Alejandro Ospina: Algorithms / Magical Thinking

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Press release

Upsilon Gallery is delighted to announce the opening of Alejandro Ospina's solo exhibition, 'Algorithms/Magical Thinking.' The exhibition showcases works from two of Ospina's ongoing projects, Algorithms and Magical Thinking, highlighting the artistic evolution from the earlier series into the latest body of work. This seamless transition reveals the conceptual and visual development that bridges both projects, offering a compelling exploration of contemporary digital culture.

 

'Ospina’s visual maps are related to the continuous changes in attention prompted by the expansion of the Internet. They aim to simulate the activity of minds as they encounter image after image, accumulating and merging layers of visual information with every blink. Such paintings mutate how sets of images are seen and contemplated, like a stream of information that is never completely understood. To this end, they explore how the Internet has transformed our relationship to images, to space and to each other in unprecedented ways. In complexly schematic paintings, he incorporates the technological tools available to him to investigate the phenomenon of high-speed information. Ospina digitally filters images with themes found on the Internet before reconstructing them using layers of the same images turning them into abstract associations'.

 
- Osei Bonsu 
Curator of International Art at Tate Modern 

 

Alejandro Ospina, a London-based Colombian artist, has exhibited extensively on the international stage. His works are held in prestigious collections, including the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Rupert and Wendi Murdoch Collection, the Saatchi Gallery, the Alex Katz Foundation, the Barings Bank Collection in London, and the collections of Catherine and Franck Petitgas, among others.

 

Algorithms/Magical Thinking

 

“It took me 4 years to paint like Raphael and a lifetime to paint like a child” 

 

This is a quote by Picasso about the enigmatic power of children’s paintings and drawings.
 
In my previous work, developed in Algorithms, I have incorporated the drawings of  draughtsmen such as Gorky, Miro, Mondrian, Poussin, Kandinsky, Twombly…etc, embedded in the process of layering to affect the composition of each work, in unison with images from the internet surrounding my interests. A key element in my painting is the use of traditional painting forms used to represent new phenomenon in relation to the changing landscape in the way image viewing has been transformed by the internet.  The image, mostly photographic, stays relatively the same, but the amount of material at hand has never been available to society, the speed at which it can be accessed, and the infinite choice to follow ones own interests.  This creates a ‘white noise’ of information, so much of it that it blurs into itself and becomes one abstract whole.  The process of conscious to subconscious interpretation is amplified, causing many changes in the way we think and act, and especially affecting the youth which have started their young lives in the midst of this change.
 
Into this process I am introducing a new element which challenges the draughtsmen's abilities with the innocence of a child's mark-making. There is a power to children’s drawings; they are direct, they have not yet been wholly affected by the infinite imagery in which we live.  The power of imagination is free and unhindered, and there is a moment when children have learned to use their mediums and have not yet been subject to so many years of cultural impressions. They have a purity about them, unfettered by the various beliefs and generalities the consciousness takes as truth, one which is a short and wonderful journey into their thought process. They are in the process of taking in information like sponges, real ones full of animals and cities and cars and the newness of everything in their surroundings; coupled with monsters, dinosaurs, books and films which fill their imaginations.  In this whirlwind of neuronal and emotional activity they are yet to be bogged down by any process of traditional drawing or yet affected by publicity. 
They are free to roam this never-ending realm of information and imagery and invent and interpret it through their drawings, drawings which may seem simple but in reality are infinitely complex, built with a boundlessness of ideas and images. The pandemic’s ‘slowing’ of time and the creative work that we did during that time has placed me in a position to see the development of this continuum very closely during its brief span through my two boys, aged 6 and 8 at the time, and given me a way to get back to the basics of deconstruction, to the point zero of painting and drawing.  The anthropological basis for painting has stemmed from a cultural relativism largely unaffected in a child’s drawings.  The internet has posed a challenge to this relativism and by using these drawings there is a playful juxtaposition of this moment with the infinite availability of imagery.
 
The project encompasses the quick passing of time, a snapshot of a moment.  The new paintings embrace the instability of time and memory. Considering time as continuous and variable,  our relationship to the world now undergoes inexorable change at a speed never before experienced. The children grow before you know it, the drawings become more affected each passing day or come to a halt altogether.  In our particular case the difference between the two boys styles was Dionysian and Apollonian.  This marked difference led me to experiment with the layering in different ways, sometimes just using one set of images, other times a challenge was set up between the two different styles on the same work or one or both of the styles was set against a master. A sense of urgency emerged, as the drawings exemplified the continuous flux in which we live, the inevitable change of a moment in time.  They are a reflection on a memory which is subject to change, forgotten if not documented.  They acted as an anchor to the myriad almost ‘unreal’ and daunting amount of imagery that encompasses one’s own interests.
 
As spectators or art critics we tend to consider this journey back to the unhindered moment, one which may take a lifetime to accomplish. By incorporating the children’s drawings into the work, a different compositional, conceptual, and colour palette begin to emerge.  The images from the internet take a back seat, a tonal abstraction acts as an anchor, and the old master drawings intertwine with the complexity and ingenuousness of the child’s mind.
 
-Alejandro Ospina
Artist 
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