Juan Pablo PlazasSelected works 2014 - 2020

How do you see yourself?

This is the perfect question for someone who is either standing in front of a mirror or practicing astral projection. I’m interested in both activities, but like many other things, I haven’t yet studied them in proper depth. I rather introduce myself as an artist and anthropologist, because these are the areas that I have studied the most and they are a fundamental part of what I do everyday. I describe my activities as a sort of fortuitous ethnography that unveils itself through the manners of an art practice. This means that I’m constantly looking for the unexpected within the apparently obvious, the blatant certainty of the misunderstood and the wrong answers to the questions that no one ever asks. I’m specially attracted to coincidences, which I take as the thread that guides any kind of project I’m doing, as the only proof that something ties this world together. To be able to make use of coincidences, I create strategies to make myself available to them. I use the same strategies to build sculptures, performances, installations, videos, audio pieces, photographs, drawings or whatever medium the circumstances of a project demand. What makes two events, ideas, people or situations fall in the same spot? They meet in corners that come from the same old road: language. No matter which kind of language, my aim is to go down that road and make all the stops possible.

When one tries to talk to animalsa strange sensation of deep understanding emerges, the conviction that both creatures, human andanimal, share the same spoken language.Every reaction from the animal would be there to confirm that belief, eventhough one knows that the animal is never going to talk back.

01. Hugo Bola y el Caldero Caliente(work in progress)

2016 - Video15’’ 40’’’https://vimeo.com/262805952/37abf3eca9

After making a series of sculptures that were barely smaller than my hands, I started to think: how to manipulate this sculptures without feeling like a possessive giant? how to respect their morphology, resistance and availabitiy? what were the strongest and weakest points of each sculpture? the result is a film that resembles a moving pup-petery show, heavily inspired by the poetic stage work of Hugo Ball and the mobile circus of Alexan-der Calder. In this spectacle, each sculpture makes my hands move differently, with different rythm and pace, almost as if they were alive. Currently my friend Pablo is working on the soundscape that ac-

companies this puppetry show. He is looking also for a way to make this sculptures appear alive through sounds. It’s all about keeping the right balance be-tween revealing the artifice and keeping a sense of make-believe magic.Long distance project between Juan Pablo Plazas and Pablo Escallón.

02. pe’epe’e maka’ole

13/04/2020 - 27/04/2020Solo online poject PodcastProtocolsPostcardshttp://rectangle.be/https://hart-magazine.be/expo/kunst-in-tijden-van-co-rona-8-tips?fbclid=IwAR0k13r-AC8XGR5YCpeUDUn-InwWxOmSSoCqbyQ2yCzhN_YTY-Jm_tBoJYJwhttps://www.nada.com.co/Pe-epe-e-maka-ole

This project came out directly from the confiment period during the months of March and April. As soon as we were asked to stay at home and not go out, I was proposed by Rectangle to make a project for their website, as a way of inaugurating their view-ing room project. What did it mean for me to make a project without going out of my own living room and still aim to connect with everyone that was in the same situation as me? How is it possible to attain concoiusness of our physical existance in the world while doing a project for the internet?

Guided by Xavier de Maistre, who was introduced to me by Xavier Pawles, I decided to write about a trip around my own living room. In my trip I encountered other great artists, amazing writers, sunny beaches, and hard cocktails. I also met king-kong and spiders that have no eyes. As souvenirs of my trip I made a podcast, an intervention in my window and a post-card.Looking back I think this project is a poetic and narra-tive reflection on the ability to live someone elses life though vestiges of their own experiences. To be able to literary stand inside someone elses experiences as an act of empathy.

Window intervention in my own living room, with rice starch, 2020.

Post-Card Pattern for Paradise, series of 50 signed, dedicated and mailed postcards, 2020.

