THE UTOPIA OF THE CAGE
Place: Galería Puntángeles, Valparaíso, Chile.
Materials: Bambú, huincha negra, acero, 12 diamantes (aves), alpiste, agua.
Dimensions: Dimensiones variables, en la sala 12 x 4 x 4 mts aprox.
Year: December 17, 2007-March 25, 2008

“The birds hold the secret to their singing in the grid of an empty language; a grid that is at the same time transparent and unbreakable.”

Juan Luis Martínez, from the poem titled: Observations relative to the exuberant activity of the phonetic confabulation or language of the birds.

The project proposes the construction of a structure that is attached to the pillars of the exhibition space like a parasitic “architecture that transforms the space, creating contextual relationships with the place.

This STRUCTURE- CAGE is inhabited by birds that move about freely in the space it affords, finding their habitable place precisely in this “cage” that is proposed as an option and not imposed as a living space.

Dimensions variable, it occupies approximately 12 x 4 x 4 metres in the gallery.
It is built of Bamboo, black tape, steel, twelve Gouldian finches (Erythrura gouldiae), birdseed, water.

“The Utopia of the Cage by the artist Cristián Salineros F. closes the 2007 program of exhibitions in silent homage to the 30th anniversary of the publication of The New Novel by Juan Luis Martínez.

Salineros deals with this quotation in the execution of his “Utopia of the Cage”  which is structured within the logics of intervention and deployment with respect to the work-place relationship.

Salineros appropriates the reference to sculpture on the basis of the columns in the Exhibition Room and from that basic discomfort he contextualizes the displacements of sculpture in Chilean art system over the past few decades. His work distances itself from the monumental and figurative logic of sculpture through the observation of the structure of the place, transforming its inherent difficulties into a constructive problem.

“The Utopia of the Cage” could be characterized as a minimalist structure through which the artist takes figuration to its “zero degree” and only constructs in relation to the notion of suspension and the habitability of three-dimensional form, which he deploys from the pillars upholding the structure of Sala Puntángeles.

The layout suggests the logics of the place on the wall through the ribbing of the central structure of the Exhibition Room. “The Utopia of the Cage” can be likened to the figure of a ship in a dry-dock.

In the room, the text “About Bird Language” from the poem by Juan Luis Martínez resonates in our imagination. Just like the poem, which in its time gave rise to a new literary structure with the “New Novel”, Cristian Salineros modifies the layout of the Room and in doing so, he initiates a new narrative.” Alberto Madrid Letelier.

“The Utopia of the Cage will be on exhibition at Sala Puntángeles until the end of March, 2008.

BACK