Eduardo Navarro Works 2004-2009 La Sede On-Off Primer Maraton Antitabaco Shelter Shelter Colleagues Anexo Fabricantes Unidos Art Center Chapel From Your House To My House Estacão Auto-Suficiente De Agua Purificador El Dorado Statement I approach social spaces, and draw a line between reality, representation, and the staging of an experimental art work. I create works that have a certain amount of naivete, this naivete acts as a start point in the development of my practice and is a pre-requisite for the viewer that experiences the work. While I create and transform environments where the surroundings of the artwork are taken into consideration and contemplated upon, I search for alternatives to pre existing structures in society and alter them in subtle ways.
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Eduardo NavarroWorks 2004-2009
La SedeOn-OffPrimer Maraton AntitabacoShelter ShelterColleaguesAnexoFabricantes UnidosArt Center ChapelFrom Your House To My HouseEstacão Auto-Suficiente De Agua PurificadorEl Dorado
StatementI approach social spaces, and draw a line between reality, representation, and the staging of an experimental art work. I create works that have a certain amount of naivete, this naivete acts as a start point in the development of my practice and is a pre-requisite for the viewer that experiences the work. While I create and transform environments where the surroundings of the artwork are taken into consideration and contemplated upon, I search for alternatives to pre existing structures in society and alter them in subtle ways.
La Sede (2004) is a wooden shack. Inside a group of Mormons used this space to share their speech in front of an audience. This space was created to be used by religious groups. Wood 3 meters by 2,50 meters by 4 meters height. The cabin at the right functioned as a kitchen, it was mobile thanks to the wheels it was placed on.
The Book of Mormon contains doctrinal and philosophical teachings on a wide range of topics, from basic themes of Christiannity and Judaism to political and ideological teachings.
Inside La Sede at one of the meetings
"On-Off” 2004: I participated in a New Age Package trip with group called Mantra. Their goal with this trip to the country side was to sight UFO's and open a specific energy gate called 11/11. I asked them if I could film the experience, and announced them that I was going to traveled with them dress up as a fat man, they said yes. This is not a scripted work, the video follows for 2 days the experience as it occurred.
See short version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTBnXGAqJ5o
In the work "First Marathon Against Smoking" I started attending anti smoking meetings, I decided to organize a Marathon that would function as an anti-smoking campaign. Ones I had arranged the stadium where the Marathon would take place, having constructed the props that would be used as the identity/signe of the project and having advertise in the news paper the event, I took part in the marathon, making a opening speech, running and giving out the medals. What is important to underline in this project is that the marathon could not have happened unless "real" participants, who I did not previously included in the project had not showed upon the day of the event. This condition is what I intended to appropriate, it is in this moment where I myself withdraw in order to give up control to the dynamics that go beyond my self as an individual producer. This event done at a public open space (the event occurred on Saturday at 10 am)
List of participants that signed in for the marathon
"Shelter-Shelter”(2006) was created by a lake at the residency Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. This space did not have a slogan or any indications on how it had to be used. Shelter Shelter was created and existed in parallel to "Colleagues”. This space was meant to be found with out any previous notice and allowed participants to escape from the residency facilities. The structure sustained itself floating from the ground with sliced logs that acted as columns. This added slices allowed the floor to be lifted until it became horizontal and independent from the irregular landscape. During the night the light was left on. It was 28 feet by 9 feet and 8 feet tall, It is made entirely with wood and mosquito netting.
After dinner
Colleagues 2006
"Colleagues" is an exchange of values. I participated at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. While I was there I invited a therapist to give counseling to the participants during this two month period. I turned my studio into a counseling office, adding a carpet, sofas, lamp, curtains, a plant, painting the walls and closing the roof to create a more private atmosphere. Dr. Leigh Haskell accepted to work in this space and also accepted that her honorariums where paid with art work. She also agreed to exhibit these art works at a show open to the public at her official office in the town of Skowhegan, Main US
Annex 2006
”Anexo" was constructed at a group show at a news paper basement, the show was called "Jardines de Mayo".The inside of this space acted as an empty office, it had two entrances and two main spaces and a functioning telephone line. It's surface was 202 square feet.The curator of the show was in charged of a drawing workshop at a Women's Prison in Buenos Aires. She invited a women that had very recently left prison to visit the exhibition. I met her during her visit and invited her to visit the inside of Annex and think if this space could be useful for her in any way. I asked her if she would like to use the space to develop an activity or spend time in it. We decided to meet ones a day and use the space to make drawings. After some time she decided to invite two more friends that had recently being released from prison as well. The space became a meting point and a drawing space. After some time I asked them if we could make drawings of the moment that got them in prison. We also did videos recreating this moments, in some I play the victim and in others the police man.
