RAFAEL MORENO BUILDS HIS EVER-CHANGING UNIVERSE IN ALSACE

The World? marks Rafael Moreno's (Colombia, 1993) first solo exhibition at a French art centre, the country where he has lived and worked for several years. For this presentation, the artist has produced sculptures, installations, collages, poems, and films specifically conceived for the spaces of CRAC Alsace (Centre Rhénan d'Art Contemporain) in Altkirch. The dialogue established among these works proposes a reflection on the world as an immense and ever-changing place, where real and imaginary references coexist, driving continuous processes of movement and transformation.

Moreno's artistic practice embraces a deliberately precarious aesthetic in which the works appear to be in a constant state of becoming through the assemblage of everyday materials and found objects. This approach foregrounds process as both an identifying feature and a critical strategy. In doing so, the Colombian artist reconsiders the relationship—and the tension—between the human and the artificial, explores the performative dimension of gender, and examines the structures of contemporary economies.

His practice is built upon a formal and semiotic framework in which different media permeate one another, dissolving conventional disciplinary boundaries and opening the possibility for unconstrained reinterpretation. Within this resulting architecture, sculptures become moving images, poetry acquires spatial presence, and installations can only be experienced partially through peepholes or images transmitted from specific vantage points within the building.

The exhibition space also cultivates a persistent sense of surveillance. The galleries are inhabited by Pinocchias—mannequin-like figures with fixed, unsettling gazes whose construction extends the exhibition's commitment to reuse. Their presence generates an active and organic spatial precision that evokes memories, projections, and unconscious associations. Consequently, the viewer becomes an essential component of the exhibition's operation, invited to navigate the complex, fragmented, and open-ended world that Moreno constructs.

Rafael Moreno: The World is on view through 30 August 2026 at CRAC Alsace (Centre Rhénan d'Art Contemporain), 18 Rue du Château, Altkirch, France.