The “Miscelanea”* series is a work that comes from my collections. One of my favorite is the gift wrapping papers collection. I collect cheap gift wrapping papers that call my attention due to their designs. Inside this collection there is a “special” selection: papers with printing errors, with smudge marks of ink, papers that show how color plates didn’t match when printing or when white spaces were left in a mistaken way. These imperfect papers, despite not reaching the “quality standards” that characterize products that come out for sale, manage to survive and sneak into the “perfect” gift wrapping papers that are on the market. In a culture that prioritizes “beauty” and cutting edge technology, these papers become a rarity that make perceptible the destructivity and transitoriness of today’s world.
The printing mistakes and the aesthetic values that entail “inaccuracy” and “mistake” interest me as they allow me to rethink and speculate about images. Each of the drawings that shape “Miscelanea” reproduce some kind of “mistake”, overlappings and/or juxtapositions. I draw them by hand, a practice that leads to the possibility of making other non-deliberated errors.
The patterns drawn are taken from things and objects that I recurrently spot and receive during my daily walks around my neighborhood, traces that are collected by my imagery as a sort of archive of my routine and relation to Bogotá, my city. House railings, stained glasses, houses facades and decorations, colored bricks, advertising flyers and promotional calendars are some of the traces that make part of this mnemonic collection and that are then turned into drawings. The most insignificant thing becomes valuable because it is a vestige of what my everyday events and experiences leave behind as a residual mark of their occurrence. It is a way to reconstruct a personal archive of my routine and my surroundings, of a time and a space.
The way these drawings are shown resembles the manner in which paper gift wrappings are exhibit at the local shops: hanged in structures made of wooden sticks and chains. In the last month I have been showing this drawings in my neighborhood stationary and miscelanea shops in an attempt to use alternative spaces for the artist work display in response to the lack of exhibition spaces for young emerging artists in Bogotá. I am returning the drawings back to place where they come from.
*A miscelania in Colombia is a small shop that sells a diverse amount of merchandise, that doesn’t limit to a determined line of products. For example, it is possible to find stationary goods, make-up and beauty supplies as well.
Some detail views of the drawings:
view of some details
Ink and marker pens on paper
The printing mistakes and the aesthetic values that entail “inaccuracy” and “mistake” interest me as they allow me to rethink and speculate about images. Each of the drawings that shape “Miscelanea” reproduce some kind of “mistake”, overlappings and/or juxtapositions. I draw them by hand, a practice that leads to the possibility of making other non-deliberated errors.
The patterns drawn are taken from things and objects that I recurrently spot and receive during my daily walks around my neighborhood, traces that are collected by my imagery as a sort of archive of my routine and relation to Bogotá, my city. House railings, stained glasses, houses facades and decorations, colored bricks, advertising flyers and promotional calendars are some of the traces that make part of this mnemonic collection and that are then turned into drawings. The most insignificant thing becomes valuable because it is a vestige of what my everyday events and experiences leave behind as a residual mark of their occurrence. It is a way to reconstruct a personal archive of my routine and my surroundings, of a time and a space.
The way these drawings are shown resembles the manner in which paper gift wrappings are exhibit at the local shops: hanged in structures made of wooden sticks and chains. In the last month I have been showing this drawings in my neighborhood stationary and miscelanea shops in an attempt to use alternative spaces for the artist work display in response to the lack of exhibition spaces for young emerging artists in Bogotá. I am returning the drawings back to place where they come from.
*A miscelania in Colombia is a small shop that sells a diverse amount of merchandise, that doesn’t limit to a determined line of products. For example, it is possible to find stationary goods, make-up and beauty supplies as well.
Some detail views of the drawings:
view of some details
Ink and marker pens on paper
