Iván Navarro expõe “Thereshold” no Pavilhão do Chile na 53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (em Veneza-Itália), até 22 de Novembro. A mostra tem a curadoria de Antonio Arévalo and Justo Pastor Mellado.

Born in Santiago del Chile in 1972 the artist became quickly known on the international stage thanks to a number of personal shows including, most recently, Nowhere Man (2009) in Towner Eastbourne (UK) and Homeless Lamp, the Juice Sucker (2008), at the Fabric Work Shop & Museum in Philadelphia (USA). He has also participated in the latest Havana Biennial (Cuba 2009) and in the Biennial of the Canary Islands (Tenerife, Spain 2009).

For the 53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Iván Navarro has created a group of works in a socio-political perspective – a theme woven into all his work.

The artist formalises his art work entitled Threshold in three separate elements/moments:

Death Row is consists of thirteen aluminium doors with a neon light inside, arranged in such a way that each door creates an optical illusion in the space it occupies, creating an effect of multiple corridors through the wall.

Resistance is a sculpture that complements a video: it is a bicycle with a chair made of fluorescent tubes that are illuminated by the activation of the pedal. In the video the same bicycle goes around Times Square in New York, showing the sharp contrast between luminous urban furniture and the lights generated by the cyclist’s muscle power.

Bed is a circular sculpture affixed to the floor. It gives the impression of a deep hole in which the word “BED” is illuminated to “infinity”.

The work poses questions on the possibility of a world beyond the wall, but eliminates the possibility of entering that realm. This element of illusion and the parallelism between the human and electricity, in its industrial and fluorescent expression, are constant features in Navarro’s artistic journey.

The materials he uses, purportedly cold and extremely technical, depend entirely upon electric energy, an element that determines a great deal about our lives as humans, and propose a latent metaphor for bodily fluids and the act of giving life, of ‘reviving’ objects.

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