These are some of drawings of the moments that took them To prison
Fabricantes Unidos 2008
In the work "United Manufactures" I constructed a pudding factory at the top floor of a huge commercial store. In this store second hand artifacts are sold with out being subjected to tax laws. I created a mimic of the precarious conditions of labor and consumerism at this rough neighborhood in the city of Buenos Aires. The pudding factory shop staged a proper welcoming facade, where a formal looking store welcomed the visitors. Ones the visitors steeped through the back door of this office, they would see the raw working condition in witch the puddings where produced, which mimic the conditions prevalent in the "real" second hand shops on the ground floor. I did not wish to make a denunciation of the context, I intended to become apart of it and create a political work from a naive perspective. The chain production factory could be visited during the hours the store was open, and the visit included a guided tour to the factory.
This stairways were situated at the end of the Galleria, they conduct inside "Fabricantes Unidos". Ones you go up you find a reception hall followed by a business office where the business took place. The door at the office takes you to the inside a hall that leads of to the chain production area, where the puddings where cooked.
This is the door that leads to the firsts hall ways. The first hallway leads to two separated rooms. The first room is the elaboration room and the second room is the cooking room, where the oven is. At the end of the 2 hall way you find third space where the decoration and packaging takes place .
First room where the elaboration is done.
Second room Oven where the pudding's where baked
Third wall way: Decoration-Packing-Deposit
Propaganda/Fabricantes Unidos
Propaganda is apart of "United Manufactures" I did street advertisement in order to promote the enterprise and the pudding consumption. Four waking Puddings visited Shopping malls, Mac Donald's and different social realities
Art Center Chapel 2008
The work "Art Center Chapel" was created at exhibition at the Frankfurter Kunstverein. This "real" chapel was constructed with in the premises of the Kunstverein with the purpose to offer a space for meditation and contemplation. Before the opening of the exhibition, a ceremony was held by a priest to initiate and consecrate the physical space as an actual chapel. As in my previous works I ones again take on a experiment which deals with a social space that I have access to, transforming the given space into a place for self meditation. In this work the presence of the possibility for self-transformation of the viewer through meditation as well as the physical transformation of the art space into a a place of spiritual value where both situated next to each other.
Ceremony Program
Holly Water
Sanctifying the space and thronging holly water at the walls
From Your house to my house (2009)
This work was created in Limerik, Ireland. I placed a pre made house bought at Home depot between recycling garbage bins located on a corner of a road. Anyone could access this city corner any time of the day, this made the work very vulnerable meaning that the house could be vandalized during the night (which eventually happened). I made a circular cut in the front of the house at the same height that the other bins had their holes. The only access door to the house was closed with a lock. Ones the house was in place and had it´s own hole, I started working in the in side, this meant, finding a mattress, a lamp, chair, etc. Simultaneously every time some one approached the garbage bins to thought their garbage I asked them if they could just thought it in side my house, this took some time and explanation. It is important to mention that even do this work was created in the frame of a group exhibition, there where no explanatory signs at the site. Ones people started to get involved with the idea and dumping their glass, plastic, and aluminum inside my house I organized and separated each material in different boxes. The work ponders the idea of recycling from a absurd perspective, becoming part of it while generating a dyslexia in every day routine. During the day I lived inside the house creating small sculptures from the garbage, ones they where done I placed the sculptures in the house window. The next day people could approach the house and see their every day rubbish transformed into something ridiculous, like a garbage fairy. I was not allowed to spend the night inside the house because of security reasons, in the previous exhibition a work of art was lighten on fire. Mainly all the garbage where beer cans and beer and wine bottles. Limerik is knowed as the city with most number of bars in Europe.
