David Tobón  - Sara Hernández

Notes about our work.

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Our work questions the perception we have about our surroundings. These questions appear through associations, displacements and modifications of objects and everyday situations. Sometimes, this can happen with the cancellation of the function that things have. For example, a double pencil that does not write, a book that cannot be opened or a magnifying glass who works as a mirror. In theses cases, the usual function has disappeared, opening the way for a narrative function that invites the spectator to create multiple stories about the same situation. The intention is to explore the rupture between the perception we have of an object image and its function. 

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In other cases, perception is altered by displacements of matter. For example, a sheet of paper made of graphite. Here, the material that normally constitutes the lead of the pencil becomes the support, the roles are exchanged. Graphite is also used as the material to construct objects arranged in the exhibition space, as in the case of a chair, a shipping package, or a clock. Drawing is no longer understood only as a set of forms arranged on a paper surface. For us, the drawing support is the empty space.

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Displacement can also occur by the subtraction of information within one or several images. When drawings are made on paper, they accurately represent the information that the eye perceives. However, the intention is not to reproduce what we see, but to question its relationship with reality. This is why the selection of the information represented undergoes an operation of subtraction or addition, generating a tension between what is seen. This means that the viewer speculates on the possible associations between the images, thanks to the empty space that arises due to the subtraction. This intention has been explored in the series "displacements", in which some trash cans are represented without their surroundings. Subsequently the containers are displaced, and keeping their silhouette, the space behind is drawn and shown next to the image of the trash can. The image of the container and the image of the space it conceals are separated by an empty white space: what is the container and what is the content? What is the inside and what is the outside?

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Currently, this strategy of subtraction is being explored with a series of photographs taken from Google Maps in which the parasol object is always present. The screenshots are subsequently stripped of their contexts, printed at 1:1 scale and arranged in the exhibition space. The series is still under construction and the implications of its displacements are just being deciphered.

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Finally, with displacements, modifications and associations, we want to get closer to the idea of what things are, to decipher the strangeness that each object seems to have and to evidence the simultaneity of the multiple interpretations that reality has.