GCB Kunstlexikon
DAMIÁN ORTEGA
VIDEO / FILM
Merging Reality with Possibility | Artist Damián Ortega | Nasher Sculptor Center | Presented February 24, 2018 at Nasher Sculpture Center Through the use of wit and humor, Damián Ortega deconstructs both familiar objects and processes, altering their functions and transforming them into novel experiences and scenarios. Ortega’s works play with a scale that ranges from the molecular to the cosmic, applying the concepts of physics to human interactions, in which chaos, accidents, and instability produce a system of relations in flux. Inverting and dissecting, reconfiguring and zooming in, he explores the tension that underlies every object and the infinite world inside them. The result of his inquiries reveals the interdependence of diverse components, be it within a complex engineered machine or a social system. Although his projects—which he envisions through drawing—take form in sculpture, installation, performance, film and photography, for Ortega the work of art is always an action, an event. His experiments inhabit a space where possibility and the quotidian converge to activate a new way of looking, one that transcends the original context of simple objects and everyday relations. Damián Ortega Biography Damián Ortega began his career as a political cartoonist. He joined the Taller de los viernes from 1987 to 1992. In 2005 he was awarded with the Hugo Boss Prize in New York, United States and in 2007 he was nominated to the Preis Der Nationalgalerie fur junge kunst of the Hamburguer Banhof, Germany. Damián Ortega currently lives and works in Mexico City | YouTube
Damián Ortega | Alias | Art21 „Extended Play“ | Episode #257: From his Mexico City studio, Damián Ortega recounts his early career as a cartoonist and his struggles to find Spanish-language resources on contemporary art as a young artist. Given the 1979 interview „Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp“ by his colleague and mentor, Gabriel Orozco, Ortega was challenged to grasp the content in English. Ortega asked an artist friend to translate the book into Spanish and the process morphed the text’s original content into something else profound. „It’s beautiful because at the end it’s Duchamp completely out of context,“ says Ortega. „He becomes like a Mexican.“ From this experience, Ortega founded Alias, an independent book publisher that translates contemporary art texts into Spanish, distributing and publishing books otherwise unavailable in Spanish-speaking countries. „My generation didn’t have any of this information about contemporary art. It was a time when we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t have cell phones. We used to share information through photocopies, through books.“ Ortega explains the process of translating, recontextualizing, and appropriating as an opportunity to reexamine knowledge and ways of thinking from different perspectives. „In the end, every country gives some special way of thinking.“ Damián Ortega uses objects from his everyday life—Volkswagen Beetle cars, Day of the Dead posters, locally-sourced corn tortillas—to make spectacular sculptures which suggest stories of both mythic import and cosmological scale. In many of the artist’s sculptures, vernacular objects are presented in precise arrangements—often suspended from the ceiling or as part of mechanized systems—that become witty representations of diagrams, solar systems, words, buildings, and faces. These shifts in perception are not just visual but also cultural, as the artist draws out the social history of the objects featured in his sculptures, films, and performances | YouTube
WIKIPEDIA
DAMIÁN ORTEGA
VIDEO / FILM
Merging Reality with Possibility | Artist Damián Ortega | Nasher Sculptor Center | Presented February 24, 2018 at Nasher Sculpture Center Through the use of wit and humor, Damián Ortega deconstructs both familiar objects and processes, altering their functions and transforming them into novel experiences and scenarios. Ortega’s works play with a scale that ranges from the molecular to the cosmic, applying the concepts of physics to human interactions, in which chaos, accidents, and instability produce a system of relations in flux. Inverting and dissecting, reconfiguring and zooming in, he explores the tension that underlies every object and the infinite world inside them. The result of his inquiries reveals the interdependence of diverse components, be it within a complex engineered machine or a social system. Although his projects—which he envisions through drawing—take form in sculpture, installation, performance, film and photography, for Ortega the work of art is always an action, an event. His experiments inhabit a space where possibility and the quotidian converge to activate a new way of looking, one that transcends the original context of simple objects and everyday relations. Damián Ortega Biography Damián Ortega began his career as a political cartoonist. He joined the Taller de los viernes from 1987 to 1992. In 2005 he was awarded with the Hugo Boss Prize in New York, United States and in 2007 he was nominated to the Preis Der Nationalgalerie fur junge kunst of the Hamburguer Banhof, Germany. Damián Ortega currently lives and works in Mexico City | YouTube
