protagonists of this unique and unrepeatable moment in order to leave a scratch, an indelible mark that will be remembered by future generations.

Will we be able to accept this challenge, to emerge from the nightmare, to leave behind the recurrent horrible night and move forward with joy into the inexorable curve of history? Let us oscillate on a different, harmonic and sublime frequency.

Gustavo A. Ortiz S.
Director MAC