Orden natural
(Valenzuela Klenner Gallery, Bogotá March 20th-April 2nd)
To understand and perceive our sensory limitations is often an unusual task. Visually, it would only take to stand in front of the sea to realize the boundaries of the visual perception, a blurry line that divides the sky and the sea represent our inability to perceive beyond our own limitations.
(Orden natural #9
Video produced with a sub-woofer, linguee, carbon dust, glycerin, macro lenses)
Acoustically, these limits are even blurrier because we are placed in the centre of all the sounds that we perceive, so the threshold of our acoustic perception is never as noticeable as the boundaries of sight. Listening to a murmur is a common action, and although it doesn’t necessarily refer to perceptual boundaries, it could relate to our omnidirectional listening abilities, which leads to questioning where the boundaries of sonic perception are? or if there is more than one boundary?
(Orden natural #5
Sound composition using field recordings projected on bone – transmitting transducers)
For both the visual and sonic perception, is the downshift of our physical abilities what allow us to acknowledge and experience our consciousness frontiers, mostly in the elderly years when our audiovisual perception faces its strongest restraints. The exhibition ‘Orden natural’ (Natural order) works around the perimeters and possibilities of our perception taking them beyond the mere technical articulation, placing the visitors in front of many acoustic contingencies, where the apparent limitations become interesting perceptual resources. In the exhibition the avid listening visitor can come close to his own perceptual boundaries, where the notion of aural periphery becomes a mere illusion, the beauty of stumbling across this margin manifests in their own indiscernible nature where our principles of reality are questioned.
(Orden natural #2
Installation produced with a water tank, a water dropping device and lighting manipulation)
‘Orden natural’ is not a shy exhibition, mostly when we talk about sound. The precision in which the pieces are placed, juxtaposing powerful visual and acoustic images, keeping the sonic element alive and vigorous, but also showing that the artists aren’t afraid to allow sound and visual images to coexist in the same space, as powerful resonances. Sound exalted, sound expanded. The causality of listening.
(Orden natural #10
Sculpture produced with a miniature piece, strobber lights and a 60 RPM motor. Photo 1 external view, photo 2 internal view)
Despite the sporadic presence and the lack of continuity in the history of sound art on Colombia, in the last ten years many efforts has been made to make this presence less intermittent. These efforts have centered in cities like Cali, Medellin and Bogota which finally have gathered the whole national territory, and this exhibition is a clear consequence of this continuity, and even if curating an exhibition with diverse sonic pieces presents a series of issues that have been widely discussed over the past years, finally and exhibition sets the tone and resolves this issues in a very simple and convincing way.
(Orden natural #1
Installation produced with wax worms, wax, a glass recipient, a contact microphone and speakers)
(Orden natural #13
Animation based on visualisation of black holes)
* Felipe Rodríguez appears next to ‘Orden natural #4’ -a manipulation of photographies taken of textured, damaged and aged walls-
