CUARTO DE INVITADOS 3:
Escenarios virtuales, “matches” y “megustas”
Technology and social networks are changing our relationships and the way we see the world at breakneck speed, so much so that it is very difficult to reflect on it and be truly aware of the new paradigm we live in. We communicate through electronic devices that supplant people and we allow applications and algorithms to skew our decisions and desires, entering a dangerous game that distorts our identities, homogenises them, and makes them become confusing, making them fit into parameters that are far removed from the inherent complexity of human beings, their instincts and intuitions. The medium becomes the message, as Marshall McLuhan already announced, and our freedom is diminished in a subtle and alarming way. In the age of the so-called post-humanism, virtuality is part of our reality as never before. While it is true that it has always existed – imagination is one of our most genuine virtual capacities – it is now, together with technology, beyond our control and in the hands of companies and powers whose interests do not really coincide with those of the user, as well as being full of traps that lead us into excessive consumerism and addiction, trafficking with our emotions, using our fears and desires to achieve their goals. For our part, we play the game with complacency and self-confidence, submissively feeding the machine.
In a more creative and less suspicious sense, technology is also at the service of artists and creators to develop new ways of understanding and creating more desirable worlds, seeking from that context those levels of freedom that evaporate. The expressive possibilities become infinite and increasingly lead us into a context that we previously thought only possible in science fiction.
In this new issue of Cuarto de invitados we welcome three artistic proposals that emphasise these questions from different perspectives and in different formats. Once again art becomes a catalyst, providing us with a privileged vantage point from which to observe with perspective, to pause the time for a moment and, from aesthetic pleasure, perhaps glimpse our own conclusions that allow us to open our eyes wider and be more aware of how we live our reality.
-Jay Kaes (Santander, 1985)
Jaime de la Torre (Santander, 1985), known as Jay Kaes is an urban artist living in the UK whose murals can be seen all over the world. His aim through art is to illuminate public or private environments through murals. He seeks to motivate viewers with works loaded with references and meanings of the times we live in and approach current issues to bring something positive to society. He is currently working on a creative process that focuses on the interrelation of art and technology. It is about the change in human beings due to digital technology and its exponential growth. The art especially reflects the human capacity to cope with these changes that affect the way we see ourselves, as well as our vision of the future as a society.
Jay Kaes’ pieces, which we present for the first time in Spain, are divided into two series. On the one hand, Avatar addresses an issue of extremely importance in our time, brought about by the vertiginous rise of social networks, and that is the creation of avatars or alter egos that in many cases supplant our true personalities, generating complex processes of self-generation of identity that dislocate the parameters according to which we communicate and try to understand each other. The series Dopamine, on the other hand, delves into the mechanisms that social networks and applications develop to hook us, it being a scientifically proven fact that receiving notifications on our devices provokes the sending of a chemical messenger to our brain called dopamine, which is pleasurable and turns us addicted to these social platforms. The artist makes this addiction a metaphor for our contemporary world.
-Sara Reyes (Santander, 2000)
Sara Reyes studied Fine Arts at the Universitat Politècnica de València and is currently pursuing her master’s degree at the École De Recherche Graphique in Brussels. She works in different artistic fields such as space: sculpture and installation; and image: photography and experimental video. However, she is constantly learning and searching for languages and ways of expression, showing interest in action art (performance) and graphic-plastic exploration.
His work is based on observation and the desire to understand the environment, whether the natural environment or social dynamics, trying to find minimal works that maintain a certain manual involvement and organic finishes. He follows two main thematic lines, sometimes interrelated. On the one hand, there is a strong admiration for nature, its processes and finishes. On the other hand, there is an interest in absurd humor and the alteration of the general logic necessary to produce it.
For the guest room, she proposes an installation entitled Oh! It’s a Match. By using very handcrafted materials and procedures deselect it from the distance of the physical state that virtuality brings, she works on the casual coincidences that occur in the field of quotidian, and concrete of contact applications, and the strange romantic concept, always approaching it with humor and aspontaneity. In English, the word “match” means both match and coincidence or encounter, a meaning (this one) that social networks have made internationally popular. To do so, she combines apparently unconnected objects that, when interacting in the same space, expand, creating new and curious meanings.
-[dis]Persé Colectivo
Daniel Méndez (Santander, 1996) y Alberto Calderón (Usera, Madrid, 1996)
The [dis]Persé collective was born as a response to a hostile ecosystem: Architecture and its academic discipline. Their projects are marked by the longing for an alternative reality that would give rise to new social contexts, far from fast food and daily architecture. [dis]Persé explores the limits of space to generate new environments for new inhabitants and individualities of a globalized and standardized planet.
In their beginnings, with a hybrid practice between architecture and art, the collective focused on the development of utopias and dystopias, contextualizing the problems of miserable cities in dreamlike, paradoxical, weightless and quantum environments. With an experimental and anti-architectural working method they transformed personal experiences, musical or festivals into 3D environments by modelling and rendering.
They are currently working in a new theoretical and technical field, which responds to these realities. The intersectional work in text, painting, 3D modelling, generation of spaces in augmented reality and interactive mechanisms allows the projects to encompass contextual, anthropological, philosophical, spatial and physical fields where human ontology and its deconstruction are studied in order to subvert reality in favor of a utopian world, the one generated in virtual space.
In this line are the digital prints that they present, born from designs of utopian architectures and the interactive environment sɐʇsnƃǝW ʎ sǝɥɔʇɐW ‘sǝlɐnʇɹᴉʌ soᴉɹɐuǝɔsƎ in which the spectator becomes a creator by interacting with his or her body. This is an interesting reflection on the threshold at wich the fhysical world connects with the virtual digital one.
Galería Juan Silió
C/ Sol 45, bajo. 39003 Santander.
Horario:
De martes a viernes- 17:00 a 21:00h
Sábado- 10:30 – 13:30 h. / 18:00 – 21:00 h.
Exhibition subsidised by the Department of Universities, Equality, Culture and Sports of the Government of Cantabria
