Defined as entropy, the second law of thermodynamics proposes that energy is more easily dispersed than it is concentrated. One basic illustration of entropy is to imagine white and black sand: once mixed together, it is highly unlikely that the contrasting grains of sand can be separated and restored to their original distinct color groups. Arturo’s Trópico Entrópico ( Entropic Tropics , 2012) considers the colonization of the American continent as a similarly irreversible process of cultural entropy. His inspiration derives from a place near Manaus in the Brazilian Amazon, where the Black River meets with the sandy-colored Solimões River, producing a river of two colors that extends over ten kilometers. In the late nineteenth century, the Brazilian rubber barons decided to commemorate this impressive natural phenomenon by covering the main square of Manaus with a design of black-and-white waveforms made from stones. The square is known as the Encontro das aguas (Meeting of the Waters). Decades later, Roberto Burle Marx used this same pattern in his famous Copacabana walkway in Rio de Janeiro. Since then, the design has spread across the continent to Lima, Bogotá, Cali, and beyond. Trópico entrópico uses this pattern to produce entropy in the exhibition space. Sugar, the material used, signifies one of many economic motivators for colonialism. Visitors are invited to collectively dissolve this modern design by walking on the brown and white sugar, and participating in its entropic mixing.
Felipe Arturo considers elements from urbanism, architecture, and art in relation to politics, history, geography, and economy. His works and projects often manifest as sculptures, installations, or videos, departing from concepts such as structure, sequence, and matter. They are deeply influenced by vernacular architecture and construction techniques, and reflect processes of assimilation and resistance to colonial and postcolonial processes. He frequently combines the language and materials of Modernism (e.g., concrete) with the informal methods of autoconstrucción (self-construction).
Nicolas Paris studied architecture and worked as an elementary school teacher before he decided to become an artist...
With Roca Carbón (Charcoal Rock, 2012) and Roca Grafito ( Graphite Rock , 2012), López plays with our relationship to inert and unremarkable objects such as rocks...
With Roca Carbon ( Charcoal Rock , 2012) and Roca Grafito ( Graphite Rock , 2012), López plays with our relationship to inert and unremarkable objects such as rocks...
Part of a larger series of photographic works, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck’s Corrupted file from page 14 (V1) from the series La Vega, Plan Caracas No...
Primero estaba el mar ( First Was the Sea , 2012) is a system of equivalences between syllables and silhouettes of waveforms cast in cement...
Nicolas Paris studied architecture and worked as an elementary school teacher before he decided to become an artist...
With Roca Carbón (Charcoal Rock, 2012) and Roca Grafito ( Graphite Rock , 2012), López plays with our relationship to inert and unremarkable objects such as rocks...
A residency program in the blazing hot city of Honda, Colombia, inspired artist Nicolás Consuegra to consider the difficulty in understanding the needs of a distant community...
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...
Off-White Tulips is an intimate, meditative, and tender essay-film composed as a fictional exchange between Black gay writer James Baldwin and the artist, Aykan Safoglu...
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Primero estaba el mar ( First Was the Sea , 2012) is a system of equivalences between syllables and silhouettes of waveforms cast in cement...
Flag (Thames) 2016 depicts a small section of the Thames River—one that is adjacent to the Palace of Westminster in London—as an algorithmic representation on an LED panel...
One Thousand and One Attempts to Be an Ocean by Yuyan Wang reflects on the experience of not being able to see the world with depth perception...