“Every single thing he owns makes up one great collection. In him this passion shows its true face, the stern Indian expression that lingers on, but with a dimmed and manic glow, in antiquarians, researchers, bibliomaniacs. Scarcely has he entered life than he is a hunter. He hunts the spirits whose trace he scents in things; between spirits and things, years pass in which his field of vision remains free of people. His life is like a dream: he knows nothing lasting; everything seemingly happens to him by chance. His nomad-years are hours in the forest of dream. To this forest he drags home his booty, to purify it, secure it, cast out its spell. His dresser drawers must become arsenal and zoo, crime museum and crypt.” — One-Way Street, Walter Benjamin.
The exhibition One Year at ORDOVAS presents a complete cycle of one year’s work by Jose Antonio Suarez Londono, consisting of 52 envelops and 132 drawings. We are invited into a world not just an exact interval of time, but a seeming endless profusion of images, signs, and words, on the condition that our optical scanning is able to become reassembled, not just to the realm of the miniature, but that of an even smaller scale, at times on the very threshold of visibility, a scale just beyond zero. Perhaps it best to conceive of an imagined short story by Borges of a painter who has lost contact with human scale to reveal a lost kingdom of visibilities that might otherwise be dissolved into undifferentiated substance. The miracle of such a focus would be the charting of all that lies dormant or lodged beneath the diagrams of recorded reality. A cartography of invisibilities perhaps. Somehow such a literary cipher might come to mind as a means of finding an entry point to such an endeavour, because otherwise we might be simply left adrift in almost infinite relation. Yet this might be the very point, an exact measure of time, combined with a fascination with immeasurability. Thus, the fold at the heart of the symbolic realm is opened and the eye is allowed to wander free from the navigations afforded by mass culture with it, the endless incline towards simulation and spectacle.
「他擁有的每一件物品都構成了一個偉大的收藏。在他身上，這種熱情展示了它的真面目，帶有那種嚴肅的印度人表情，這種表情在古玩商、研究者和藏書癖者身上依然存在，但卻帶有一種昏暗而瘋狂的光芒。他剛一進入生活，就成了一個獵人。他獵捕那些他在事物中嗅到痕跡的靈魂；在靈魂和事物之間，歲月流逝，他的視野中始終沒有人。他的生活如夢一般：他一無所知，一切似乎都偶然發生。他的遊牧歲月是在夢境森林中的時光。在這個森林中，他將戰利品拖回家，淨化它，保護它，驅逐它的魔咒。他的抽屜必須成為軍械庫和動物園，犯罪博物館和地穴。」–《單行道》, 沃爾特·本雅明
在ORDOVAS的展覽《一年》展示了Jose Antonio Suarez Londono一整年的工作週期，包括52個信封和132幅繪畫。我們被邀請進入一個世界，不僅僅是一個精確的時間間隔，而是一個看似無盡的圖像、符號和文字的繁盛世界，條件是我們的視覺掃描能夠重新組合，不僅僅是在微型領域，而是更小的尺度，有時甚至在可見性的邊緣，一個剛好超過零的尺度。或許最好把它想像為博爾赫斯的一篇短篇故事，講述一位失去了對常規人類尺度感知的畫家，而他揭示了一個隱藏的、細微的失落王國，這個世界如果不通過藝術家的仔細觀察和描繪，可能會被看作一種沒有細節、沒有結構的平常事物。這種細緻入微的專注帶來的發現就如同奇跡一般，可以揭示和記錄出那些隱藏在常規現實描述框架下的潛在細節和真相，使我們看到那些平時看不到的東西。或許這是一種對不可見之物的製圖。在進入這種複雜的、不可見之物的製圖工作時，需要某種隱秘的、象徵性的文學符號或隱喻來幫助我們找到方向，否則我們會迷失在無限的複雜性中。這種隱喻或符號可以幫助我們理解和導航那些隱藏的、未被發現的領域。然而這可能正是重點，一個精確的時間衡量，結合對不可測量性的迷戀。因此，象徵領域的核心褶皺被打開，眼睛得以擺脫大眾文化的影響，自由地探索和發現，而大眾文化往往傾向於表面的模擬和視覺奇觀，限制了人們的視野和深度探索。
Artwork details, by Jose Antonio Suarez Londono, One Year Installation shot ©ORDOVAS
Within this project is the work of a restorer, discovering images locked away within childhood reverie, scraps of paper to be occasioned yet again, encyclopaedias to become a source of reassembly, scientific diagrams placed in surprising conjunctions, the cross overs of observations related to objects that are linked to abstractions of the elsewhere, obsessions and compulsions, all these things criss-crossing in seemingly endless combinations which cohere into underlying method and daily practices that includes drawing, reading, and etching.
In dwelling in this obscure realm, various transportations arise, like a series of scattered references. Medieval manuscripts, the notebooks of Leonardo, the drawings of Paul Klee, Renaissance illustration and engraving all come to mind, encyclopaedias, but there is a tonal quality that is both remote and singular, derived through a synthesis of drawing skills, particularly those of Degas. It is as if various personas inhabit his world and that they are given licence, not only to influence technically, but to wander freely through the various imaginary conjunctions. This invites the viewer, not only to be with this apparatus of vision, but to navigate the multiplicity of worlds assembled which function like scripts for displaced allegories. Each week is given over to a theme, such as Dogs, Songs, The Dotted Line, Dark Skies, Airships and Dresses. At times they resemble picture puzzles, in other instances labyrinths or schemas, but always the spectator is drawn in close no matter how strange the resulting field of resonance. Here there are combinations of things such as the common and the esoteric, the banal and the marvellous, near and far, all in a strife for relation.
