29 November, 2017 - 28 January, 2018
Daniel Canogar’s work addresses the paradigm of our data society by investigating the interfaces and transitions between virtual and real worlds. He uses media as tools for a novel esthetic experience and examines in his works the esthetic dialog with digital environments. In expansive, large-scale installations and generative video animations, the artist is dealing with the impact of media technologies on society. Canogar vividly presents the transition from electromechanical to digital systems and is searching for the individual person's impact and position in the technologically networked world. Fluctuations stands for a world in flux – a world of transient, fleeting memories, medial changes and continuously increasing data streams.
In the exhibited works, Canogar reflects on technological change and vividly presents the complexity of today´s digital world. In his Small Data series he investigates obsolete technologies like an archeologist and revitalizes discarded electronic devices by evoking lost memories through video animations. The to date culmination of Canogar´s reflections on technological change and the broken libraries of our cultural memory is his impressive installation Sikka Ingentium, in which the artist utilizes 2,400 DVDs to create an abstract audiovisual mosaic based on our cinematic past. Another set of works is reflecting the current data streams of the world wide web. In the Echo series real-time data of various natural phenomena are transmitted to the exhibition space through specially designed LED screens developed with flexible, rubber-coated circuit boards that allow Canogar to bend the screens in any desired form. The screen thus becomes a membrane which can be wrapped, like a skin, around objects and structures. In other real time data works like Ripple or Cannula abstraction is used as a method of capturing the social fabric created by the never-ending flow of electronic news. Combining his interest in data and the materiality of the media, Canogar finds again stunning visualizations and configurations in his new series "Draft", that reflect the fragility of our screens that have become permeable and allow the texture of the digital matter to be transmitted into the physical space.
Fluctuations makes reference to the change of systems, as well as to the continuous changes which technology will continue to bring with it. The old antagonisms of analog and digital, of body and media have disintegrated and, instead, they form cooperating units of one system.
Sabine Himmelsbach
Curator of the exhibition
Photo credits: Guillermo Gumiel 2017