Colombian artist Miler Lagos, represented by Max Estrella Gallery, received the 2018 Kubik Award in the framework of the 14th edition of ARTBO Fair, Bogotá for his work Rainmakers (2017).
This recognition is granted to artists who address in their work the themes of space, relationship with the environment and dialogue with architecture, and who have previously developed site-specific projects.
The award seeks to stimulate proposals that articulate art and architecture for the benefit of the City and its inhabitants, through a contemporary language in their works.
Rainmakers is a sculpture consisting of a wooden ring of 5 meters of diameter and 1.5 of width. The piece is in contact with water in its lower part and it’s designed to dialogue with landscape as a sculpture. As a result of its connection to water, it produces rain when people walk in it. Miler Lagos practice gravitates towards consciousness on the conservation of the environment. Not only he denounces human’s action negative impact on nature, but also reflects on the scientific side of the elements that define landscape. Connection to water plays a main role here in Rainmakers. Water’s energy features serves the artist to comment on the idea of vital energy, also known as prana by Hindis, chi in China, ki by Japanese, ka in Egypt or divine breath in Christian religion. The sculptural nature of the work and becoming part of landscape, defines an additional line of reflection, that is, interaction between culture and nature. Highlighting the potential positive impact by humans through culture counteracts the critique on the damage caused by big corporations. There’s also a kinetic and interactive part in Rainmakers. Audience may activate it. Furthermore than a mechanical relationship, it is the individual’s energy that portraits the energy flux from a human being to nature, and through water.
The work will be exhibited in one of Kubik’s architectural projects, an innovative architecture firm that proposes sustainable solutions adaptable to contemporary life that are based on the arguments of good design and are developed hand in hand with art.
The jury was made up of Camilo Alvarado, director of Kubik Lab (Colombia); the artist Tutúa Boshell (Colombia); the collector Eduardo Macía (Colombia); the collector Sergio Ferreira (Colombia), and the curator Ana María Lozano.
Regarding the winner, the jury stated that “throughout his career he has adopted sculptural resources, mimetic elements and paradoxical forms to tackle problems that question the contemporary world and its contradictions. On the other hand, he has been working on issues that have to do with human actions in the face of nature, in which monumental trees and paper, waste and knowledge build irreparable tensions. In his latest projects, the artist has undertaken projects for public space, in which they review the relationships that human populations had with their bodies of water ”.