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05-17-08
Levitación asistida opening may 17 | 12h may 17 - june 8, 2008 Museo de arte Carrillo Gil Av. Revolución - San Ángel Mexico City The project presented by Fernando Ortega (Mexico City, 1971) at MACG, is an act of radical daintiness. The artist uses heavy machinery to carry out a simple action: a crane will be placed at one of the ends of the museum to hold, with an iron wire, a fragile hummingbird feeder, in front of the museum’s large window on the second floor. Levitación asistida contrasts two objects which being combined in a simple act of rocking, they provoke a paradoxical action. If levitation implies the situation of making an object float in the air without help of any physical instrument, in this case, the process become inverted: holding a manual size object with a machinery, which would be able to support hundreds of times the weight of the artifact, as a complex maneuver of unnecessary magnitudes. It is about a levitation, which misleads the sight because of what is unexpected, but it stresses the quality of “assisting”, in an action of extreme presence. The construction machinery supports a superfluous weight. Inside the museum, the disconcerting distribution of the load — happening in the outside — doesn’t alter the function of the framed object: the hummingbird feeder, only moved by the wind, appears levitating through the window. Hanged twenty-three meters above the floor, it remains clear of the heavy paraphernalia with which all the maneuver is carried out. In this route of upward escape, the fine wire that holds the feeder disappears in the frame, dematerializing the image and making it ambivalent. As in any act of selection, the window frames something that it’s happening outside and we can’t fully understand. |
 Fernando Ortega, Levitación Asistida, 2008, courtesy of the artist The action itself is exhibited in such a way that, at the end, there is no alternative but to understand it in a dissociated manner, as if each object worked separately… Does this destroy the genesis of imagination? Or, is this separation where this material poem acts specifically? Outside the museum, the vertical reality works with the landscape’s frame of reference. The crane turns into another of the many landmarks pointing out areas under construction. However, the minuscule load manages to unbalance the working practice of this iron tower. Mounted with the same precision than in other works of yesteryear, it needs much more counterweight than the usual one to support itself. The confusion exerts its effect over the final result of the project. On the other hand, the practicality of this issue corrupts any moral beyond the visualization of a simple experience: to keep an object through another one in an assisted levitation. |
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Fundación/Colección Jumex | National Museum of Art | Mexico City the practice of everyday life curated by Frédéric Bonnet november 27, 2008 - march 15, 2009 12-04-08 |
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kurimanzutto in artforum Linda Yablonsky's article about our inauguration at scene & herd 12-03-08 |
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Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo | Mexico City Recursos incontrolables y otros desplazamientos naturales Curated by Olivier Debroise (1952-2008) group show 11-26-08 |
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