Lattices

18.03.2010 - 24.04.2010

Luz Ángela Lizarazo (Bogotá, Colombia. 1966)

Celosías, estéticas de la paranoia

Palm trees, swans, anthuriums, boats, spider webs with spiders ... all of this coexists with an infinite catalogue of geometric figures to create a whole aesthetic of paranoia, which is held for the expression of the taste of each resident. Each gate has something of the one who chose it, this is who I am, this is how I want others to see me, this is how I differentiate of my neighbor. It is a vivid account that speaks to both pedestrians as potential aggressors, these bars have no other purpose than to protect us from the other, they put a barrier between us and strangers, between us and the dangers and bad intentions of the one that walks on our streets. Stranded citizens have decided to put this protective barrier that separates them from the rest of their fellow citizens.

The use of the bars is so important that in the classified ads on internet you can read:

Grille - Colombia, Department - House for sale - Colombia ...

on sale large corner house with window grille, all new in the urbanization don carmelo ... NORMANDY HOUSE SECOND SECTOR - HOUSE IN NORMANDY Bogota, SECOND SECTOR, ...

0 Nov 2009 ... SE VENDE HERMOSA CASA DE 160 MTS2 Lattice AMPLI ... WITH TERRACE HOUSE FOR SALE (Bogotá, Bogotá, DC) House of three levels, finished the first ...

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"Celocías, estética de la paranoia\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\" is also a small catalogue of Bogota bars, the attempt to make visible a popular imagery in which universal themes converge, like the experience of the private perspective that invites you to see what it means to live behind a fence.

Perhaps we are so used to these elements, like alarms and guards at the corners, or security dogs, to the point that we no longer see them. But those elements on the everyday itemsthe locals make a different city, a city marked by an ornate fear. A fear that is aesthetic.

Luz Ángela Lizarazo

Bogotá, Febrero 2010.

Aldo Iacobelli

Small things

They are, and that’s enough

Unjustly, I think of these drawings as a type of writing, and the ceramic sculptures as drawings, and therefore writing too. Perhaps it’s slightly more just to say they are small scripts to unravel, as if one could follow the line back to the blank page or the soft clay. (The image of the stars; lines of sight to the clouds, in the dark. The line becomes (a) universe, a universe for every imaginable line’s matter and intensity, every inhale, exhale: intuitions, shivers. Connecting lines (drawing), inventing forms, networks, peripheries – dashes, letters, numbers, arcs, arrows.) They are concentrated studies, intense ‘documents’; each a singular scene, yet each holding the same terrible question: how do you notate a crisis, a disaster, a plea, a sadness, a melancholy (or hilarity). The drawings are notated slowly, laboriously, as they should be, and as they continue an integral force of labour that Aldo Iacobelli has been developing throughout his practice, and which is evident in recent years in large thickly patterned paintings. There have always been drawings though; they amaze me, they take my breath away, they hurt my heart.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"At times when I am drawing I imagine I am way up in the sky looking down at us and we look like insects going through our daily routines, like ants unaware of our fragility. But unlike ants who take from the earth only for their needs and give back plenty in return, we don’t.” (Aldo Iacobelli)

If we call them notations – a process of marking, of making a record, by a special system of signs or symbols – then maybe they are (like a mystery) for something else, another medium (film, dance, music, fiction), like textures on the floor (scenarios to heal memory), or embedded worry. Poetic worry, that is their strange value, they worry for us – talismans for our pain; images of our common pain for our common healing; an opportunity to stare at ‘worry’ (like at flames or flowers); an opportunity to see what comes about through the act of drawing/writing, at the time, as one goes. (On the paper a world is made/operated on, a world of infinitely moving (extracted, adjusted, filed, combined) parts, its complexity packed into shades of a doubtful tentative procession of learned and improvised movement(s) – the unexpected happening of a pencil held on the page and slowly patiently pulled across – trust, pleasure, surprise; the seeing and watching of one’s body as a subject in the world, and that subject bringing into appearance something by deliberate sitting, deliberate attention.) And, accepting what arrives; tiny networks burrowing into the paper, or finding their way from somewhere far behind the paper, and being isolated (as the ceramics are too (they, these ‘things/creatures’ could have been seen once in a burrow, somewhere close-by or somewhere in another time, like childhood)) from much bigger situations. Yet it is likely that just as ‘situations’ are completely themselves, of their own time and place and circumstance, these imagistic arrangements are evidence of music, of dance, another ritual, another effort, a way then to pass on the idea of human hope, like calling out in the rain (hello hello), like reaching for a hand, like truly listening.

All together they form a ‘view’, a world, a set of complex stories that appear one by one and appeal to us (plea) by virtue of one flash (we have one chance to see their openness, their surge forth). Here they are, gathered to ‘appeal’ to the one-by-one other forms (and flashes) of the world – us, as we stand before them alone too. This is their own work (the work they are charged with by the artist), to be alone with us (as we un/earth, again, our essential ongoing processes) in as forthright a way as possible – the one with the one, them with us. It makes their work majestic, and ours, as we move toward them, again and again, free, writing ourselves.

Dr Linda Marie Walker

Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture & Design

Art Architecture Design

University of South Australia, Adelaide

(March 2010)