03. The Drunken Forest

04/09/2019 - 08/09/2019 InstallationMixed mediaGroup show at Chateau Nour, Brussels, Belgium.Curated by Rectangle.be

I guess there is something distinctively human in wanting to own things. By owning I mean to sep-arate an element from a totality, to make this thing unable to relate to something else rather than our-selves. I don’t deny that there could be other crea-tures in this world that feel an unstoppable impulse to take something and take possession of it, I just don’t know about them.Were humans always this way? Is it because we have opposable thumbs that allow us to simply hold on to things? Is it because our brains work in com-partments that we need to separate and divide what is ours’ from what is not?I do these things all the time, when I feel the burning

urge to possess something I take it in my hands, I ex-tract it from its totality, I put it into another place that I also claim my own. Although sometimes I wonder if is really me who has the power over things or if I’m just a victim of some kind of strange enchantment inherent to things instead of possessing them?Most of the time I take things to my studio and throw them anywhere, so the order of things is no longer domestic but problematic, distorted, disor-ganised and useless. Over diverse periods of time, things start to find each other and stretch, bend, pile, squeeze, smash, surround, wrap and told each other. Through these actions, things start forming clusters that allow them to be capable of standing by them-selves without the aid of human beings. These clus-ters emulate the way organisms form in nature: It’s a sum of parts and a whole at the same time. A parallel totality is created where my presence becomes in-trusive, subjected and careless. The Drunken Forest is the title of a book by Gerard Durell, a diary around his animal collecting trip to Argentina.

Installation view, photographs by Ludovic Beillard and Xavier Pauwels

Croq / Foam, straw, wire mesh / 2019

Round Beak / Top of chair, rubber, ribbon / 2019

Installation view

04. The Twilight Home

30/06/18 - 28/07/18Solo ExhibitionMieke Van Schaijk Galerie‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Nederlands

I will never forget the first time I saw The Twilight Zone’s opening titles: the image of a door that came to me flying through space and opened itself just to welcome me into an unknown realm of strange and horryfing stories. For those who don’t know, the Twi-light Zone was a tv series from The United States about strange, bizarre and thrilling well written sto-ries. I was never too impressed by all the stories in the actual series though, but this image of the flying door stayed with me through adulthood years, as it opened up two possibilities: firstly, it opened the possibility of domestic objects flying and aproaching me, claiming some kind of live-lyhood agency, while I just stood still, motionless. Secondly, it opened the posibility of any object be-coming a door to a dimension where everything is just strange, weird and far different from what we consider normal reality. Actually now I remember that The Twilight Zone was translated to spanish as

“La dimensión desconocida”.For my second solo show at Mieke Van Schaijk Gal-erie I decided to create sculptures with objects that mostly belong or recall our domestic spaces: things that look like lamps, tables, small curtains or plas-tic bag dispensers. Only all of these objects seem slightly aside from normal, they seem a bit alive but most of all they appear uncanny and abstract. Their presence was not dramaticly alienating, just little enough to still have one feet in the recognizable and familiar.The feeling of strange domesticity was an important element in this exhibition since it took place inside a shop that also hosted actual furniture of recognized designers. On one side we had the normal domestic home and after the curtain The Twilight Home.Once all the doors were to the other dimension were in place, anything could happen. I invited then my friend David Bernstein to do a performance with me. He introduced me to his project the Self Luminous Society and since then we collaborated together.He assumed the objects in the exhibition as The Self Luminous Society Showroom, household elements to make yourself self luminous.

Installation view

Telmeh / Helmet, light, cable, glass lamp / 2018

Telmeh / Helmet, light, cable, glass lamp / 2018

Dquis / Blanket, topside of a baby bed, billiard balls, exercise bar, hooks, doorstop, bicicle hanger, candle holder / 150 x 140 cm. / 2018

Dquis / Blanket, topside of a baby bed, billiard balls, exercise bar, hooks, doorstop, bicicle hanger, candle holder / 150 x 140 cm. / 2018

Iraka / Fabric, wood, metal, rubber, paper, glass. / 75 x 60 x 45 cm. / 2018

Iraka / Fabric, wood, metal, rubber, paper, glass. / 75 x 60 x 45 cm. / 2018

Iraka / Fabric, wood, metal, rubber, paper, glass. / 75 x 60 x 45 cm. / 2018

Iraka / Fabric, wood, metal, rubber, paper, glass. / 75 x 60 x 45 cm. / 2018

Clastip sagb / Plastic, metal, rubber / 2018

Clastip sagb / Plastic, metal, rubber / 2018

05. The Sitting Totem

06/02/2019 - 09/02/2019 InstallationMixed mediaAs seen at Art Rotterdam 2019Part of the Booth of Mieke Van Schaijk Galerie

The sculpture you see it’s composed by 8 seats where 9 people could be easily seated. Inbetween these seats any kind of small meeting of sudden event can happen, for example, once we used with Sylvie Eyberg for a cine-club in the place of Tania

Nasielski. Another day I used it to invite people to listen to a text I wrote about the difficulty of seating down during art fairs. After each activity, the totem can be piled up into a single colunm that looks quite neat and organized.Before you think of sitting down on each of these chairs, I should warn you that they are not comfort-able at all. The experience of sitting down in these seats resembles more the one of sitting on an ani-mal where the aim is not to be confortable but to be transported somewhere else.

