Invisibles is two- part project by Soledad Pinto and Javier Rodríguez: Invisibles Carousel (a collective piece at Galería Tajamar, Santiago) and Invisibles (at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC), Valdivia). The artworks attempt to explore an ethic of the invisible, as a way of resistance to the contemporary hegemony of the visible in the Visual Arts.

Invisibles (Carousel) is an hexagonal and translucent building (which is like a sculpture itself) transformed into an archaic ‘vision machine’. Fluorescent tubes light up 360 found slides, which depict pinturesque scenes photographed by a Chilean chemist during a trip to Europe in the 70’s. The ‘carousel’ is activated by circular walking of the beholder around the building.

Panorama- Soledad’s work at MAC- is a serigraph on opaque black-coated aluminium that projects unstable reflexes and changes with every movement of the beholder. The image used for this work is a slide from the same collection of the ones used at Galería Tajamar, and corresponds to the front view of the so-called Panorama building of Einsiedeln (Switzerland). Like the 360º view paintings and buildings popularized in the 19th century, used to present historical events, the Einsiedeln building houses a huge circular painting devoted to the representation of Christ’s crucifixion in the hill of Golgotha. The aim to emulate a total-vision of the religious event is taken in this work as tantamount to the boundless desire, the contemporary fantasy of “seeing all” that atrophies the ability to observe. “Visibility is a trap”, Michel Foucault once said, and in this Panorama what we see is only a fleeting image: a viewing device completed when the visitor observes its unstable intensities of shine.

Invisibles (Carousel)
Installation: 360 slides, masking tape, fluorescent tubes
Variable dimensions
Galería Tajamar, Santiago, Chile

Panorama
Screen printing on black aluminium
30 x 19 x 10 cm.
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Valdivia, Valdivia, Chile