The Ordering of The Gaze is the confluence of seven perceptions that dialogue with space, territory, and landscape. Germán Botero, Rafael Gomezbarros, Juan Ricardo Mejía, Mariana Varela, Javier Vanegas, Juan de Dios Vargas, and Mario Vélez are the artists who are part of this exhibition. Through sculpture, drawing, photography, and painting, these artists have constructed scenarios that lie between the real and the imaginary, awakening profound reflections on the human condition, the fragmentation of the territory, the changing city, the transformed landscape, and the ancestral cosmogony.
In this exhibition, looking transcends the notion of being only a sensorial exercise. It is a complex system where the relational, subjective, and cultural converge, giving meaning to what we see. The Ordering of The Gaze invites the viewer to shed the idea that the exhibition is only a collection of fragmentary visions, finding instead the underlying relationships in the objects and referents of each of the works.
Germán Botero uses sculpture to explore the materiality of the territory, creating forms from geometry and abstraction that are a metaphor for its constant transformation. Rafael Gomezbarros, with his House Taken installation of ant sculptures, offers a visual metaphor for displacement and migration, touching on themes of collective memory and the indelible traces of conflict. These ants, made with organic materials, symbolize resilience and collective work. Juan Ricardo Mejía, through his sculptures, connects the urban with the rural, reflecting the dichotomy between progress and nature. His works are poetic cartographies, inviting viewers to reconsider his relationship with the built and natural environment. Mariana Varela uses drawing to capture ephemeral moments and marginal spaces, revealing the beauty hidden in the transitory. Her images speak to us of the fragility and transience of life in a liminal territory. In his series ALUNA 2.0, Javier Vanegas explores the cosmogony of the native peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, using photography to document their ancestral wisdom. In his research with the Kogui community and through artificial intelligence, he creates images using chlorophyll print on coca leaf fabric called goné. His works are windows to a deep and spiritual knowledge, contrasting with modernity and its vertiginous rhythm. Mario Vélez, in his installation Cumulus, his canvases are palimpsests of stories about the impact of war on nature. With his distinctive abstract style, he deconstructs and reconfigures forms, creating compositions that invite us to contemplate the invisible structure of what we consider essential and everyday water. Finally, with his work Voces del Monte, Juan de Dios Vargas shows us different maps of territories in Colombia where there is a high concentration of mining exploitation. This fragmented landscape is a reflection of the consequences of extraction and the impact it has on the population, nature, and capitalist ambition.
In this exhibition, each work acts as a node in a network of meanings, where the viewer's gaze becomes the thread that weaves these connections. It suggests an integrative and contemplative gaze, a way of seeing that not only appreciates beauty and technique but also seeks to understand the deep narratives that underlie each piece.
Thus, The Ordering of the Gaze is not only an art exhibition but a space for dialogue and reflection, where the viewer is invited to question, discover, and reimagine his or her relationship with space, territory, and landscape. The ordering of the gaze is a proposal to see beyond the visible, to find in each work a story, an emotion, a connection that enriches our understanding of the world and ourselves.
