Chacoal on paper
50 x 35 cm


The Argentinian artist Eduardo Navarro (b. 1979, Buenos Aires, Argentina) predominantly works in performance, but regardless of the medium (installation, performance, objects, drawings), his aim is always to explore the uncertain, and to propose a different way of experiencing the world beyond the mind’s limits, something akin to “eating a drawing or a hearing flower.” Navarro prioritises sensation and emotion in his work, and encourages the viewer to discard the notions that humans as a species fix onto other species and the natural environment, allowing us instead to open up to communication that we would otherwise shut ourselves off from whilst existing in our narrow view of superiority from the non-human.
 
Movement and its ability to transfigure, shift viewpoints and transfer information is key to Navarro’s practice. In the charcoal on paper work Dibujo para Investigar el Futuro 1 (Drawing to Investigate the Future 1), Navarro explores multiple forms of movement. Two bodies entwine, not only around one another but through — instead of a chest the black figure has a circular hole, the white figure a diamond through which the black figure has entered. Neither figure has a face, yet their ears have been repositioned to where their feet ought to be, and the entire skull and its contents have been removed in both. The black figure has one hand framed by the empty space of the white figure’s head, emphasising this cranial void, the other hand grips the crotch of the white figure. The empty spaces that run through both figures seem to propose the removal of anything preconceived, allowing for a more free flowing communication to be established, one of the body, and one based in movement and an intuitive symbiosis rather than one using the traditional senses. As suggestive with the title of this work, Navarro questions the possible limits of communication in the future. Through upending how we transfer information — hearing with our feet, placing a hand into another’s mind — Navarro suggests a greater and more profound empathy can be achieved with each other and with the non-human world.

CURRENT LOANS

Group show: Remedios
Venue: C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba
Curator: Daniela Zyman
Exhibition 14 April 2023 -  March 2024

Eduardo Navarro (Buenos Aires, 1979) uses art to create new modes of perceiving the world. His practice involves the empirical study of diverse organisms, based on sensory experience. In conducting these studies, Navarro appeals to diverse specialists and contexts in order to challenge entrenched behaviours and attitudes. The artist approaches each project as a fresh endeavour to allow for the study of forms of expression and thought alien to human perception. His interest lies in investigating how other entities and elements think, feel and perceive, with the ultimate aim of embodying the subject of study. As such, Navarro proposes altered situations that can seem absurd but trigger transformations of state, thus enabling a reevaluation of the known.