The 9.99 Gallery presents Darío Escobar / Órbitas imperfectas

Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation states the attraction that exists between the masses of the objects. On that same line, the artist proposes an interaction between objects that revolve around a superior and more complex mass, which is present in our everyday lives: consumerism, taken as a metaphor for who we are through what we buy, what we consume, and what we throw away. The imperfect trajectory or orbit of the process starts when the artist obtains one or many objects in convenience stores, which then are taken to his studio, and made a sculpture, a drawing, or an installation. This act, then, creates not only a physical trajectory but also a conceptual path of the objects themselves, which go from being simple objects of consumerism to being art objects. Therefore one can think of a true exchange value, where the symbolic meaning is found in an interchangeable system of symbols and meanings, where mass consumption products are transformed into symbols and at the same time they acquire a more complex meaning, far from their function or their objective equivalence.

Objects have always been part of the artist's repertoire. Escobar has been committed to buying objects randomly or specifically. He is not interested in the used object or whatever its past trajectory has accumulated. In fact, it is the artist who wants to give the object a new story, starting with its purchase and ending with its transformation. Maybe this is the starting point of the artist’s interest in delving further into the behavior of the objects, about everything that happens before the final work, that which is so far away from the spectator: those transactions that reveal the trail connecting the store, the artist's studio, and the public exhibition.

It is important to point out that the artist proposes this exhibition to be one of drawing because the works that conform it are basically behaving like curves drawn in a space: three sculptures made out of wood and basketball rings; thirteen works made of mahogany, wood that is used in the fabrication of guitars, with curvy designs produced in different colors (acoustic guitar rosettes); six ink and graphite works on rice paper; and a sculpture made of bicycle tires that hang from the ceiling. The circularity displays the semiotic and symbolic concept of the orbit whose trajectory will impact the value of these pieces, way beyond the objects.

Darío Escobar / Órbitas imperfectas (Darío Escobar / Imperfect Orbits) reveals the interest the artist has in the dynamic and spatial shapes and evidences the attraction that the objects have between one another and their anthropological and aesthetic operations; but, more than that it shows us another way of seeing all these trajectories through a universal principle.