artist
Jairo Llano (born in 1979 in Bogotá, Colombia) is a Colombian photographer who lives and works in Bogotá. His photographs utilize everyday objects to explore light and geometry, some of them of structures built by him and others as abstractions of daily life buildings into idealistic cubes. His work has some influences from Tara Donovan, Zoe Leonard, Bleda y Rosa, and Catalan photographer Jordi Bernadó.
Crossword Puzzles
Can an image capture both the ephemeral and the eternal? Can fragility coexist with beauty? In his first solo exhibition at BEA, Colombian artist Jairo Llano explores these and other existential questions through his camera lens. While these queries bear a philosophical nature, Llano approaches them in a rather playful way by presenting us with photographs that document the existence of ephemeral paper sculptures which appear to defy the laws of gravity. However, in this series of large-scale portraits, there is much more than meets the eye. Their scale, stability, and technique next to the exhibition’s title, inspired by a widely known children’s rhyme, all activate an aesthetic interplay through which Llano invites us to reactivate our curiosity as a path for knowledge and reflection and a mere pleasure.
The tension of papers next to each other breaks their original shapes and changes constantly. Photography is the witness of an instant in the movement of these elements.
¿Es posible que una misma imagen capture lo efímero y lo eterno? ¿Puede la fragilidad coexistir con la belleza? A través de su lente fotográfico el artista colombiano Jairo Llano explora estas y otra serie de preguntas de tinte existencial. Si bien estos cuestionamientos tienen un trasfondo filosófico, Llano los aborda de una manera lúdica al presentar frente a nuestros ojos el registro fotográfico de esculturas efímeras de papel que parecen desafiar las leyes de la gravedad. Sin embargo, en esta serie de retratos de gran formato nada es lo que parece. Su escala, estabilidad y técnica junto con el título mismo de la exhibición inspirado en una rima infantil, todo forma parte de un juego estético con el que Llano nos invita a reactivar nuestra curiosidad como un camino de conocimiento y reflexión, pero también como un simple deleite.
texto por Constanza Ontiveros