Daniel Canogar
Spin
Daniel Canogar's most recent works are constructed with discarded electronic materials: colored computer cables, telephone and electric cables, thousands of burnt-out bulbs, meters of videotape, old slot machines, etc.
These installations explore the short life expectancy of the technologies we cast off and their relationship to organic mortality. They also seek to reanimate the lifeless. Light animations projected onto the installations appear to free the energy stored in the electronic waste, awakening in it memories of its past. Daniel Canogar tries to bring dead materials back to life, reveal their secrets, revive the collective memory they contain to construct an accurate portrait of a society and an age.
In his second solo exhibition at Max Estrella Gallery, hundreds of DVDs are recycled to create several installations. In Spin the copied contents of the DVDs are projected back onto their surface, revealing the moving images trapped within the discs. Due to the DVDs’ mirrored surfaces, the projections are reflected onto the opposite wall, creating an abstract double of the films. By layering the different soundtracks of the DVDs, an acoustic cacophony rises and subsides throughout the video loop. Turning Benjamin’s notion of the work of art in the age of mechanic reproduction on its head, these distinctly utopian cosmologies brim with kinetic energy.
Daniel Canogar, Madrid, 1964. He earned a Masters Degree specializing in photography from New York University and the International Centre for Photography in 1990.
Last year he intervened in two new pedestrian bridges crossing the Manzanares River, in Madrid, with the biggest photo mosaic in Europe: “Constelaciones”. Likewise he was appointed as the artist to represent Spain by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, in which capacity he produced a large-scale, site-specific piece for the Atrium of the European Parliament. Nowadays we have the chance to see such installation at Canal Isabel II exhibition hall in Madrid, until May.
His public art installations include a permanent photographic mural in the Arensa Train Station in Naples, Italy; a public projection in downtown Rio de Janeiro, a public projection on the Alcazar monument in Segovia as well as public projections on the Puerta de Alcalá monument in Madrid and Rome´s church of San Pietro.
A new and current installation, commissioned by the American Museum of Natural History in New York for the exhibition “The Brain: The Inside Story”, is a monumentally-sized installation that visually simulates the human brain’s synaptic impulses. He presents “Vórtices”, a solo show at Fundación Canal, in Madrid, curated by George Stolz. He also participates in a group show at the Sundance Film Festival 2011, in Salt Lake City, USA.
His publications include Ciudades Efímeras: Exposiciones Universales, Espectáculo y Tecnología, published by Julio Ollero, Madrid, 1992, and Ingrávidos, Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, 2003; and various essays on the architecture of image, contemporary photography and new media art.
His work has been exhibited at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (MNCARS), Madrid; Fundación Telefónica, Madrid; Palacio de Velázquez, Madrid; MATADERO, Madrid; Centro de Arte Santa Mónica, Barcelona; MUSAC, León; Museo Artium, Vitoria; Musée du Art Contemporain, Lyon; Museo Alejandro Otero, Caracas; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; Offenes Kulturhaus Center for Contemporary Art, Upper Austria, Linz; the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfallen Museum, Dusseldorf and the Hamburger Banhof Musuem in Berlin and Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh.
