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Opening Reception: Thursday, Oct 28, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
bitforms gallery is pleased to announce Trace, the first solo exhibition in New York of work by celebrated
Spanish artist Daniel Canogar. On view will be two large-scale installations, Spin and Dial M for Murder, also
making their United States premiere.
Daniel Canogar has exhibited widely in Spain and throughout Europe and is perhaps best known for his
sculptural projections that use light and fiber optic cables to evoke modern phantasmagoria. Much of
Canogar’s practice is informed by the tradition of the readymade and he frequently raids dumpsters and
sources materials from garbage heaps near his studio in Madrid to create his photography, sculpture, and
installations.
Using discarded DVDs, VHS tapes, computer parts, lenses, light bulbs, telephone wires, and modem cables,
the works on view in Trace are built on the history of the nouveau réalistes’ overt appropriation of reality into
their practice. Recalling both Jacques de la Villeglé’s ripped film posters and Arman’s Poubelles series
constructed of collected trash, Canogar examines the vestiges of our obsolete and discarded technologies
and reanimates them to reveal new meaning.
Dial M for Murder is an elaborate network of tape ripped from a VHS copy of Alfred Hitchcock's eponymous
film. Forming a latticework of crisscrossed lines spreading across the gallery, a video animation is precisely
aimed at these radiating geometries and appears to constantly move along the tape, much as the head in
the VCR would have done. A living system also becomes apparent, the animation spiriting a vital narrative
forward, evoking a pumping heart, veins and arteries. Reviving this celluloid artifact to dramatic effect, the
animation was inspired by Saul Bass' credits for Hitchcock's films, as well as the filmmaker's sawtoothed
suspense plots.
Exploring the short life expectancy of the technologies we cast off, Spin is comprised of the copied
contents of 100 discarded DVDs that 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.
A concurrent exhibition held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City titled “Brain: The
Inside Story” will feature a monumentally-sized, brand new installation by Canogar that visually simulates
the human brain’s synaptic impulses.
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