¿Qué
Quiere Mostrarme la Ciudad? / What does the city want to show me?
Video.
Performance. 2023
The work
of Johannes Gerard proposes an artistic exploration of culture, space
and identity in Quito, through videos, performance and elements
autobiographical. During the process, Gerard toured Quito through
daily journeys in buses or walks around the city.
Letting yourself be carried away by chance, curiosity
and intuition, the artist became a distant observer of urban life,
discovering the diversity, complexity and beauty of the capital.
In their tours he was able to get to know different
places, people, situations and atmospheres that inspired him to
create his work. With his drift, the artist seeks to reveal and
stress the traces of the utopian and the dystopian in the city and
relate them to his own social disconnection and search for solitude.
Through his work, Gerard shows us a vision personal and
criticism of Quito, a city that for the artist becomes dichotomous
since it is at the same time a dream and a nightmare, a place of
meeting and isolation, a reality and a fiction. Quito, like many
cities, is a city that lives in a contradiction, houses intersecting
realities, dreams and nightmares that struggle between the progress
and regression.
It is a city that offers opportunities and challenges,
that welcomes and excludes, that unites and divides, that transforms
and resists, that adapts and rebels, which is invented and
remembered.
Quito lives a reality that It involves fiction, hope
and political disenchantment. The project proposes a cultural
experience manifested in videos about the Daily life and atmosphere
of the city taken during the day and night, and a performance that
narrates the relationship between the city, the people and Gerard.
He artist uses different media such as video and
performance to create a narrative that reflects on identity, memory,
power, violence, endurance. Gerard draws inspiration from his own
biography, as well as the history and culture of Quito, to create a
work that dialogues with the social and political context of the
country. The artist also incorporates elements from nature, popular
art, architecture, religion and literature, to create a visual
language that expresses their sensitivity and commitment to the
environment and human rights humans, each fight is a way to transform
dystopia into utopia.
Rubén
Darío Díaz Chávez Curator No Lugar – Contemporary Art,
Quito,
Ecuador, November 2023
With Thanks To Stroom, The Hague, Netherlands
Live performance : la ciudad, la gente y yo - the city, the people and I
Premiere: 21 November at 2023 No Lugar, Quito,Ecuador
Video Work:Premiere 21 November 2023 at No Lugar, Quito, Ecuador 1: ¿Qué Quiere Mostrarme la Ciudad? (version diurno /
What Does the City Want to Show Me? (day light version)
2: ¿Qué Quiere Mostrarme la Ciudad? (version nocturno /
What Does the City Want to Show Me? (night version )
Link to both version for viewing:
https://vimeo.com/889251586?share=copy
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