Guest Lecture CONTRA-NATURE curator: John Angel Rodriguez

About

Contra-Natura research exhibition explores practices that are originated from the combination of artistic and scientific experimentation in order to understand how nature is structured and organizes us. Each of the works in the exhibition raises discussion on boundaries based on non-organic life, loss, and radiation and how these play into questions of social development and growth.

This project of creation establishes a series of contrasting relations between the works that the artists display and the curatorial postulate. In this situation, they indicate processes of substitution and simulation of the organic life. Therefore Contra-Natura proposal can be understood as the persistent dichotomy relationship in a world where avatars are now a reality, not only discursive but applied to social and political life.

This condition can be identified within the wide range of natures modified, altered and replaced by synthetic mutations. Contra-Natura reflects on the contradictions and bifurcations of political systems and economic models that deny the notions of sustainability, renewable energy and the equilibrium between different ecosystems. It is true that the human being in most cases performs actions that unbalance the natural, originating a so-called anthropic system, which is constituted by a series of elements that go hand in hand with the technological, urban, industrial and cultural development of society.

Related Terms:
Bio art or Bio-Art is one of the most recent trends developed by contemporary art. It has the particularity of assuming biotechnology as a medium. Genetics, morphological transformations, biomechanical constructions are some of the techniques used by artists of bio-art, raising ethical and social issues in the development of biotechnology.

Grey Cube Projects is an itinerant site of cultural production and interdisciplinary research; therefore we work in partnership with different associates and strategic allies (art galleries, art institutions, and academic institutions among others). 

GREY CUBE PROJECTS is an independent art project that is emerging as a springboard for thinking experimentation, across participation and development of trans disciplinary projects. GCP is also a non-profit initiative which concerns are different to commercial galleries, in terms of weaving and conceptualizing art. Our projects are focused on promoting creative processes differing from those methodological conventions proposed by commercial institutions.

This project is forging a creative network around manifestations of collective execution. Consequently, on-going participation, knowledge sharing, and cross-disciplinary collaborations between artistic, scientific research and practice will be setting the grounds on which new areas of speculation; critical institutional analysis and alternative forms of documentation will arise. For instance, the huge amount of data that technological devices are generating from the oceans, weather and geo-formations is something that needs creative ways of thinking how we are going to visualize and materialize that amount of data.

GREY CUBE PROJECTS' ethos identifies with the practices of the invited artists, therefore, our curatorial proposals differ from white cube displaying formats; we also understand the participation of each artist, such as inserts. All interventions made by the artists are by definition contributions to our project.

International visibility is another of GREY CUBE PROJECTS' interests. For this reason, we have created a space for artistic residencies, allowing us to make cultural exchanges with similar spaces elsewhere.

Photo:
Johanna Arenas
Rhizopus 
2017
Photographer: Luis Eduardo Sampedro

John Angel Rodriguez.
John Angel Rodriguez is a graduate of visual arts from the District University Francisco Jose de Caldas Bogotá. He began his activity as an artist during his studies of fine arts, from 1999 to 2004, participating in university salon halls, art collective exhibitions, open calls and research grant projects. He worked at the National Museum of Colombia, 2002 at the department of education. He also conducted research for the international academic exchange at the faculty of arts ASAB at the department of visual arts. Upon graduation, in 2005 he worked as a lecturer at The District University Francisco Jose de Caldas Bogotá.

To date, he has curated a diverse range of international exhibitions: one in the City of Gdansk, Poland, “Bogota City on the Edge” which is part of the exchange program “Cities on the Edge” Łaźnia, featuring the work of four artists. (Jaime Avila, Andres Londoño, Adriana Salazar and Alberto Lezaca). In London he was the resident for the curatorial fellowship at Guest Projects, London, presenting the exhibition “Vanishing Points” July 2014. In Bogotá, he curated in February 2014 the exhibition Digital Analogy: The pioneers of the New Media, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Bogotá that counted with the participation of twenty international and three national artists.

He curated “Travel to the Unknown” at the Gallery ASAB-Bogota by the polish artist Zuzanna Janin. In 2015 he curated the exhibition “Transparency, Fluidity, and Mediation” displaying artworks by recognized international artists like Jenny Holzer, Universal Everything, and Jake & Dinos Chapman. Currently he is the curator of an independent art platform Grey Cube Projects that aims to create bilateral collaborations and curated shows extracting concepts from the techno-scientific knowledge to deliver art exhibitions. For Grey Cube Projects he has curated more than fifteen shows such as “Non-Organic Life” and “ArtFutura 2015: Collective Intelligence” and “Deconstruction”, “Contra-Natura”, “Multiverse”, “Dark Matter” among others.