Clown / Payaso
Andres Carranza
Thursday, August 22, 2019
12:00 - 6:00pm
Andres Carranza, Clown/Pasayo (still), 2010
signs and symbols presents Clown / Payaso, a video portrait by Andres Carranza as part of artists & allies II. The work belongs to a self-experimental phase in Carranza's practice, using his body as art and questioning his mystical power as an artist.
In this video performance, Carranza role-plays an alter ego, a Jungian archetypical figure represented by a monochromatic and animalistic clown. He faces the viewer, framed as a 'claro/oscuro' portrait - a representation of duality. His heartbeat becomes the soundtrack, building tension and expectation in its repetition, the increased accumulation of the clown's breath trapped in a balloon. As the balloon expands, its capacity for transformation is tested and pushed to the limit. Ultimately, the artist/clown vanishes from the stage with a bang, transforming from reality into illusion with a sudden dilution into dark nothingness.
Clown / Payaso, 2010
HD color video with sound, RT 14:00
andres carranza was born in 1975 in San Jose, Costa Rica and currently lives and works between Costa Rica and New York. Trained as an architect, his work can be positioned at the junction of art and architecture, as his artistic practice embraces material and space as primordial elements within specific environments. Carranza studied Architecture at the U.D.I Universidad del Diseño, Costa Rica and Film at Universidad Veritas, Costa Rica. Since 1999, his work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions internationally. He represented Costa Rica in the 25th São Paulo Biennale and received the second Grand Prize in the 2nd edition of the Central American Biennale. In 2003, he gained recognition for his video works in Central America’s first video art exhibition Inquieta Imagen. His work, which has grown to encompass performance, video, installation, sculpture and painting, has been exhibited in Spain, Dominican Republic, China, Panama, Brazil, London, Barcelona, the United States and Costa Rica. Carranza continues to have two parallel studios, having an active studio practice as an artist as well as an architectural practice.