Sitting Totem / foam, fabric, metal, rubber and plastic / 220 x 56 x 78 cm. / 2018 /

Shown at Besme 105, Brussels, Belgium in 2018.

Brouhaha / felt, granite andwood / 295 x 178 x 20 cm. / 2018 / Photos by Alexandra Colmenares

05. Will I Am

06/09/19 - 08/09/19A Performance AffairBrussels, Belgium.

For this edition of A Performance Affair I reproduced a performance that I have seen a couple of months before. It happened at a place called Alma Sarif, it was their inaugural exhibition and in that sunny after-noon Will Holder was performing. He used his typographic skills to write a name on the wall while talking about many different topics that he was interested in. While the letters appeared on the wall new words were forming and new senses were created. As an spectator I learned a bit about how letters are created, but also how inside a name there are infinite words that share the same letters and create unexpected associations. At the end the name Alison Knowles appeared in the wall while Will spoke about how she has been an influential artist to him, but also how Alison found in William Carlos Williams a lot of inspiration too. For Al-ison Knowles, William Carlos Williams was a key fig-ure but at the same time something to depart from. Will Holder exposed so generously and critically the

things that feed what he is doing at that moment that made me want to reproduce that same gesture.I wanted to mimic the performance I have seen from Will Holder and make it mine through my own expe-rience in the context of APA. I wanted to invite the audience of A Performance Affair to sit with me on a carpet that I own like Will Holder did, but this time on a carpet that I made myself. I want to show them how I make letters through a method of embroidery that I taught myself through mimicking too. I want them to discover with me the letters that are includ-ed in a name while they appear in the piece of fabric. I want to talk to them about “Maneru” and other top-ics that limb from it. The name that would appear at the end would be a surprise to everyone, even to the person who is reading this.If your are interested in seeing an image of the car-pet I have made, here is an image of it, hope it would inspire you to have an image of how this could create a space for generously sharing influences, ways of learning and ideas.

Will I Am / Performance / 2019

06. Girls #1

24/06/2017 - 01/10/2017Group Show: How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be BrokenCurated by Wim LambrechtSMAKGent, Belgium.

I did this piece while collecting a lot of magazines for making collages. At some moment I was stroked by the fact that these people depicted among fashion publicity really didn’t existed beyond the printed pag-es. Any photoshopped alteration of the initial image of the model already made it into a new two dimen-sional person. I decided then to try to mix these two dimensional people and see what would the result be. The image that resulted somehow looked more realistic maybe because it didn’t focus on following a precise beauty cannon but two separate ones.To make it stand I wanted to create the most com-plicated kind of frame ever. This whole construction involves a mirror where people can look themselves into in order to also reflect about their take on looks and modeling.The fact that this work made part of a summer

exhibition in a museum transformed it into a perfect setting for taking selfies. I colelcted all this pictures and did a performance about it afterwards.This group exhibition was about the fragility and fu-gacity of the existence of an art work, whose dissap-pearance tries to be ensured by museums.

Installation view

Girls # 1 / Mirror, foam, magazine cutouts, leather belts / 80 x 90 cm. / 2013 / Shown at SMAK en Gent, Belgium in 2017.

Installation View - Exhibiton Emotional Gold, curated by Merzedes Šturm-Lie, 2018, Brussels, Belgium.

07. God Gold and God

2018Edition of 10 Enamel plates (18 karat gold)21 x 29,7 cm

Dear reader,What is God?What is Blond?What is Gold?I’m sorry to surprise you with such impossible ques-tions. I felt the same when I was assaulted by them 6 years ago when I arrived in Belgium. They came as I was trying to find out what was underneath a cul-ture that was new to me. They gave some clues butsolved nothing.