在這個項目中，修復者/藝術家的工作包括發現童年夢境中隱藏的圖像、重新利用的紙片、將百科全書作為重新組合的來源、出人意料的科學圖表組合、與其他地方抽象物相關的觀察交叉，痴迷與強迫，所有這些在看似無盡的組合中交叉，最終凝聚成一種底層方法和日常實踐，當中包括繪畫、閱讀和蝕刻。
在探索這個隱晦領域時，會湧現出各種轉換或靈感，這些如同一系列分散的參考資料。例如中世紀的手稿、達芬奇的筆記本、保羅·克利的素描、文藝復興時期的插圖和版畫以及百科全書等都會浮現在腦海中。然而，這些轉換中有一種既顯得遙遠又獨特的風格，這種風格通過多種繪畫技巧的綜合而來，特別是德加的繪畫技巧。彷彿各種人格居住在藝術家的世界中，並且這些人格被賦予了權利，不僅可以在技術上產生影響，還可以在各種想象的結合中自由漫遊。這種安排不僅吸引觀眾與這種視覺裝置互動，還引導他們探索這些作品所構建的多重世界，這些世界如同被移位的寓言腳本。每周都有一個特定的探索主題，比如狗、歌曲、虛線、黑暗的天空、飛艇和裙子等。這些展示有時像拼圖一樣，需要觀眾去解謎；有時像迷宮或結構圖一樣複雜。無論這些展示產生的共鳴多麼奇特，觀眾總是被吸引。在這些展示中，有各種對立元素的組合，比如平凡與神秘、平淡與奇妙、近與遠，所有這些元素都在爭取找到彼此之間的關係。
As an art form it is difficult to locate in time and place as it draws in so many references and formal devices constantly in search of the elsewhere of things touched upon. Certainly, it is off centre to any prevailing mainstream, but it commands its own tribunal regardless of any other fashionable disposition. A symbol of this is the fact of not owning a computer which almost functions as a disavowal of contemporary techno image culture. Rather than function on the edge of critique, these works open out a visual and textual poetics, which generate densities of reading and passage, from which surprise might leap out. As an exhibition, it sets up a counter intuitive narrative about the Contemporary context, in that it resists large scale studio practice. Given over to an imaginary figure working in solitude this is in stark contrast to a multi-media apparatus dependent on cutting edge technology and serialised production. This is not just a case of tradition versus experimental practice, but a question of reorientating the trajectory of the relationship to a mode of production. The direction of the practice finds its orientation in the expansion of the syntax of the encounter with art, not in the fetishization of it. A restoration of faith of the manual skill and vision, combined with the expansion of the imaginary world to sustain such an endeavour, is what is gestured within such a project. Made witness to an extreme art of delicacy, and with this, an inward flight towards immeasurability, which was the dream of the early Romantics, this is an art that combines worlds within yet more worlds, whilst retaining a fidelity to the observed. Novalis published a series of fragments under the title of ‘Pollen’ which indicated his orientation of perception to the textual voyages into the realm of the invisible. In our late cultural passage, these miniscule works can be seen as an equivalent of this condition inaugurated by the Jena Romantics. Medellin in Colombia is an unlikely setting for such a project, but then it might be such an unlikely setting for late modern pollen to discover location. The ordinary discover relation to the extraordinary, the marvellous and the uncanny likewise cohabit mutual space of encounter and instances are revealed within extended durations.
作為一種藝術形式，它很難在時間和地點上定位，因為它引用了大量參考資料和形式手法，不斷在探索涉及事物的其他層面。這種藝術形式偏離了任何主流，但它擁有自己獨立的評價標準，不受其他流行趨勢的影響。這一點的象徵就是不擁有電腦，這幾乎相當於對當代科技圖像文化的否定。這些作品不僅僅是停留在批評的邊緣，而是通過複雜的視覺和文本表達，展開了一種視覺結合文本的詩學，產生了密集的閱讀和體驗通道，從中可能會跳出意想不到的驚喜。作為一個展覽，它抵制了大規模藝術工作室的實踐，從而建立了一種與傳統和主流藝術實踐相反的敘述方式，挑戰了人們對當代藝術的常規理解。設想一個在孤獨中工作的藝術家，這種藝術實踐方式與依賴尖端技術和系列化生產的多媒體裝置形成了鮮明對比。這不僅僅是傳統與實驗性實踐之間的對比，同時更深層次地探討了我們如何重新定義和理解藝術創作與生產方式之間的關係。這種藝術實踐的方向在於擴展與藝術相遇的語法，探索和拓展人們與藝術互動和體驗的方式，而不是對藝術的迷戀。這個項目旨在恢復對手工技能和視覺價值的信念，同時擴展想象世界以支持這種藝術創作。這種實踐見證了一種極致的精細藝術，以及由此產生的不可測量的內在飛行，追求內在的無限性，這曾是早期浪漫主義者的夢想。最終，這是一種結合了多個世界的藝術，並且忠實於細緻的觀察和表現。諾瓦利斯通過《花粉》探索不可見的世界，這種感知方式在現代文化中得到了延續，類似於18世紀末德國耶拿浪漫派的追求。位於哥倫比亞的麥德林看似是不太可能的項目地點，但恰恰在這種不太可能的地方，現代「花粉」可能找到了自己的位置。在這個過程中，普通與非凡、奇妙與詭異在共同的空間中相遇並共存，隨著時間的推移，這些關係和實例逐漸顯現。
Jose Antonio Suarez Londono : One Year
52 envelopes, 132 drawings
Ordovas
30 May – 26 July 2024
Text by Jonathan Miles
