- Dates
- —
- Curated by
- Jorge Díez
Juan López
Today I Aspire to Nothing
Juan López creates works for both exhibition spaces and public settings, using signs, images and messages. In each case, he alters the existing space, layering symbolic content over it, drawing from the visual strategies employed by advertisements that saturate our cities: decontextualisation, appropriation, ambiguity, images, texts, photographs, posters and graffiti. He uses a variety of artistic tools – drawing, form, colour, composition and collage. While advertising and the visual arts today share many resources and techniques, López uses them with a different intent: to surprise us and shake us from the consumerist stupor induced by advertising’s elaborate and superficially daring claims. His works offer a reflection on the reality that surrounds us, including the mechanisms of artistic practice itself.
For this project, López draws inspiration from Joan Miró’s collages and their shared use of simple, readily available materials. He intervenes directly on the walls of Espai 13, using various techniques, including drawing and video installation. The project continues his exploration of mural works, shifting the viewer’s perception of space through tape drawings and photographic vinyl imagery.
The idea stems from earlier works like Satán Mola – New Grecas Specific Project, where life-sized video projections of characters were combined with wall drawings. This led to the concept of allowing movement to unfold sequentially across the room’s walls. In Today I Aspire to Nothing, the central theme focuses on traceurs – practitioners of parkour, a discipline that involves navigating urban or natural environments with fluidity, overcoming obstacles like walls fences and gaps, and relying solely on the body’s physical abilities. The final installation features drawn obstacles on the walls, as well as drawn extensions of visible or concealed elements in the room – bolts, pipes, smoke, oversized buttons. A ceiling-mounted projector rig casts false shadows, creating a comic-strip-like frame through which the traceurs move. These life-sized figures navigate the space, performing jumps and acrobatics off the drawn elements – sometimes disappearing into one and reappearing from another. In a corner hidden from view, a standalone drawing features the cryptic phrase: “Did you know 3M started in hair salons?” – an ironic twist on an advertising slogan, appropriated by the artist in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the domestic use of adhesive tape.