Inside
View of the sculptures seened from the street
Estacão Auto-Suficiente De Agua Purificador
The original idea of this work consisted of creating a floating factory that purified the water and then made this water into a drink beverage, mimicking for example Coca Cola that is made from water that is supplied from companies that filter and recycle water from natural sources. Beverage like Sprite, Fanta, etc are made from recycled water. As the idea and the work developed during the production stage, I realized that i wanted the beverage idea to become a hide idea, where everything was built around it but it with out underlining it or making it obvious. In the end I decided that the factory shod become a station, where water is analyze, purified with an inverse osmosis water filter and then returned back to the river. In the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil (where the work was done) the sewers are dumped into the Guaiba lake after being treated, simultaneously this same water is treated again to become drinkable and being distributed back into the city, creating a loop where the same water is used over and over again. I became apart of this cycle cleaning the water. On the one hand I returned part of the purified water back to the river and meanwhile I used this purified water to drink it my self and return it back to the river by peeing it back and becoming a apart of this never ending cycle. In the end this station functioned as a water purifier, and cleaned the waters of the lake Guaiba in Porto Alegre Brazil while simultaneously created a precarious beverage that I drank my self, since they would not allow me to sell it
1-1-Water contaminated extracted from the river2-This is how the water came out of the Inverse osmosis water Filter3-Ones the water was filtered it had no minerals. We added Tang, that´s why the water has that particular color, after adding tang the water was perfectly drinkable
Inverse Osmosis water filter
Catalog Text:¨In the work El Dorado Eduardo Navarro appropriates a preexisting structure in society and alters it in a subtle way. While he's committed enterprise (located 2 hours away from the biennial) modifies the landscape with a real purpose (the pursuit of gold) simultaneously questions the line that separates reality from art. This new project that can be read as Land Art must respond and face real needs. This needs such as fencing, guards, contracting manual labor, electric generators, etc are fundamental and real, since the excavation is located at a opened field in a peripheral area of Sao Paulo. If the enterprise was entirely fictional the possibility of finding gold would only be symbolic, that is why his work is a fiction prepared to face reality. Again Navarro appropriates a structure that can incorporate the success or failure of the proposal. Within the venue of the biennial there will be a cork wall where he will pin documentation and reports send from the excavation via fax during the course of the show. The work is a diptych, two simultaneous situations where the viewer has to build the idea of the excavation in their head, exact location of the mine is never reviled¨
During the course of these months I have spend all my utmost attention and dedication to the pursuit of gold, and I can say conclusively that I am approaching a real possibility of being able to actually find it. At this time thanks to the use of delicate instruments brought from the US I can promise that over the next few months the first signs of a real possibility of finding gold will began to appear. For the following reason I ask you to please consider extending my project ¨El Dorado¨ over the three months time of the biennial. I propose to extend my project and simultaneously be considered as a possible Fund Raiser for the next 30 San Paulo Biennial. In order for this to happen I need to leave my wall mounted during the course of the next four years. I consider of great importance to have a physical space for development and progress of the excavation. I do not think this will be a major problem during the following events such as Fashion Week, this wall can be surrounded by models and eventually used as a backdrop for a runway. Please find attached in this email the following sketch where I explain how my wall can be used as a runway wall during Fashion Week. I compromise my self that through the fax machine installed in the wall I will send daily reports of the total amount of gold total weight collected during the following years. I decided to bring to the biennial a mountain of soil removed during excavation as evidence of progress during these months. This mountain of earth symbolizes the unprecedented union between art and the ability to exploit its economic potential. I consider with blind faith that in this mountain of earth at least there is a 50 dollars worth of gold. I believe that even though my proposal as an artist may seem naive or somewhat irreverent to an art context of this magnitude simultaneously it considers the following issues with the utmost care and seriousness that applies to this situation:
1-A new way to approach the Fundraising of the next Biennial. If my calculations are correct profit rates for excavation within the next years will grow and multiply exponentially from 1.2 million per year to 12.3 million (after deducting income taxes). For this reason the 30 Biennial de San Pablo can count on my financial support, since I'll be able to sponsor them with the sum total of: $ 31 million dollars. 2-The gold at the moment is the only element that has a stable value in the international market, due to the great economic crisis that the world is going through I think the project I'm embarking can be a pillar and an example for future economic development. I am not scared to propose my project ¨El Dorado¨ as an economic model for future biennials. 3-Colonialism, industrialization, deforestation, exploitation, natural resources.
Please feel free to contact me in case you have any questions, I would be glad to meet you in person and discus more in detail new ways to approach Fund raising alternatives.
Measures: 7 meters by 3 meters cork wall3 meters by 3 meters palets surface, covered with plastic, 700 kilos of filtered soil from the excavation
←shaking hands with the president of the Sao Paulo Biennial at the opening
In this cork wall I pinned: The emails I exchanged with my producer, list of materials, budget, my contract with the biennial, a map of Brazil, sketches, photographs and a letter to the president of the biennial. I also had a fax machine so I could fax reports from the excavation. These faxes will be added to the wall during the show. I also brought a mountain of soil from the excavation
