Fantasmagoría: espectros de ausencia -Phantasmagoria: spectres of absence- is a new exhibition taking place at the Luis Angel Arango Library in Bogotá.

I had to visit the space three times before deciding to write about it. So, I can’t skip mentioning that in spite of the impeccable texts and profound questions prepared by his curator José Roca:

“Is the soul more like a shadow, a reflection, a breathe, or what?
Who are we?
Where do we come from?
What are we going to become when we ceased to be here?”

and his magnificent intention to bring the sublime to the mundane by the careful selection of twelve renowned artists reflecting on the mysteries of life and death, ghosts and shadows, like Christian Boltanski, Jim Campbell, Rosângela Rennó, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, or Regina Silveira, the works hardly transmit a profound experience.

Some of the works were initially thought as installations. Bringing them into a controlled environment made them loose spontaneity, lacking much of their potential to engage oneself with the overthere. The result is the experience of being interacting with a technological trick.

There is one exception: Library, (2004) from Jim Campbell. This work was my connection to the mysterious, the magical and perhaps the sublime.

Library is an ingeniously crafted composition of low-resolution moving images made from a set of LEDs placed behind a high-resolution photogravure of the New York Public Library. The experience of watching this choreography of lights and shadows was close to magic.

However, and doing honor to the title of the exhibition, after my third visit my attention was drawn out from the image itself to be placed in the absent, in the mysterious and hidden chip containing the 25-minute of video recording.

The poetic time-capsule which I never saw, and that I suppose must exist somewhere behind the panel of LEDs brought to mind memories from the evocative and sublime Air de Paris (1919) from Marcel Duchamp.

The idea of compressed time from New York brought to this city in a chip was in my mind parallel to the idea of encapsulated Parisian air brought to N.Y. by Duchamp, and very well made the exhibition worth visiting three times.

List of participating artists: Christian Boltanski, Jim Campbell, Michel Delacroix, Laurent Grasso, Jeppe Hein, William Kentridge, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Teresa Margolles, Óscar Muñoz, Julie Nord, Rosângela Rennó and Regina Silveira

Fantasmagoría: espectros de ausencia will be at the BLAA until May 21.

Julie Nord, The Hands, 2006-2007.

First image on top: Jeppe Hein, Smoking Bench, 2003.