GUSTAVO PRADO’S INSTALLATION “THE UNDERCURRENT” AT MIAMI BEACH BOTANICAL GARDEN
Presented together with The55Project, The Undercurrent revisits Prado’s ongoing series “Measure of Dispersion,” last exhibited at the Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2017.
Bridging art, the psychology of perception, and philosophy, Gustavo Prado creates sculptures, performances, photography, and video works that invite viewers to experience their surroundings through unexplored sightlines. Using mundane materials of our everyday life, Prado challenges the human perceptive capabilities and offers new encounters between objects, space, and individuals. He encourages them to analyze how their bodies interact with the works, observe the spatial relationships created within the environment where the pieces are placed, and extract the new layers of reality that are often exposed through these experiences.
Measure of Dispersion series (2014–ongoing) is a group of works in which the artist has employed the use of industrial materials and convex safety mirrors typically used in garages, cars, or stores with the purpose of expanding the viewers' field of vision. In this public art installation at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden, a corridor is formed with angled convex mirrors attached to cinder blocks. Prado’s work in this space operates as a physical alteration that interferes and deconstructs the experience of the visitor in the garden. As bodies move between this passage of mirroring sculptures, reflections of fragmented bodies and elements of the garden are collaged into one. Although the perception of the work differs greatly depending on the walking speed, angle, and distance one decides to engage with, an important aspect doesn’t change—when the viewer’s image is caught on the reflective surface, the sense of self and notion of existence is activated by the work.
Prado simultaneously uses this work to ponder over the concept of the self and society’s self-obsession culture while also presenting us with alternative angles to explore our surroundings. The project's title highlights the latter point that Prado wants to raise—our reality is not made of a single element since the various components that construct it are buried in layers under the superficial surface. And if we are unable to define these underlying mechanisms because all the questions and answers may not be directly in front of us, perhaps they are at a divergent angle right next to us. Prado’s interventions introduce us to the intricate ways in which our minds and bodies process the moments and the spaces we experience, offering a new gateway to investigate the places we inhabit.
