Luis Úrculo: The Things

Stop reading these characters. The twenty-nine of them (including spaces) that your eyes have registered before the first period are enough. You already have in your hands the precise substance, the indicated object to get immersed in this exposition, you just have to stop doing whatever you are doing and start manipulating the piece of paper, start transforming it partially into something else: simple and imperfect spheres –instant sculptures- are welcome. But while in progress, the most important thing is: be skeptic about the information!

The work of Luis Úrculo (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1987) is comparable to what in botany is known as concrescence. The different facets of his artistic practice emerge simultaneously and thus generate an indivisible body; architecture, drawing, photography, installation, audio, video, performance actions, among other “parts” are combined in a single statement or aesthetic position. This amalgam of media and disciplines allows this artist to open to the possibility of camouflaging and seducing through subtle conjuring tricks of invisible-reality. In essence, this is what defines his contemporary work.

How many corridors did Robert Walser go through to get to how many rooms? Who greeted the spectators -from the right side of the back seat- on that fabulous 1958 Hongqui Red Flag while passing by a roundabout full of Washingtonian palms trees and Carebara bengalensis ants? Don’t be overwhelmed if you don’t know the answers … there are clues in front of you: pre-Hispanic ball games, cigarette brands, displacement of pianos, a deflating polka dot balloon , a detailed list of works of art whose author has been beheaded, various plastics in motion, tools, key erasures. Walser and Úrculo (both renowned assistants of inventors and deeply disturbed schizophrenics) also share a strange taste for visualizing information and, just like that … turn it into something else, another kind of substance.

Before launching your sphere into the vacuum, quietly say: “Reading is an act”. Georges Perec.

Text by Víctor Palacios