Meditation on an Ending, Solo show at Cecilia Brunson Projects
This September 4th 2013 is the opening of my first solo show in the UK, at Cecilia Brunson Projects gallery. “Meditation on an Ending”, a series of photographs and videos, a portrait of a silent conspiracy of nighthawks.
Nicolás Sánchez
Meditation on an Ending
At Cecilia Brunson Projects
Royal Oak Yard, SE1 3GD, London
Reception: Wednesday, September 4th, 2013 6-8PM
Viewing: 5 th September – 5 th October, 2013
On Sunday evenings, at ‘closing time’ during the winter months of 2012-13 the Chilean artist Nicolás Sánchez conducted nocturnal peregrinatory walks alone through the streets of London. Inevitably during these walks Sánchez would pass by the lights of public houses at the transitory point of closure following the classical call: ‘time gentleman please’.
“So then I started reading stories exploring the famous and infamous visitors of each pub: artists, intellectuals, writers, poets, etc, but mainly crawling around the pubs at night with my camera. And these images appeared. Pubs like ships in the night. A mid-distance front take, showing the shadowy exterior, empty streets, abandoned bikes, useless phone cabins, mailboxes, everything lit by a few lamps. And then the bright interior that invites us to look in on what’s happening inside. A bunch of people hanging onto the remnants of that damned hour when pubs are almost closing.
Anonymity, extending the metaphorical portrait to that of any local pub, is given by the digital deletion of names and signage, and by the blurry silhouettes from long and multiple photographic exposures” These moments during the ‘graveyard hour’ of the slowest night of the drinking week provide Sánchez with an urban study within his recurrent theme of landscapes as performance.
Between Walter Benjamin’s Flâneur and Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, he situates himself as both observer and subject within the work – a single pensive figure in the lonely sea of Sunday night drinkers.
Six of a series of 13 photographs, and a video, are to be shown in Nicolás Sánchez’ first UK solo exhibition. Nicolás Sánchez is a Chilean artist living in London. With the backdrop of an increasingly uncertain and bleak global future Sánchez conducts in his work as an ongoing audiovisual study that incorporates both performance and intervention in the physical landscape. Just as Romanticism arose in response to the excesses of 18th Century rationalism and its broken utopian promises Sánchez uses his landscapes as a form of romantic escapism whilst breathing into them a feeling desperation, melancholy, anger and hope.
Sánchez won the Juan Downey award for video creation in 2009 and has been exhibited in national and international institutions including the MAC Museum of Contemporary Art Chile, Borges Cultural Centre, Argentina, BAC Festival Barcelona, Spain. This is his first solo- exhibition in the United Kingdom.
Cecilia Brunson Projects is a project room dedicated to contemporary art within the home of the curator. For more information contact: Phone: +44 (0) 207 3579274 assistant [at] ceciliabrunsonprojects.com Website: www.ceciliabrunsonprojects.com
Exhibition opening hours: Tuesday – Friday, [3pm- 6pm] Saturday 10am–2pm and by appointment.
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