nervio

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Liliana Sánchez & Santiago Díaz-Escamilla

Nervio (Nerve) builds on the collaboration between artists Liliana Sánchez and Santiago Díaz-Escamilla that began in February 2020, when for the first time their work was displayed in our gallery space in an integrated manner under the title Ser, Dejar, Estar. Some shared interests and the shifting and latent aspect that characterizes the practice of both artists, allowed them to develop a work that sought to destabilize the notion of the art object.  In addition, Sánchez and Díaz-Escamilla put themselves to the task of creating a poster for the exhibition in the installations of Rélampago, a Bogotá based print workshop, which resulted in the creation of a series of abstract linoleum prints.  Mediated by the artists’ resistance to traditional graphic work so distant from their practice, Sánchez and Díaz-Escamilla produced a series of prints that evidence the many trials and errors involved in the printing process. 
Produced two years ago, the linoleum prints with amorphous forms that seem to accidentally float or slide out of the page, today are converted into conceptual and material destabilizers that made way for the creation of a highly experimental exhibition which in Sánchez´s words:  “puts forth a series of questions surrounding artistic creation, creativity and alternative ways of doing research that are often disregarded when one adheres to traditional ways of working.”
Far from presenting an exhibition based on an extensive research process with a set objective in mind, Sánchez and Díaz-Escamilla conceived Nervio as a “circuit of situations” or a total work of art that responds to the specific attributes of an architectural space and converses in an intuitive manner with works (or a lack thereof) by Luisa Ungar, Alex Rodríguez, David Peña, Luis Roldán, and Adolfo Bernal. Like magnets, the linoleum prints strategically installed throughout the space, attract and feed from the object based works that like echoes, resound and destabilize the viewer. 
Nervio is a think tank providing a non-traditional experience of an exhibition space. It articulates the notion of “collaboration” as one that surpasses the simple execution of a joint action.  For Sánchez and Díaz-Escamilla, collaboration is understood as  “a presence that destabilizes the other” and one in which uncertainty lies implicit within.  Albeit challenging, the collaboration between the artists after a two-year hiatus, brought along with it a renovated spirit of freedom that translated into a playing scenario marked by chance. 
Paula Bossa