From August 31 to December 8, 2024, the exhibition Manigua by nicolás paris at Kunsthalle Münster will be the first time works by the Colombian artist have been shown in a German institution. His work is a poetic resistance to conventions, rules and entrenched beliefs. His working method, which is based on the act of drawing, dialog and architecture, aims to initiate open and experimental learning processes. Through the knowledge thus generated, new ways of being together are found. paris transforms the exhibition space into a place of egalitarian, collaborative and exploratory exchange, with collective experience at its heart. His work is guided by his interest in the intelligence of nature.
Image above: nicolás paris, Protobosque (Still), 2023, Einkanalvideo, Farbe, Loop / Single-channel video, colour, loop. Courtesy the artist
nicolás paris’ installations, drawings, objects, workshops and videos, as well as his collaborative educational projects, are characterized by delicacy and stillness. One of the artist’s fundamental strategies is based on relationships and dialog – between people, animals, clouds, plants or light. In his immersive installation, which he created especially for the Kunsthalle Münster, as well as in the space-consuming presentation of his video Protobosque (2023), he examines the symbiotic coexistence of the forest, which is challenged in its functionality by human intervention. The forest behaves as if it were a single organism. paris transforms the forest into an abstraction as a living system that functions through diverse relationships and interactions, making its knowledge visible, audible and tangible. At the same time, paris uses the forest as a model for exchange and empathy.
The artist encounters our location in the world and the urgency of entering into a connection with the environment in order to counter the moment of advancing destruction and exploitation of man and nature. In doing so, he refers to alienation as described by Jean-Baptiste Vidalou in his book We Are Forests: Inhabiting Territories in Struggle (first published in 2017). He uses the forest as an interspecies school, referring to it as a place of origin stories and a sensory communication network. In the forest, we learn basic lessons about interdependence, mutual aid, and defense systems that operate in balance rather than annihilation.
With his works, paris allows a different perspective, creating an awareness of missing connections to our environment. He attempts to counter the decontextualized knowledge, consisting of data and theories that the human body is unable to process, with meaningful experiences, thereby addressing a deficit in our Western society. It explores approaches outside of academic knowledge, opening up a space beyond rationality and calculation.
Manigua allows visitors to immerse themselves in other forms of knowledge – by moving through the exhibition in time and space. Temporary relationships are entered into that make it possible to gain a different perspective on our environment and the knowledge it contains. His expansive installation becomes a stage for exercises that can be tried out together or alone.
The accompanying program is an essential part of the exhibition and consists of a series of collaborative, unscripted, workshop-like encounters that are open to the public: Exercises, workshops, experiments. paris understands the exhibition as a classroom, a place of learning, where the positions of teacher and student are fluid. In his classroom, people learn from and with each other without hierarchy, not only from people, but from all things, animate and inanimate. At the same time, there is always the question of how things relate to each other and what knowledge the forest has to offer in this regard.
Accompanying program:
31.8.2024, 6 p.m. – midnight: Night of Museums and Galleries
1.9.2024, 3 pm: Among trees, together. Talk and reading with nicolás paris and Merle Radtke (EN)
Curator: Merle Radtke
WHEN?
Opening: Friday, August 30, 2024, 6 p.m.
Exhibition dates: Saturday, August 31 – Sunday, December 8, 2024
Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 12 – 6 pm
WHERE?
Kunsthalle Münster
Hafenweg 28
5. Stock
48155 Münster
