11/04/2024 - 15/06/2024

Talk with Pedro Gómez-Egaña and Natalie Bell, Curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge: April 11, 4:30 pm
Zilberman Miami. 25 NE 39th St. 33137

Zilberman Miami is pleased to announce Third Crescent, the first solo show of Colombian artist Pedro Gómez-Egaña in the United States.

Third Crescent showcases installations that take inspiration on the life of Cuban poet and writer Dulce María Loynaz (La Habana 1902-1997). Loynaz's life story, particularly her voluntary seclusion following the Cuban Revolution of 1959 despite her literary acclaim, serves as a narrative influence for Pedro Gómez-Egaña.

Awarded prestigious honors such as the National Literature Prize in 1987 and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize in 1992, Loynaz's life in her El Vedado mansion from 1947 to 1997 epitomized profound solitude. She spent nearly forty years in relative isolation, deliberately withdrawing from literary engagements and creation. This period of “interior exile”, as it has been called, underscores Gómez-Egaña’s exploration of the domestic space as a site where political and social complications emerge with particular charge.

Gómez-Egaña's artistic inquiry delves into the concept of the interface as a liminal space where dichotomies blur. Traditionally, an interface is a point where two realities meet, a term that speaks to the contours of interaction, a porous membrane between insides and outsides, integrity and vulnerability, technology and faith. It’s a space for decoding and engagement. The notion of interface also presents a certain kind of eroticism, as an occasion for integrities to dissolve.

Within this conceptual framework, the interface transcends its physical boundaries; it transforms into a metaphorical threshold inviting viewers to contemplate the intersections of identity, intimacy, and societal constructs

“Es triste confesarlo,
pero me siento ya su prisionera,
extranjera en mi propio reino,
desposeída de los bienes que siempre fueron míos.
No hay para mí camino que no tropiece con sus muros;
no hay cielo que sus muros no recorten.
Haciendo de él botín de guerra,
las nuevas estructuras se han repartido mi paisaje:
del sol apenas me dejaron
una ración minúscula,
y desde que llegara la primera
puso en fuga la orquesta de los pájaros.”

“…It’s sad to confess it,
but I already feel like its prisoner,
a stranger in my own kingdom,
dispossessed of the goods that were always mine.
There is no road for me that does not run into its walls; 
there is no sky that its walls do not cut through.
Making it the spoils of war,
the new structures have rationed my landscape: 
of the sun they have left me 
only a minuscule portion,
and since the first arrival
an orchestra of birds set on flight.”

—Fragment from Dulce Maria Loynaz, “ Los últimos días de una casa” (The Last Days of a House), English version translated by the artist.
 

Pedro Gómez-Egaña, born in Colombia and based in Oslo, Norway, is a multidisciplinary artist known for his immersive installations exploring the intersections of art, technology, and perception. He studied music composition, performance, and visual arts at Goldsmiths College, the Bergen National Academy of the Arts. He finished his PhD in visual arts at the University of Bergen in 2012. He is currently a professor of sculpture and installation at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

The artist’s work addresses a concern with economies of attention by producing purpose-built, often large-scale immersive spaces that seek to modulate audiences’ perception. The relation between site and viewer is central to his work, making storytelling, music, the appropriation of historical and literary texts, and site-specificity some of his frequent strategies.

Gómez-Egaña stages objects and images in motion as an investigation of, and reaction to, a world dominated by saturation and speed. His works problematize cultural definitions of time and temporality and explore the current and historical effects of technology. His recent work investigates the domestic space, the intersection of the industrial and the mystical, as well as the sexual and spiritual undertones of digital culture.

Having led a variety of research and artistic projects with partners such as Goldsmiths College in London, Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, The Laban Centre in London, Bergen National Academy of Arts, and Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Gómez-Egaña’s recent work has been staged at various platforms such as Kunsthalle Baden Baden, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, the Munch Museum, La Biennale de Lyon, Oslo National Opera House, Yarat Contemporary Art Space in Baku, the 15th Istanbul Biennial, Contour Biennial in Mechelen, Performa 13 in New York, Kochi-Muziris Biennial, Marrakech Biennial, Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, Hordaland Kunstsenter in Bergen, Brussels Biennial, Southbank Centre in London, Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, L’appartement 22 in Rabat, Galeria Vermelho in São Paulo, Kunsthall Mulhouse in France, and Colomboscope in Sri Lanka, among others.

For more information, please contact Gladys Garrote at gladys@zilbermangallery.com or Nazli Yayla at nazli@zilbermangallery.com

Image: Third Crescent (Performance installation, 2023) —Durational performance, intervention in architecture, Sound track x 3, various domestic objects (chandelier, nightstand, table, chairs, plastic plant) © Adrian Bugge