Juan Antonio Olivares: Transference

About

The artist’s first venture in the main gallery after his inaugural presentation at Bungalow, Transference is a multi-channel holographic video installation revolving around moments of exhilaration, visions, and hallucinations– probing the nature of social connection and intimate exchange, and, as the title suggests, projections of subconscious thoughts onto others.

The exhibition references the book Awakenings, neurologist Oliver Sacks’ 1968 study of institutionalized patients in nearly akinetic states, known then as “sleeping sickness”–who were miraculously revived, albeit for a short time, by the administration of a revolutionary dopamine-producing medication called L-dopa. Sacks’ subjects, who upon waking completely lacked perception of the months or years passed in their unconscious states, experienced bewilderment or despair at the changes around them as well as in themselves—most, nonetheless, displayed a youthful exuberance.

Each channel begins with a journey through an intestinal tunnel: an endoscopy into a realm where forms morph and transform to the sound of a pulsating electronic track. Hyperreal images sublimate inner experiences—currents of pleasure from an unplaceable vastness.

Juan Antonio Olivares works in digital animation, video installation, sound sculpture and drawing to create psychologically charged environments that merge nature and technology. Mining the subconscious impulses that reflect our deeply embedded fears and desires, Olivares abstracts them through digital interfaces. His work explores humanity through constantly evolving forms of image-making, connecting viewers beyond an immediate time and place. He is currently based in New York.