22 April – 30 July 2016

Opening: Thursday 22 April, 7pm

Proyecto AMIL
Centro Comercial Camino Real
Lima

Lima … On 22 April 2016, Proyecto AMIL is delighted to present Iván Argote’s, Sírvete de mi, sírveme de ti, the first solo exhibition in Lima by the Paris-based Colombian artist.

Argote’s work revolves around radical social movements of the 20th century, honing in on the fissures and sparks that occur in moments of social upheaval. In his exhibition at Proyecto AMIL, the artist focuses on affects as categories for critical analysis, challenging the superiority of detached scientific reason over the emotional and the subjective. The six pieces presented throughout the show, scaling from the epically proportioned to the minutely detailed, are in dialogue as they explore the interplay between presence and absence that reverberates in each one of the works. The authority of the body and the emotional response herald in this intriguing new group of artworks, reclaiming a legitimate knowledge about the world.

Here eating dirt mom is an installation composed of more than 1,200 clay bricks that winds through the gallery, directly on the floor. The navigation of the space is completely reconfigured by these bricks, which have been handmade by Argote himself and bear the unique yet anonymous mark of his bite. Argote uses the symbolism of the brick, a central element in architecture since time immemorial, to refer to the construction or reconstruction of history from a personal and subjective perspective.

Setting up a system is a small collage based on a deconstructive method that questions the relations between image and ideology. Diverse material sources that circle around the global and the everyday -such as specialized photography books, scientific diagrams, propaganda, advertisements and local newspapers- are here modified creating different layers in friction that make visible and interrogate the authority of images and written text in the construction of official memory.

In that same vein, suspended in the room are Among us, large concrete but hollow pieces that create an uncanny architecture of presence and absence in the exhibition space. The sculptures seem to be fragments, or even archaeological vestiges, of a major architectural structure. The surface reveals excerpts of statements related to Argote’s long term research on the history of ideologies and propaganda and its influence on the production of subjectivity.

Produced between Paris and Lima, Sírvete de mi, sírveme de ti is 4 meter-long sculpture made of approximately 100 hands in polyurethane which have been cast from diverse groups of people, from the artist’s friends to members of the Proyecto AMIL audience. Since each hand has to be cast holding the previous one, every addition becomes a conversation, a moment of exchange with the people who have previously participated in the making of the sculpture. This piece works as both an emblem of the self as individual and a symbol of a larger social body; drawing attention to ideas such as intimacy and solidarity, but also to the distances embedded in social and cultural structures.

In the video Two 50 year old white males having emotions a camera has a 360 degree view of two men holding each other in an embrace. With each rotation of the camera, the characters change their mood, generating an endless drama. Both characters are middle-aged Caucasian men, dressed in suits; a typology that in the context of financial capitalism is associated with power and domination. However, both individuals look extremely fragile and do not represent at all this stereotype. The video appears as a metaphor of how the neoliberal myth of the free and autonomous individual does not correspond to the reality of the interdependence of human relationships.

Finally, outside the main gallery – located in one of Camino Real’s shopfronts and visible to the passer by – the video Untitled shows different groups of pedestrians on the streets of New York turning towards the camera with ambivalent and confused expressions. Silent, in close-up and in slow motion, the film captures the dramatic moments when people turn back disconcerted after the artist yells at them declarations such as “I love you” and “You are beautiful”. The point of contact between the pedestrians’ eyes and Argote’s camera is a fleeting moment of connection in a mass of isolated urbanites.

Iván Argote is a Colombian artist based in Paris. His work deals with the way that mankind relates with the myriad changes that take place daily in the historical, economic, political and moral realms. His aim is to question the role of subjectivity in his revision of these concepts. His work has been shown around the world, including: An idea of progress (solo), SPACE, London, 2016; La puesta en marcha de un sistema (solo), Galeria ADN, Barcelona, 2015; Intersections, Cisneros Fountanals Foundation, Miami, 2015; Between the Pessimism of the Intellect and the Optimism of the Will, 5th Thessaloniki Biennale, Thessaloniki, 2015; Levitate, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna, 2015; L’éloge de l’heure, MUDAC, Lausanne, 2015; Reddish Blue (solo), DT Project, Brussels, 2014; Let’s write a history of hopes (solo), Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo, 2014; Strengthlessness (solo), Galerie Perrotin, Paris, 2014; La Estrategia (solo), Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013; Tectonic, Moving Museum, Dubai, 2013; Los irrespetuosos, Museo Carrilo Gil, México DF, 2013; 30th Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo, 2012; Sin heroísmos, por favor(solo), CA2M, Madrid, 2012; Girarse, Joan Miró Fundation, Barcelona, 2012, among others.

Proyecto AMIL is a mobile contemporary art platform that aims to act as a bridge between local and international scenes. It is not bound to any particular space and perhaps does not occur in or occupy any urban site at all, taking instead the form of a publication, an investigation or a scholarship. Proyecto AMIL is a fluid, non-commercial structure that enables artists to find ways to materialise projects, and a space in which the public can encounter a distinct critical content.