Breathspace

2020 - Installation (Installation)
Dimensions variable, 2:59 minutes

The installation Breathspace by Eduardo Navarro encompasses all the content presented at the artist’s first solo exhibition, of the same name, at Gasworks, UK. In lockdown, Navarro started drawing every day and this practice “relocated the studio to inside his head”. This meditative activity was inspired by quantum physics, according to which information in the universe cannot be created nor ever destroyed. Without any trace of frustration or melancholy, Navarro’s drawings metabolised the original exhibition and enacted its transformative spirit in a more intimate language. The paper works play the role of a journal that carries doodles, sketches and propositions that seem to open a time-space portal housing his ethereal characters. The phrase “Las ideas como autor en mi” (Ideas as an author in me), written in one of the drawings, stands for the being-becoming world envisioned by the artist. A hand-made animation accompanies the drawings, featuring a large breathing head. There is a powerful image that refers to the possibility of syncing your own breathing with cosmic breathing. In the film’s soundtrack, it is possible to hear the artist breathing during a meditation session. As the sound spreads, Navarro’s breathing connects all the works in the exhibition, encouraging the audience to synchronize their breaths with each other as a single, functional lung. Navarro’s original idea was to transform the exhibition space into an actual living, breathing organism, but in light of pandemic limitations, the project morphed into a different, and more multilayered, approach to breathing. Unable to travel and to keep up with the pre-pandemic plans for the exhibition, Navarro created a stand-in, or a surrogate for himself: Self-Doll. Self-Doll is a stuffed humanoid covered in orange fleece and a communication tool that allows the artist to overcome distance and be present in the exhibition where the robot was placed inside the main gallery. In a time of strict distancing regulations, Self-Doll allows the audience to ask the artist live questions and develop a symbiotic interconnection between the works in the show, the artist himself, and the visitors. The doll sat amongst a hundred drawings Navarro produced during the lockdown. While isolating, a fundamental question came to mind, in his words: “What makes me really me? Is it my body? My ideas? My thoughts or my beliefs?”

Eduardo Navarro explores possible points of convergence between art and science, allocating special attention to the possibility of dialogue between natural forces and species. The artist frequently works with collaborators from different fields, involving participation in order to investigate the effects of natural phenomena in the human experience, triggering new possibilities in our perception of the world’s sensory experiences. Navarro’s performances and installations often rely on dancers and volunteers to be activated where either the viewer or the performers act as agents whose physical senses – tasting, hearing, seeing, feeling, and touching – conducts the direction of the work. Fascinated by our biological perceptions, his projects range from complex choreographies, sculptures and installations to edible drawings, focusing on the sensorial in order to approximate the observer and what is observed, hence “becoming” the subject study.

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