Luces y sombras

Solo exhibitionsSite-specificDrawingsArt galleryVideoDrawingPainting

Dec 31

Written By Lou Calderón

View of the exhibition. Remains from the site-specific for the past exhibition at Palacio de Cristal. © Carlos Bunga.

View of the exhibition. © Carlos Bunga.

Galería Elba Benítez +info

This exhibition was an extension of Bunga’s exhibition at the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid Contra la extravagancia del deseo, which consisted of a large-scale site-specific construction made out of cardboard and tape. From that project, Bunga created new works, including drawings, photographs and videos registering a performance where he took down the installation and its building process. These are shown alongside remnants of the installation, making visible the artist’s way of working, deeply rooted on processes, documentation and his artworks’ transformations.

George Stolz writes:

“While very much anchored in the materiality and aesthetics so characteristic of Bunga’s practice, Contra la extravagancia del deseo also wove together numerous conceptual strands and references: these included Spain’s colonial history as embodied by the Palacio itself, which was originally built to exhibit flora and fauna transported (with dismal results) from the Philippines; Bunga’s own family history as refugees from post-colonial Angola to Europe; and the harsh realities of current global migration, much of it due to the displacement caused by the disasters of climate change.

As a result, the continuation from the earlier exhibition to the current exhibition takes place on various levels at the same time. On the literal level, physical elements have been retrieved and re-contextualized. On a generative level, a work in one format has spawned numerous other works in other formats. On a conceptual level, the ideas and references that drove the earlier work continue to play an active role in the formulation of the later works. But on yet another level, the very process of evolution that has led to Luces y sombras exemplifies a fundamental aspect of Bunga’s entire artistic process-based practice. Bunga’s work is everywhere driven by the relationship between making, unmaking and re-making and by the creative tensions between imagination, creation and memory.”