TEMPORAL BIOLOGY
SOLO EXHIBITION
2022
Galería NAC
Santiago, Chile
“I imagined composing large wall panels (…) that would be like crushed, condensed, crystallized time. Sheets of time that could be taken in at a single glance.”
— Par les routes, Sylvain Prudhomme
— Par les routes, Sylvain Prudhomme
The placement of light sources and their relation to the architectural space have been recurring elements in Scognamiglio’s work in recent years. These actions link both spatial and artistic interests, from which he has found great aesthetic and discursive potential.
In this exhibition, the artist proposes an ulterior evolution of his creative process. Beginning with personal experiences, but transcending that which is merely biographical, he delves into new formats and materialities that drive reflections on the temporality of life (from the title: bios - Gr. “life” + logia Gr. “to speak”).
Underlying these movements are two forces.
The first is conceived and frames itself within one of the most revelatory personal experiences for the artist: being a father. This transcendental fact has been the central pillar of the conceptual and material processes that he has developed over the past year. This stage has seen the emergence of reflections surrounding the place that is occupied by an individual who is between the death of his ancestors and the birth of his descendents; in other words, the space occupied by the segment of the life of a person in the temporality of the infinite.
The second force is linked to the artist’s continuous search to extend the experimentation to new languages. As a result, he has incorporated fiberglass resin into his work, a material that is present in everyday life — from ships to car bumpers — but that is underexplored in the art world. The author chooses to work with this substance due to its ability to retain light or to allow it to pass through depending on its thickness; to produce, deform, or blur reflections depending on its texture; and to be extremely firm or fragile depending on its composition.
In the convergence of these two forces lies the basis and the watermark of the entire exhibition.
Visitors find themselves amid elements that are replicated like cells, canvases that are translucent like skin, structures of a coral-like composition, and membranes as thin as slices of clouds suspended in time.
The pieces, when contemplated closely, bear the mark of time. Corresponding to variations in thickness are variations of translucence, which directly relate to the amount of time that the artist dedicated to the creation of each piece. Where the material allows more light to be observed, the times of formation of the membranes have been very brief; likewise, where the material is more opaque, there have been multiple laminations with a more extended period of fabrication.
The ultimate goal of this journey is to propose the idea that time, rather than being explicable in a chronological line, can be extended like a cloud with different points, whose relationships are changing and hazy, just like the pieces presented. It is about, then, going beyond the birth-beginning / death-end dualism and connecting with the cloud of subjective, precarious, granular emotions that the passage of time evokes in us. Thus, Scognamiglio invites us to embrace the uncertain vision that our own life experiences, as well as the marks left by the evolution of our past lives or its future sedimentations, intertwine in multiple, inextricable temporalities.
In this exhibition, the artist proposes an ulterior evolution of his creative process. Beginning with personal experiences, but transcending that which is merely biographical, he delves into new formats and materialities that drive reflections on the temporality of life (from the title: bios - Gr. “life” + logia Gr. “to speak”).
Underlying these movements are two forces.
The first is conceived and frames itself within one of the most revelatory personal experiences for the artist: being a father. This transcendental fact has been the central pillar of the conceptual and material processes that he has developed over the past year. This stage has seen the emergence of reflections surrounding the place that is occupied by an individual who is between the death of his ancestors and the birth of his descendents; in other words, the space occupied by the segment of the life of a person in the temporality of the infinite.
The second force is linked to the artist’s continuous search to extend the experimentation to new languages. As a result, he has incorporated fiberglass resin into his work, a material that is present in everyday life — from ships to car bumpers — but that is underexplored in the art world. The author chooses to work with this substance due to its ability to retain light or to allow it to pass through depending on its thickness; to produce, deform, or blur reflections depending on its texture; and to be extremely firm or fragile depending on its composition.
In the convergence of these two forces lies the basis and the watermark of the entire exhibition.
Visitors find themselves amid elements that are replicated like cells, canvases that are translucent like skin, structures of a coral-like composition, and membranes as thin as slices of clouds suspended in time.
The pieces, when contemplated closely, bear the mark of time. Corresponding to variations in thickness are variations of translucence, which directly relate to the amount of time that the artist dedicated to the creation of each piece. Where the material allows more light to be observed, the times of formation of the membranes have been very brief; likewise, where the material is more opaque, there have been multiple laminations with a more extended period of fabrication.
The ultimate goal of this journey is to propose the idea that time, rather than being explicable in a chronological line, can be extended like a cloud with different points, whose relationships are changing and hazy, just like the pieces presented. It is about, then, going beyond the birth-beginning / death-end dualism and connecting with the cloud of subjective, precarious, granular emotions that the passage of time evokes in us. Thus, Scognamiglio invites us to embrace the uncertain vision that our own life experiences, as well as the marks left by the evolution of our past lives or its future sedimentations, intertwine in multiple, inextricable temporalities.