I off course I’m aware that these three words de-scribe something desirable to some extend. Gold is desired for its shininess, and blond too in fact.

Blonds were hired in the first days of cinema to por-tray the main star of the film, partly because their hair made a sacred halo over their heads: the light plus the film made them stand out. From that point

on they meant gold and fame. If you want to shine too you, can buy in the supermarket a box of gold blond hair dye. Think of the hair color of the model in the commercial from the Million perfume Paco Ra-banne, her name is Hana. Or the hair of the Divino Niño, one of the most popular religious images in Colombia.

This kind of shiny hallo made me think also about a lot of stories about ecstatic religious experiences. People that get into this kind of trances often de-scribe them as a very strong light that takes over the space inside and outside their bodies. I guess this is reason why Baroque churches have a lot of gold and why it’s so expensive too.

Even though god, gold and blond are not exactly the same thing they help me to understand better one or the other. Blond is yellow and shinny as gold, but gold’s value exists beyond the mundane. A bit like god, in fact for some gold is god. But if blond is gold and gold is gold then god is blond?Well, why not?

( A + B = C + B = C + A )

God Gold and God / Edition of 10 Enamel plates (18 karat gold) / 10 21 x 29,7 cm.

God Gold and God / Edition of 10 Enamel plates (18 karat gold) / 10 21 x 29,7 cm.

God Gold and God / Edition of 10 Enamel plates (18 karat gold) / 10 21 x 29,7 cm.

CV

Member of 76,4 Project with Ekaterina Kaplunova, Richard Venlet and Michel Francois.Member of The Self Luminous Society with Marianne Theunissen, David Bernstein and Bernice Nauta.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS2020 - pe’epe’e maka’ole. Online Project, Rectangle.be2018 - The Twilight Home. Mieke Van Schaijk Galerie. ‘s-Hertogenbosch. The Netherlands. - Mein Schmetterling: Juan Pablo Plazas. crispr bogotá. Bogotá, Colombia.2019 - Will I Am. Performance invited by Mieke Van Schaijk. A Performance Affair. Brussels, Belgium2016 - From: Juan Pablo Plazas, To: Marianne Berenhaut. “Monster”. Project developed with Marianne Berenhaut and Lilou Vidal. Bureau des Réalités. Brussels, Belgium.2015 - Esto. Héctor. Ciudad de México. Mexico. - The Wachter. These Things Take Time. Gent, Belgium. - Matter Matters #1: Juan Pablo Plazas. De Schelp. TAC Eindhoven, The Netherlands.2014 - Blind Magic. Mieke Van Schaijk Galerie. ‘S-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands.2013 - Don’t Hesitate, Don’t Move. Project Space C1.02, Sint-Lukas. Brussels, Belgium.2012 - Querer es poder: Amargas promesas dulce rencor. La agencia. Bogotá, Colombia.

