Le laboratoire presents the exhibition Sobre la noción del vacío
 (y un diálogo con Kawabata) by Luis Felipe Ortega.

What is a horizon? It is a line that appears to separate the sky from the earth. That limit is nevertheless unstable because it depends on both the land itself and the observer’s gaze, such that there is always something relative and artificial about it. In that sense, the space that emerges from that ambiguity is a product of a set of relationships, and is never static, always moving. Those relations, in turn, generate different experiences among observers because they involve not only their respective gazes but also their bodies, which enable that relationship. Luis Felipe Ortega has been exploring this ambiguous, interstitial space and the particular experience it produces over the last fifteen years... (.)

Drawing on relationships between landscapes, architectures, objects, and bodies, as well as between images and volumes, and influenced by the tradition of minimalist and conceptual art in the United States and the neo-concrete movement in Brazil, Ortega tasks himself with producing liminal spaces in which the materials and techniques he uses become fundamental: both the scale of the pieces and the material components of each of them entail a specific work that together enable a peculiar way of imagining the time invested in their completion. In this way, times and spaces coexist in unique ways and can only be perceived in the experience of being there, in the exhibition space. That is why the apparent simplicity of each piece is just that: pure appearance. Insofar as they are observed carefully and they move about, they take on a different dimension, manifesting the multitude of layers they comprise(.)...

— Daniel Montero

Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday: 11am-2:30pm and 4:30-7pm, Saturday: by appointment from 11am to 2:30pm

Luis Felipe Ortega (México, 1966)

The work of Luis Felipe Ortega engages contemporary thought by seizing words, phrases and ideas of writers and filmmakers, philosophers, anthropologist, music and artists so as to weave a hybrid map of relations. Through this map, through this primary material, Ortega generates actions, situations, videos, drawings, sculptures and installations. By placing in tension the framework or limits of the pieces with the body of the spectator, his work always frames the specific political dimensions of art. The horizon, the emptiness and the constant silence are locations of arrival and new departures in his production. To produce ideas (tools) through which we engage with other ideas is one of Ortega’s primary obsessions; his production can thus be understood as a ludic field through which to construct these tools.

— Le laboratoire

Image: Esquina expandida (Lineas, cantos, espejo y peso), Wood, mirror, steel wire and plumb line, 2016-2022