Centre Pompidou opens an Installation by Mexican Damian Ortega

Thursday, 13 November 2008 23:06

 

PARIS.- Born in Mexico City in 1967, Damián Ortega is the first Latin American artist to show in Espace 315. With Abraham Cruzvillegas and Gabriel Kuri, he is one of the leading members of the rising artistic generation in Mexico, first coming to widespread attention at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, with Cosmic Thing, a Volkswagen Beetle dismantled and suspended from the ceiling, an ironic deconstruction of one of the cult objects of Mexican consumer culture. His Centre Pompidou exhibition on view through 9th February, 2009.

Ortega began his career drawing political cartoons and his work is always marked by a certain acerbic playfulness. With irreverent eye, he parodies the purity of Minimalist sculpture. His sculptures, photographs and action pieces, which often make use of commonplace objects, suggest potential for development and perpetual change. A certain skepticism regarding the utopian forms of Modernist architecture and a distinct fondness for language games are also central to his work.

For Espace 315, Damián Ortega has created an installation that operates as a camera obscura. At the entrance is a collection of molecular models, while in the central space 6000 coloured modules are suspended from the ceiling. At the far end of the room, visitors pass behind a partition, from where they view the installation through a lens. Once again deploying the principle of fragmentation and spatial dispersion of forms, here Ortega allows viewers to experience the very process of perception that links eye to brain.

The Centre national d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou was the brainchild of President Georges Pompidou who wanted to create an original cultural institution in the heart of Paris completely focused on modern and contemporary creation, where the visual arts would rub shoulders with theatre, music, cinema, literature and the spoken word. Housed in the centre of Paris in a building designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, whose architecture symbolizes the spirit of the 20th century, the Centre Pompidou first opened its doors to the public in 1977. After renovation work from 1997 to December 1999, it opened to the public again on 1 January 2000, with expanded museum space. Since then it has once again become one of the most visited attractions in France. Some 6 million people pass through the Centre Pompidou's doors each year, a total of over 190 million visitors in its 30 years of existence.  Visit : http://www.cnac-gp.fr/

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