ART CITIES:Berlin-Pedro Gómez Egaña
Pedro Gómez-Egaña’s video works and installations engage discourses around historical and contemporary technologies in relation to chronopolitics as well as the politics behind the history of inventions. Gómez-Egaña looks into several questions on who claims the honor of a discovery and why and the effect of the exercise of power.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Zilberman Gallery Archive
Time is a vigorous element of Gómez-Egana’s work, he believes that temporality is an important and useful way of exploring the world culturally, socially and politically. In his solo exhibition “The Common Ancestor”, at Zilberman Gallery in Berlin Pedro Gómez-Egaña presentss sculptures, installations and video works that deal with hegemony and colonial re-making of history. For instance, “The Chariot of Greenwich” (2013) is a replica of the ancient Chinese two-wheeled vehicle, the video “Report of the chairman of the Committee on Standard Time, GH Wood, 1884” tells the story of the south pointing chariot, a compass from China 2600 BC to London 20th Century and the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, the so-called center of the world. Pedro Gómez-Egaña makes sculptures, immersive installations, phonographic pieces and films, also making use of different mediums such as performance, text and sound works. Central to his artistic approach is the performative aspect of sculpture, which he presents as dynamic, animated objects or as theatrical environments. His practice is motivated by technology and how it in-luences the ways in which we experience and understand time. His recent projects reconstruct and refer to historical examples of industrialization, presenting them as haunted and vulnerable. Drawing from both contemporary and historical intersections between science and the occult, Gómez-Egaña’s work also explores the relationship between technology and mysticism, and the emotional and spiritual undertones of digital culture.
Info: Zilberman Gallery, Goethestraße 82, Berlin, Duration: 27/4-30/7/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, http://zilbermangallery.com
