PEDRO GÓMEZ-EGAÑA

Pedro Gómez-Egaña’s practice explores various relationships and tensions between culture and technology. His work researches historical machines, technological mysticism, and the ways in which the networked world moulds our perception. His new exhibition Islands is the latest part of an ongoing research looking at domestic spaces as both intimate and vulnerable.

Through a major architectural intervention, Islands transforms the main gallery space in Istanbul into a series of playful limbos between a domestic space and a white cube. A tunnel-like structure hosts objects that spin so fast that their movement becomes almost imperceptible. A play with windows that connect spaces in the gallery, as well as the gallery with the city outside, points to the blur between real and artificial, private and public. An ordinary dining setting balanced over an inclined floor is broken and sliced by electromagnetic steel spheres. These morphed domestic spaces and objects follow Gómez-Egaña’s previous works in playing with the uncanniness of everyday life.

Taking its name from the 17^th century English writer John Donne’s well-known saying, ‘No man is an island’, Islands reflects on digital interconnectedness but instead of focusing on digital interfaces, it presents a blur between inside and outside, public and private. It does so by focusing on analogue objects imbued with dynamics that make them ominous and fragile.

Pedro Gómez-Egaña (1976, Colombia) lives and works in Oslo (Norway). He studied music composition, performance, and visual arts at Goldsmiths College, Bergen National Academy of Arts, and completed his doctoral project with the Norwegian Research Fellowship Programme. Gómez-Egaña’s works have been presented at The Common Ancestor (Zilberman Gallery, Berlin, Germany, 2018), 15^th Istanbul Biennial (Istanbul, Turkey, 2017), Contour Biennial (Mechelen, Belgium, 2017), Museo de Arte Moderno (Medellin, Colombia, 2017), Kochi-Muziris Biennial (Kochi, India, 2016), Mana Contemporary (New Jersey, U.S.A., 2015), Colomboscope Biennial (Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2015), Performa 13 (New York, U.S.A., 2013), Kunsthall Mulhouse (Mulhouse, France, 2013), Marrakech Biennial (Marrakech, Morocco, 2009), and Brussels Biennial (Brussels, Belgium, 2008). His recent solo shows took place at Munchmuseet (Oslo, Norway, 2019), YARAT Contemporary Art Space (Baku, Azerbaijan, 2018), Entrée Bergen (Bergen, Norway, 2017), Hordaland Art Centre (Bergen, Norway, 2015), and Casas Riegner Bogotá (Bogotá, Colombia, 2013). Gómez-Egaña is currently professor of sculpture and installation at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.