Ramon Laserna: “Ciudad cin-ética

August 24 – September 23, 2006

Bricks, scaffolds, doors, wires, cables, and hoses are just a few of the lineal objects photographed by the promising young artist Ramon Laserna, who will mind-blow the viewer with a one of a kind perceptual and aesthetic experience titled Ciudad Cin-etica. This new series of works that resulted from Laserna’s interest in finding kinetic spaces within the city, is made up of a selection of large and medium sized photographs that metamorphose as the spectator walks in front of them.

The formal elements of color and line prevail in the artist’s photographs. In the large compositions—all of which are unique pieces—Laserna uses color as a starting point; he looks for lineal objects or spaces within the city that contain this particular formal element. Each of his assemblages consists of two different photographs that have been cut up and mounted on aluminum sheets that are then superimposed on a flat wood-like surface. The careful arrangement of the two different images on the aluminum sheets creates a unique effect best described as kineticism. Unlike the full-scale works, the smaller compositions have the appearance of grids, characterized by a certain formal flatness and playfulness of line. After fragmenting the recorded image into perfect small squares, the artist adheres these onto a black background in an attempt to achieve an optical effect that confounds the viewer. All of Laserna’s works are static, they convey objects or spaces frozen in time. However, through the careful and ingenious manipulation of his photographs, the artist attains a unique kind of kineticism that not only combines harmony, balance, simplicity and beauty, most importantly, it requires bodily movement.

The visual play attained by the artist through the careful handling of his photographs, points to a significant factor that lies implicit throughout this exhibition: the notion of movement which goes hand in hand with the notion of perception. That which one experiences through the body is perceived differently through the mind. According to Merleau-Ponty the body is a medium for perception of the world. In Laserna’s work, the body becomes a significant perceptual tool thus determining the viewer’s aesthetic experience; without the body’s movement through space, the works could not be fully apprehended.

Appropriation, fragmentation, resignification, and hybridization are terms that are commonly used when talking about contemporary Latin American Art. The title Ciudad Cin-etica, in addition to being wordplay, also references the phenomenon of appropriation that lies implicit in Laserna´s work. Brazilian poet Oswaldo de Andrade, in his notion of Anthropophagy or Cultural Cannibalism, proclaimed that one should deliberately devour and digest the cultural production of other centers of the world, in order to produce something fresh and independent. This repossessing, or recycling of foreign cultural elements is present in Laserna´s art. One can evidence a borrowing of both formal and conceptual elements from the art of two kinetic masters, Soto and Cruz-Diez for the sole purpose of developing a unique kineticism marked by originality of invention and construction.

Art, design and photography harmoniously come together in Ciudad Cin-etica, an exhibition in which the dynamism of the city has successfully “been brought to rest aesthetically,” as in the words of Piet Mondrian. By photographing materials commonly found on construction sites, Laserna not only extols architecture and the city, he also aestheticizes materials and objects that usually go unnoticed. In addition to containing a strong aesthetic component, Laserna’s photographic assemblages and grids of hybrid nature, bring forward relevant concepts pertaining to contemporary Latin American art.
Artist's page