COLLECTIVE PROJECTS, DUO EXHIBITIONS AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS2020 - Luis Bonito. Performance with Vincent Sampaio. In the frame of the exhibition Condition Report, Invited by Juan Duque and Ella Strowel, curated by the programme of Curatorial Studies, KASK, Gent, Belgium. At Vandenhove Pavillion, Gent, Belgium. - Self Luminous Society HQ. installation and performances in the frame of the exhibition Mind Full of Thoughts. CAC Vilnius. Vilnius, Lithuania.2019 - The Drunken Forest. Garden Party. Curated by Rectangle.be. Château Nour. - Residency at atelier 340. Brussels. Belgium. - Hydraulics. Performance with Céline Matthieu. In the frame of Night Shift. Gent, Belgium. - Performance at Sint Lucas Gent final year proclamation. Handelbeurs. Gent, Belgium. - The Name Blessing Game. Performance with the Self Luminous Society for the exibition of Bernice Nauta. 1646. Den Haag, The Netherlands. - The Name Game. Performance with Bernice Nauta in the frame of the exhibtion: Kompromis. Schloss Kalkhorst, Germany. - Slim Denken and Hayne E. Day come to Karneval. Performance project supported by Marres, Maastricht, The Netherlands. - Self Luminous Society. With David Bernstein and Bernice Nauta. Poppositions, Brussels, Belgium.2018 - Il diavolo è muto ma non è cieco. Performance in an exhibition with Vanessa Valero. Curated by María Fernanda Domínguez. Caserma la Marmora. Paratissima. Turin, Italy. - Stone Islands. Performance for the exhibition of Kurt Ryslavy: Het is geen kunst fake news te maken. Mieke Van Schaijk Galerie. ‘s-Hertogenbosch. The Netherlands. - 8. Duo Project with Sylvie Eyberg. Curated by Tania Nasielski. 105 Besme, Brussels, Belgium. - A Practice of Everyday Life, After De Certau. Curated by Ben Gavin. Yuill/Crowley Gallery. Potts Point, Australia. - Maastricht Museum Night. Van Eyck Academie. Maastricht, The Netherlands. - Hypertrophy. Coherent. Brussels, Belgium. - Dirty Pretty Things. Chauffeur. Sidney, Australia.2017 - Duck Full of Ants. Duo Project with Nicolás Lamas. Second Room. Antwerp, Belgium. - How beautiful it is how easily can be broken. Curated by Wim Lambrecht. SMAK, Gent, Belgium. - Duo project with Timo Van Grinsven. DMW Art Space. Antwerp, Belgium. - Laat ons dansen. Mieke Van Schaijk Galerie. ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands. - Chorus of Cold People. Curated by Benjamin Installé and Swallowing Helmets. Brussels, Belgium. - SPRING 1883 art fair. Melbourne, Australia.2016 - 3rd Belgian Performance Festival. Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Brussels, Belgium. - Strech Armstrong I loved you. The Atrium, Harvard Square. Cambridge, USA. - Not Really Really. The Frédéric de Goldschmidt Collection. Brussels, Belgium. - 5- 31 January, 1969 – 20- 24 April, 2016. Bureau des Réalités - Art Brussels - Curator run space & Non profit section. Brussels, Belgium.2015 - Hotel Pink House. Pink House. Antwerp, Belgium. - Fashion Clash Project. Maastricht, The Nederlands.

- Nationa(a)l. Artist selected by Pieter Vermersch y Lilou Vidal. Brussels, Belgium. - ALGH. Besme 105. Brussels, Belgium. - Poppositions. Mr. Present, Mss. Absent and Everyone Inbetween. Brussels, Belgium. - Horror Formalism. Organizada por Helmut Stallaerts. In-between space. Brussels, Belgium. - The Museum Walls. The Archive Box Museum. Itinerant project. - Retrospective / Introspective. Dauwens & Beernaert Galerie. Brussels, Belgium. 2014 - The Divided Body. Predikherenkerk. Curated by Wim Lambrecht. Leuven, Belgium. - Paper Works. Tatjana Pieters Galerie. Gent, Belgium. - Jan Naaijkens Prijs. Kunstpodium T. Tilburg, The Netherlands. - Things presented to the mind. AgainAgainAgainAgain. London, United Kingdom. - Exorcised. Sint-Lukas Brussels graduation show. Sint-Lukas, Brussels, Belgium. - Norma: The Navigation Cycle System. Kunstpodium T. Tilburg, The Netherlands. - Ttitle of the Exhibition. An initiative of Koenraad Dedobbeleer. Sint-Lukas Galerie. Brussels,

GRANTS2018 Short term development grant. vlaamse gemeenschapscommissie.2015 Grant for Foreign Artistic Residency Projects. Mexican office of Foreign Affairs. 2014 Jan Naaijkens Prijs, granted by the Noord-Brabants Genootschap. Tilburg, The Netherlands.

PRESS AND PUBLICATIONS2020 - Hart: Kunst in tijden van corona: 8 tips. Edited by Sam Steverlynck & Pieter Vermeulen. hart-magazine.be2019 - Bruzz TV: Juan Pablo Plazas: ‘Ik houd er van om dingen door elkaar te halen’: https://www.bruzz. be/videoreeks/bruzz-international-zondag-20-januari-2019/video-juan-pablo-plazas-ik-houd-er- van-om2016 - Juan Pablo Plazas, Marianne Berenhaut at Bureau des Réalités. In Contemporary Art Daily. March 15th.

COLLECTIONS - Frédéric de Goldschmidt Collection - Olivier Vandenberghe Collection.