NYAB Event - Omar Barquet “Ghost Variations Project”

Omar Barquet “Ghost Variations Project”

Mandragoras Art Space

This event has ended.

MAAS | Mandragras Art Space in collaboration with Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo presents Ghost Variations Project by Omar Barquet. This is the first artist’s solo performance/installation in New York City.

“Ghost Variations” is an interdisciplinary proposal launched in 2012 by artist Omar Barquet (Chetumal, México 1979), comprising a sequence of five projects organized like the movements of a symphony, as well as a series of five subprojects generated from experimental collaborations understood as “fugues”. Together they pose an analogy to the distinct evolutionary phases of a hurricane, emulating its intensities and movements, like the sketch of a spiral shape, mainly reflecting on the perception of time through the transformation cycles of a landscape.

2nd Fugue: The Groans of White Noise, brings forth an environment of tension which occurs at a sonorous and performatic level, carrying the spectator’s imagination into the most intense part of a hurricane. It is a project which is based in the emotional and physical tensions experienced in this phase of the meteorological phenomenon, occasionally verging on moments of delirium and using the acceleration of the pulse of the breath as patterns to elaborate the evolution of intensity.

This sonorous action also uses as reference a few fragments of the poems of Licofron, El Obscuro, where he constructs a labyrinth of associations around the ravings of Cassandra, Greek mythological character and Trojan princess.

This epiphany of catastrophe articulates a connecting link in which madness constitutes a repetition of certain phrases of the poem in a sort of mantra, whose progressive acceleration and intensity drift into meaninglessness, generating a confused and dense state, similar to the most intense phase of the storm creating a soundscape. The performance and sound experimentation took place on June 17th at MAAS, and was in collaboration with sound and visual artist Richard Garet, and with experimental musician Javier Barquet. Both artists are based in New York City.

5th Fugue: The Broken Poem, is an action taken through video, based on a phrase from a poem by Paul Éluard. It is conceived from fragments of broken chairs, articulating a sculptural typography which quotes the poem slowly, and in fractures. Simultaneous to the projection of these phrases, there is a mound created randomly with the remains of the broken chairs, on a floor soaked with water, corresponding to the flood - the final phase of the Ghost Variations project sequence. Both these fugues depict an analogy of the storm and the chaotic nature of thought, where human emotionality manifests as an unstable and complex phase of the renewing energy of life cycles - a breath which changes in intensity, and as such, the state of things.

Omar Barquet was born in Chetumal, México, September 10th 1979. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from ENPEG La Esmeralda, in México City. He has exhibited in various national and international forums, in cities like New York, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Lima, Miami, Basel, Madrid and México City. He is a founding member of the Segundo Piso art collective, composed of Augustin Gonzales, José Luis Landet y Moris. He was the recipient of the Jóvenes Creadores Arts and Culture Fund National Grant, as well as the Arte Actual Bancomer MACG Grant. In 2009, he obtained a two-month residency in Capacete, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2010, he performed his solo show REVERB, at the Museo Experimental El Eco, and in 2011 was commissioned to develop the LAPSES installation for the brand Hermés Paris - México. In 2013 he completed his residency for Casa Tomada art ists, which concluded with his solo show, entitled Ghost Variations’ 1st Fugue: “The Flock”, in Kunsthalle, Sao Paulo. For the second half of 2014, he is preparing a series of solo shows starting at the MACAY Museum in Mérida, Yucatán, a residency for his first solo show at Mandragoras Arts Space in New York, and a solo project at 123 Space in México City. Since 2013, he collaborates in GRAMA RUINA, a visual and sound experimental collective with Fernando Soberanes, Javier Loyola, and Xavi Cunilleras.