Paratext #36 with David Ortiz Juan, Francisco Navarrete Sitja, Mario Santamaría

This name, Paratext, hides a monthly programme of presentations by the artists residents in Hangar of long and short duration, as well as the international residences, always on Wednesday, from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Various artists will be presenting in different formats, specific projects or parts of their works. The sessions are always open to the public in order to facilitate interaction with the artists themselves. In addition, each Paratext has an editor who then publishes his/her impressions of the presentation on this blog. On this occasion the editor will be David Franklin.

The next Paratext session will take place on Wednesday June 19, at 7 p.m. in the Sala Ricson of Hangar.

Projects will be presented by:

David Ortiz Juan

After residing in the Netherlands, Lebanon and Mexico he is currently based in Barcelona. He has completed an MA in the Sandberg Instituut (Amsterdam), and Bar Tool # 1’s Bar Project (Barcelona) training program. He works from the creation of narratives focused on roaming, disappearance and displacement themes, often related to the landscape, exploring the links between the psychoesthetic experience and the combination of hybrid knowledge.

Francisco Navarrete Sitja

The artistic practice of Navarrete reflects on the contemplation, temporality and subjectivity of the image and representation of the territory. Hence-superimposing reality and fiction, the material and immaterial, the local and global- he speculates on certain narratives associated with the construction and performativity of the landscape view; interpellates the symbolic dimension of certain material expressions of certain contexts as enabling new horizons of meaning; and addresses various technical devices as configurators of our way of seeing, understanding and situating in the world.

From a time to this part, Navarrete has acquired great interest by the exploration of field in diverse topographies, approaching thus to local geopolitical problems that intersect the image, technical intervention, nature and society. In this sense, the artist has dedicated himself to producing specific projects based on his in-situ experience and analysis of ephemeral spaces; working in places invisibilized or in a state of transformation due to the dialectical condition between their processes of historical recognition and modulation of certain material manifestations – natural and artificial – of the environment. Navarrete is interested in these contexts, since they allow him to question standardized subjectivities and generate stories of counter-memory – bifurcations – about different dynamics of territory exploitation; making its way towards the vulnerable, drift, chance and other attributes of it. Thus, the artist establishes an affective nexus with the geography that allows him to speculate on the production of visual imaginaries.

Mario Santamaría

Graduated in Fine Arts and in the Master Degree in Visual Arts and Multimedia by the Polytechnic University of Valencia. He has done residencies in centres such as Art3, Valence (2017); Hangar, Barcelona (2014-2016); Hisk, Ghent (2016); Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart (2015); Flax Art Studios, Belfast (2014) or Sarai, New Delhi (2012) among others. He was recently a finalist in the Post-Photography Prototyping Prize organized by Fotomuseum Winterthur. Among his collective exhibitions stand out: Una Cierta Oscuridad, CaixaForum Barcelona (2018); No secrets!, Münchner Stadtmuseum (2017); Infosphere. ZKM Karlsruhe (2015); Apuntti, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2015); Species of Spaces. MACBA, Barcelona (2015); The Act & the Tracer. WKV Stuttgart (2015); Look into the net. Edith-Russ-Haus, Oldenburg (2014); Fuga. Fundació Antoni Tàpies. Barcelona (2013) and Sarai Reader 09. Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon, India (2012).