ART CITIES:London-Damián Ortega
Damián Ortega alters and deconstructs objects, building structures that create a dialogue between matter and form, action and thought. His oeuvre is permeated by a very personal and subtle sense of humour, which gives both meaning and originality to the most mundane things, in order to convey even the most challenging issues in a light-hearted manner.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: White Cube Gallery Archive
In his solo exhibition “Play time” Damián Ortega presents large-scale installation, sculpture and two-dimensional works focusing on the themes of chance, game play and systems of knowledge such as cosmology and genealogy. The exhibition brings together a new series of works which explore context as content and how, in an age of digitised information, it is still the accidents and imperfections that can hold meaning. Ortega returns to key materials such as concrete and clay to investigate the limits, possibilities and potential for disruption within them. Time as a material structure is a prevalent theme within the exhibition and is explored in a trio of large-scale works displaying the interior of a wrist watch. The intricate sculptures, titled “Construction time”, “History of time” and “Deconstructing time” (all 2017), are typical of the artist’s process of transformation. A sculpture inspired by Eadweard Muybridge questions the notion of dissected time, with 24 life-size images of a naked woman staggered like a set of dominoes waiting to fall within the gallery. Each image represents one of the 24 frames per second of a standard 35mm film, presenting a continuum of past, present and future within a single space. Ortega uses clay from the Mexican city of Zacatecas to create spherical forms in various material states. In “Percentual Constellation” (2017), a number of white glazed balls extend like a solar system, while in “Variable Schema” (2017) the balls are cut in half and re-joined. The exhibition also displays a series of spherical and elliptical forms created from layers of paper taken from a 1975 version of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Encyclopedic Geodes” (2017) are displayed on plinths and appear to be geological specimens which have been cut in half to reveal their compressed, interior construction. Other works include an installation titled “Reproductive Process” (2017 which explores the genetic tragedy of haemophillia within the British Royal Family.
Info: White Cube Bermondsey, 144-152 Bermondsey Street, London, Duration: 27/9-12/11/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, Sun 12:00-18:00, http://whitecube.com
