THE INTERESTING THEORY CLUB: ADRIANA LARA

27 February - 9 April 2016
Installation Views
Works
Press release

The gallery is proud to present Adriana Lara’s solo exhibition ‘The Interesting Theory Club’, which features a compilation of works from her “Interesting Theories”, an ongoing body of work Lara started in 2010. Combining some new works with a particular arrangement that articulates the series, this exhibition is presented in the form of a Club,

open for the duration of the exhibition for a first ‘meeting’ of the series.

 

In the artist’s words: 

My art practice operates subtly in the performative field by addressing objects that function as signs. Through an experiential methodology, the works I make are language experiments – language used simultaneously as a subject and as a tool – where meaning needs to be constantly reassessed to keep it alive or active. Throughout the years this interest has been reflected in individual or collaborative projects.1

I’ve always been attracted to the world of ideas, to how information constantly circulates, transforms, and takes different forms in culture, dictating the functioning of the world; most recently to how this information is contained and transferred. “Interesting Theories” is an ongoing series consisting of graphics applied to different objects and screens, which I describe as interpretations of what a theory looks like.

 

Up to now the series includes 37 pieces. Each one has a different graphic motif generated by a system of intersectedintersections (shapes intersected ad infinitum) transferred onto an object or a surface. It was conceived as a continuing production system which functions on the one hand as a hypothetical view of how theories take form, on the other, as an analogy to production: it is an ongoing mechanism that activates the fabrication of content, ideas, products. The series’ title functions as the label for the category I’ve created to refer to the feature of interesting theories as immaterial products. I started the series in 2010, pursuing my interest in the conditions under which theories in technology, finance, politics, philosophy, religion, or even lifestyle proliferate in our economic ecosystems. The “Interesting Theories” became my artistic attempt towards a visualization of a generic classification of influential theories in the contemporary collective thought.

 

It is this ambiguous, causal relationship between theory and visual arts that I wish to dwell on with “Interesting Theories.” In a room with works that look like the Club’s props and works that look like the Club’s art, the exhibition conveys a state of flux of meaning between objects and subjects, subjects and viewers.

1 Perros Negros (www.perrosnegros.info), Lasser Moderna, Pazmaker