IT´S OKAY, WE´RE ONLY HUMAN
IÑAKI CHAVARRI
CURATORIAL TEXT
"The world is suffocating in the midst of things."
Byung-Chul Han
Unite - Disunite
Hide - Unveil
Microbiome - Genome
We’re only human - Are we only human?
Unite - Disunite
For his first solo exhibition at FORO.SPACE gallery, the artist Iñaki Chávarri has decided to unite two worlds in which we are immersed day by day. On one hand, the physical space of the gallery as a container for the show and, on the other, the virtual space as a showcase and exhibition space. The show results in a hybrid that is more than relevant for the times we are living in.
His site specific (on-site) intervention breaks up the space to propose new physical and poetic encounters. This installation is a large 14 m2 black plastic cube, connected to the outside by the window frames, which occupies the center of the exhibition room and which we humans can only access through the gallery's website. It is a physical exhibition that we must contemplate through digital media.
Hide - Unveil
Chávarri does not only transform the gallery space, on the contrary, he proposes an outer space within the galleryspace. But this area is a paradox from its conception: the installation is made to inhabit the gallery but independent tothe gallery itself. The architectural space has been dismantled towards the creation of this alternate micro-world. The windows have been removed, the façade has been intervened and the usual offices have been moved to let this large black cube exist.
The idea of the hidden is manifested through an impossibility, the hidden does not acquire an esoteric character in this exhibition, on the contrary, it refers to a human sense: that of sight. A view that is now truncated, that now does not deceive us, but collides against a simple, black, plastic and abundant limit. In the following room we find 4 drawings and a projection. The drawings are assembled in layers that reveal subtle details that point out the poetic within the exhibition through the fractals, the endless lines, the allusions to the organic and the natural.
300 kilograms of land have been transferred from outside the city and now coexist within the exhibition space. It is a coexistence mediated by the prohibition of closeness. The prism that now inhabits the gallery is a lung that breathes, it is a space in itself that collects and is shown independent of its container. Finally, in the projection, the container is revealed to us. We see again.
Microbiome - Genome
Human cells do not occupy more than 43% of our body, the rest is a compendium of bacteria, fungi, viruses and archaea that live in us and make up what we now know as the microbiome. There are currently investigations about the power of this non-human percentage in our decision-making, moods or even in our tastes. Who is speaking when I say that I don't like artichokes? These data force us to rethink the definitions of the self, both physically and psychologically, discarding the paradigms of separation between inside and outside, between me and the world.
This information detonates the content of the exhibition: If we analyze architecture from this new reality, can we speak of a polarized inside and outside? How would it affect our reading of reality that the outside, what we are not and what we try to protect ourselves from, is within us?
We’re only human - Are we only human?
From there we rescued the slogan that Xerox devised in 1979 to launch the first graphical user interface on their computers "It's okay, we are only human." In a moment of environmental crisis, where we have equaled human to geological force (Anthropocene), it is worth rethinking our structures for relating to the environment. If we already see that we, as a species, are not only human, this call can be understood as an invitation to the decentralization of the human in the great story and to review our way of living from this new perspective.
But, It´s okay, we´re only human.
Jaime Martinez - Iñaki Chavarri, 2020