2018 CIRCLES WITHOUT DIAMETER AND FANTASIES WITHOUT HISTORY
Installation views, Circles Without Diameter and Fantasies Without History
Group show organized by Felipe Mujica, Anna Elle Gallery, Stockholm
May 7 – June 10, 2018
Participating artists: Cristóbal Lehyt, Johanna Unzueta, Joe Villablanca, Juan Céspedes (with Milena Gröpper), Cristian Silva and Felipe Mujica
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Circles Without Diameter and Fantasies Without History
Summer evenings in Santiago, Chile, are very nice. The hot day finally cools off and one can relax with friends, outdoors, under a tree, and if you are lucky there is a cool breeze. You get some beers, some improvised snacks, and chat and laugh like it was 1996. This happened to me recently when I was spending some time with family around the Christmas holidays and also preparing a show. That night my friend X and my friend Y disappeared into the house for about 10 minutes to later rejoin the party but with a handmade note, a drawing, which was also a formal proposition for the title of the show that X and Y, together with Z and V and A and B and myself were planning. Now, this planning was never a real plan, yet more a communion of intentions, of energies, of a specific shared history that at the same time is constantly trying to project itself into the future. The title then: Circles Without Diameter and Fantasies Without History. It convinced me on the spot. It was geometrical and personal, somehow pessimistic yet funny and absurd, a poetic statement that made no sense, or better said, just confused me, and I like confusion, I think it’s a very productive method.
X, Y, Z, V, A, B and myself could be characters of a short story by Roberto Bolaño, but no, in this case, we are just artists that share a specific history of the 1990’s in Chile: The post-dictatorship generation, who was there – far away behind the Andes Mountains – at the birth of The Internet, who learned art through photocopying books and magazines, and who shared musical and pop-cultural interests. I would love for us to be characters of a Bolaño short story but our lives are not that interesting or wired. Some of us did travel, explored new contexts, specifically New York City, and that is how A, B and myself live there and X, Y, Z, and V live in Santiago. We inform each other about local stuff. We process locally and from the other part, yet at one point the origin and the destination get confused. We also make long and short-term alliances… It is not perfect. Some of us live in small apartments and others at the edge of a mountain, in ex-hippie communities, some are intrepid nomads and others finally settled nicely and wake up looking at the Empire State Building every morning.
The works of X, Y, Z, V, A, B and myself really do not have much in common but somehow they get along. It’s like they share a dark strategy, or maybe just a directness and simplicity that has not been affected by the production schemes of the mega art world. Each one contains its own poetic intentions and is happy to share space with his/her peers, to be contaminated by them, their meanings affected, slightly different when singing together.
For the exhibition at ANNAELLEGALLERY V, B and myself will be present. I would like us to make Pisco Sour for the opening. Long live our Peruvian friends! Vivan Los Incas! Vivan los pueblos originarios de America!
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