Lost Steps (installation) & Paradise: Rewired (video), by Sergio Vega
Behm’s humorous, single channel
video Adorno/Bueller takes the viewer
on a tour of the Art Institute of Chicago. The tour is narrated by changing
tour guides reciting a garbled script
composed of lines from Theodor
Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory and the titular character’s monologue from Ferris
Bueller’s Day Off. Dawn Roe’s Mountainfield Study dual channel video
and photographic pigment prints are
sublime ruminations on incongruities between visual experiences and
photographs. The large-scale, dizzying video landscapes taken in Iceland
and Canada are spliced and edited
with mundane objects and textures
such as aluminum foil and cheesecloth, causing the viewer to momentarily question the truth of visual perception through photo and video.
A sensitivity to geography, the landscape, and how humans interact
beginning with “deliberate travel”.
The walls behind the compositions
are painted in a mural-like fashion in
the pastel color palettes of the urban
Miami landscape. Sergio Vega’s video Paradise: Rewired presents itself as
a nature documentary, complete with
a dry, British narrator, exploring the
Mato Grasso region in Brazil, an area
previously associated with myths of
Eden.
Poignant contemporary conditions of
poverty and environmental degradation provide a stark backdrop of reality to the th-century discussions of
Eden in Mato Grasso. Ernesto Oroza’s multi-faceted installation investigates ingenuity in improvised, modified, and repurposed architecture
and material culture in Havana, Cuba.
Covering a wall floor to ceiling are
repeated tabloid-style publications
in which Oroza describes the social
a nuanced and multidimensional
understanding
of contemporary conditions
with each other and these things in
the world, is a common thread uniting works by Adler Guerrier, Sergio
Vega, and Ernesto Oroza. Guerrier’s map-like folded-then-unfolded
compositions of layered elements
(frequently photo, paint, and graphite) were created through processes
Orlando’s Art Scene
and economic conditions in Havana
leading to a culture of improvisation
and re-use. A stack of the same publication is available as a takeaway. Two
vitrines display small items, modified
trash repurposed for use, and include a soda can lantern and recycled
plastic sandals. A vintage carousel
slide projector continuously cycles
through a slideshow of photographs
Oroza took in Havana titled Architecture of Necessity. Each mechanical click
reveals another architectural adaptation, stunningly composed and documented by Oroza.
María Martínez-Cañas and Michael
Vasquez both modify and distill preexisting documentation of experience.
Martínez-Cañas experiments with
various photographic processes, including modification of found family
photographs in her Vestigios series.
Vasquez’s large, figural paintings –
based on photographs of his own
friends and acquaintances – explore
visual, bodily displays of gang culture.
The artists in this year’s show present
a nuanced and multidimensional understanding of contemporary conditions. The themes of technology and
geography prompt consideration of
humankind’s relationship with environmental forces. How do we shape
our environment? How does our
environment shape us? How do our
perceptions of the world affect our
actions within the world?
The exhibition runs until August 14th at
Orlando Museum of Art,
2416 North Mills Avenue, Orlando.
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