Things do not end, we are their continuation

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"Las cosas no terminan, somos su continuación"

 

Adolfo Bernal

Antonio Caro

Bernardo Ortiz

Carlos Alfonso

Luz Lizarazo

Luis Roldán

María Teresa Hincapié

Santiago Díaz-Escamilla

 

The artistic practice of Adolfo Bernal (1954-2008)—so singular, complex, and enigmatic—harmoniously synthesizes design, communication, and poetry. His work stands out for its use of succinct and isolated words, which, according to poet Gloria Posada, “emphasizes their character as an unrepeatable graphic and acoustic sign.”[1] Words, converted into an advertising poster—whose habitat is the public urban context—but stripped of their traditional function of promoting and persuading, are deployed here on a simple and precarious support like paper, to become a signal, sign, or “visual impression” that seeks to actively affect the unsuspecting passerby.

 

“Things do not end, we are their continuation” takes as a thematic axis and dialogue catalyst Bernal’s textual production carried out between 1975 and 1989. Additionally, it draws inspiration from the collection of poems Antes del día [Before the day], written and published by Bernal in 1976, when he was still a Design student at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín. This book of poems represented a turning point in Bernal’s artistic journey since the study of words here turned towards the synthesis of poetic discourse and later towards the radical proposal of converting words into images. Thus, the exhibition “Things do not end, we are their continuation” seeks to open dialogues between diverse artistic explorations that use language as a fundamental pillar and that resonate with specific aspects of Bernal’s textual production, such as the synthesizing impulse, the force of expression behind a few words, and the visual and sonorous potential of words. To encourage new readings of the works displayed in the exhibit space, expand their discursive scope, re-signify their meaning, and destabilize, the exhibition is an invitation to re-think the function of language, its metaphorical properties, and the precision of ideas.