Look Like Without Be

October 19 - November 11, 2006

Look Like Without Be, Juan Céspedes' third solo exhibition at the gallery, includes an installation of sculptures, wall drawings, and a stop motion animation. Céspedes, who is based in Santiago, Chile, has populated the gallery with a series of sculptures depicting dogs, monsters, body parts, and human forms. Each work is cut from a flat piece of metal, and sits upon its own cast shadow made of black paper and a yellow ellipse representing a spotlight, evoking its own self-contained theatrical environment.

As the title simple states, these objects look like familiar objects without being them: they are flattened and simplified. Céspedes sees these sculptures as an extension of how space functions in painting: within one two-dimensional surface, the painter emulates figures, spaces, light, and shadow. Céspedes has cut-and-folded this illusion back into the third dimension.

Céspedes also engages the gallery space in a series of site-specific installation works. He has illustrated a false door onto the gallery wall as well as a faux-spotlit drawing. Another device Céspedes employs to shift the context of everyday objects is distortion of scale. For Look Like Without Be he has created a series of extremely oversized tee shirts, and an enormous dripping spot of paint on the wall.

In Look Like Without Be, as in his previous exhibitions, Juan Céspedes examines perception, science, human nature, and technology with a playful low-tech wit. Céspedes' work has recently been exhibited at Maze Gallery, Turin, Italy, and the OR Gallery, Vancouver.

The exhibition will be on view from October 19 Ô November 11, 2006. A reception will be held for the artist at the gallery on October 19th from 6 - 8 PM at 525 West 22nd St., New York City. For information call 212-741-8849.

 

Intuitive Imagery

January 7-January 31, 2004

Andrew Kreps Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Intuitive Imagery, an exhibition by Juan Cespedes, an artist based in Santiago, Chile. This is the artist's second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Intuitive Imagery includes sculptural objects rendered in papier-mache - a moose head, a fire extinguisher and various lumps of soil sprouting dewy grass. Though immediately recognizable, the sculpted forms don't attempt to masquerade as 'real' things. Outsized scale and the materiality of their surfaces function as interruptions. Alongside these are a group of Nude Studies - a group of spare, abstract paintings with figural references. Cespedes will also exhibit a self-portrait 'fresnel painting.' Like an analog-style laser holograph, the complex undulations of this painting's surface reveal not one, but three images of the artist, each visible from a different point in the gallery. And two 'pixel drawings' by the artist are included. A large 9 foot square work, Pixel Drawing I is made up of thousands of tiny pieces of colored paper taped together in an abstract field. When seen through a distortion-correcting lens, a buried image is revealed.

As Intuitive Imagery suggests, the works in this exhibition function as representations of actual objects - something like three-dimensional pictures - as well as like objects themselves. They are the stand-ins and perceptual exercises through which Cespedes recognizes images in his head, constructing them in the world.

 

Aberrations

February 16-March 16, 2002

Andrew Kreps Gallery is pleased to present Aberrations, the US premier of artist Juan Cespedes. Cespedes lives and works in Santiago, Chile.

Cespedes creates Lo-fi versions of the Hi-fi. His work reflects on the technological through decidedly crude techniques and basic materials. In Aberrations, an upside-down umbrella substitutes for a satellite dish and fresnel lenses and prisms are made from homemade resin casts. To create the shape of the prisms, or Bee's Eyes, Cespedes used the plastic lids of bubble gum packages found in Santiago. Many of the subjects of the Fresnels refer to contemporary technology: CNN images of bombs dropping on tanks, alarm clocks changing time.

Cespedes work focuses on different manifestations of the moving image. Fresnels and Bee's Eyes work as millisecond animations; the images change as the viewer changes viewing positions. One version of the Bee's Eyes rotates on a turntable causing the prisms to reveal continuous optical animations. Cespedes has also created crude digital animations for the exhibition. Some of these animations are displayed as framed moving pictures on a table, others can be viewed in a makeshift projection room set up in the gallery.

The title of the show, Aberrations, refers to the distortions and diffractions of light and image made by the roughly made fresnel lenses. To Cespedes, the word 'aberrations' sounds like a monster or a mutant to our ears, because it refers to something or someone set apart from normality. Through CÈspedes the uniformity of technology is subverted, the perfection is made irregular, and as a result, technology becomes more accessible.

Aberrations will be on view from February 16 - March 16, 2002. A reception will be held for the artist in the gallery on February 16, 6-8 pm at 516 West 20th St., New York City. For information call 212-741-8849.