Damián Ortega | Alias | Art21 „Extended Play“ | Episode #257: From his Mexico City studio, Damián Ortega recounts his early career as a cartoonist and his struggles to find Spanish-language resources on contemporary art as a young artist. Given the 1979 interview „Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp“ by his colleague and mentor, Gabriel Orozco, Ortega was challenged to grasp the content in English. Ortega asked an artist friend to translate the book into Spanish and the process morphed the text’s original content into something else profound. „It’s beautiful because at the end it’s Duchamp completely out of context,“ says Ortega. „He becomes like a Mexican.“ From this experience, Ortega founded Alias, an independent book publisher that translates contemporary art texts into Spanish, distributing and publishing books otherwise unavailable in Spanish-speaking countries. „My generation didn’t have any of this information about contemporary art. It was a time when we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t have cell phones. We used to share information through photocopies, through books.“ Ortega explains the process of translating, recontextualizing, and appropriating as an opportunity to reexamine knowledge and ways of thinking from different perspectives. „In the end, every country gives some special way of thinking.“ Damián Ortega uses objects from his everyday life—Volkswagen Beetle cars, Day of the Dead posters, locally-sourced corn tortillas—to make spectacular sculptures which suggest stories of both mythic import and cosmological scale. In many of the artist’s sculptures, vernacular objects are presented in precise arrangements—often suspended from the ceiling or as part of mechanized systems—that become witty representations of diagrams, solar systems, words, buildings, and faces. These shifts in perception are not just visual but also cultural, as the artist draws out the social history of the objects featured in his sculptures, films, and performances | YouTube
WIKIPEDIA
DAMIÁN ORTEGA
VIDEO / FILM
Merging Reality with Possibility | Artist Damián Ortega | Nasher Sculptor Center | Presented February 24, 2018 at Nasher Sculpture Center Through the use of wit and humor, Damián Ortega deconstructs both familiar objects and processes, altering their functions and transforming them into novel experiences and scenarios. Ortega’s works play with a scale that ranges from the molecular to the cosmic, applying the concepts of physics to human interactions, in which chaos, accidents, and instability produce a system of relations in flux. Inverting and dissecting, reconfiguring and zooming in, he explores the tension that underlies every object and the infinite world inside them. The result of his inquiries reveals the interdependence of diverse components, be it within a complex engineered machine or a social system. Although his projects—which he envisions through drawing—take form in sculpture, installation, performance, film and photography, for Ortega the work of art is always an action, an event. His experiments inhabit a space where possibility and the quotidian converge to activate a new way of looking, one that transcends the original context of simple objects and everyday relations. Damián Ortega Biography Damián Ortega began his career as a political cartoonist. He joined the Taller de los viernes from 1987 to 1992. In 2005 he was awarded with the Hugo Boss Prize in New York, United States and in 2007 he was nominated to the Preis Der Nationalgalerie fur junge kunst of the Hamburguer Banhof, Germany. Damián Ortega currently lives and works in Mexico City | YouTube
Damián Ortega | Alias | Art21 „Extended Play“ | Episode #257: From his Mexico City studio, Damián Ortega recounts his early career as a cartoonist and his struggles to find Spanish-language resources on contemporary art as a young artist. Given the 1979 interview „Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp“ by his colleague and mentor, Gabriel Orozco, Ortega was challenged to grasp the content in English. Ortega asked an artist friend to translate the book into Spanish and the process morphed the text’s original content into something else profound. „It’s beautiful because at the end it’s Duchamp completely out of context,“ says Ortega. „He becomes like a Mexican.“ From this experience, Ortega founded Alias, an independent book publisher that translates contemporary art texts into Spanish, distributing and publishing books otherwise unavailable in Spanish-speaking countries. „My generation didn’t have any of this information about contemporary art. It was a time when we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t have cell phones. We used to share information through photocopies, through books.“ Ortega explains the process of translating, recontextualizing, and appropriating as an opportunity to reexamine knowledge and ways of thinking from different perspectives. „In the end, every country gives some special way of thinking.“ Damián Ortega uses objects from his everyday life—Volkswagen Beetle cars, Day of the Dead posters, locally-sourced corn tortillas—to make spectacular sculptures which suggest stories of both mythic import and cosmological scale. In many of the artist’s sculptures, vernacular objects are presented in precise arrangements—often suspended from the ceiling or as part of mechanized systems—that become witty representations of diagrams, solar systems, words, buildings, and faces. These shifts in perception are not just visual but also cultural, as the artist draws out the social history of the objects featured in his sculptures, films, and performances | YouTube
