Art Sites is pleased to present Intangible Horizons, a group exhibition curated by Yoab Vera including works by Iliana Ortega, Andres Ramirez Gaviria, and Alan Ruiz. The three artists of this exhibition share a perceptual and minimal sensibility as well as a commitment to a kind of conceptual formalism that is critically engaged and transverses ideological frameworks. Intangible Horizons gathers three sources of contemporary aesthetics that examine evolving boundaries as fluctuating structures within indefinite areas. Once a boundary is traversed, either physical or conceptual, the understanding of that frontier becomes part of a defined space, and the definition of that boundary changes while the new frontier expands. When a boundary is surpassed the ideological concept of a limit is renovated, and the previously considered boundary becomes part of the defined universe. At that precise moment, the boundary finishes its ontological essence of being a tangible limit and becomes an intangible material of the continuous area.
Once the unimaginable is discovered, it is immediately surpassed, and the unimaginable becomes the comprehensible reference for the pursuit of the undefined. Thus, frontiers are firstly understood as unfamiliar and ambiguous; later become intimate and exact. In Intangible Horizons, each work activates a reflection of the self as a trigger for future impact. The pursuit for the unimaginable exists inside an infinite route. The innumerable models to define the infinite are only possible by definite variables.
Iliana Ortega unravels riddles of light over an obscure path by investigating the limits of drawing and photography to abstract natural phenomena. Her practice is an act of generative destruction in which the artist uses diverse tools against a pure black surface to reveal the illusion of light depicted in a photographic composition. Ortega’s excavations into flat surfaces are a reconsideration of limits and surpassing that material “boundary” through the revealing of a new texture and light source. Her compositions offer possibilities, fluctuating between urban landscapes, moving light, or a night sky, yet they offer no certainties, provoking a persistence in looking.
Andrés Ramírez Gaviria questions the semantic limits of structures within spatial and temporal realms. His work is invested in recent advancements in science, technology, and cybernetics while appropriating the language of minimalism and 20th-century abstraction. In his work, the artist defines the sound of astronomical objects through images, breaking the boundary of any concrete definition toward a dynamic ambiguous space between scientific perception and art.
Alan Ruiz’s work exists at the intersection of sculpture, site-specific installation, and performative architecture. Ruiz defines conceptual formalism as he explores the multi-stable relationships that exist between an object and its context. Treating both as political, aesthetic, and often institutional materials, he is interested in questioning the autonomy and relational value of art as a perceptual, social, and economic construction. Ruiz’s Proposals outline a conceptually plausible, yet physically impossible project; the limit is the boundary of the non-economic transaction, which nonetheless occurs when the work becomes part of the collector, that is crossing the boundary between the private and public.
