Nicolás Paris inaugurates an Experimental Educational Space at MUAC, Mexico

Nicolás Paris’s (1977, Bogotá, Colombia) training as an architect and a teacher has been a determining factor in his approach to artistic practice. His work is an attempt to build mediation processes conducive to produce and condense events or places developing environments that foster dialogue between the spectator and the exhibition space. For this purpose, he chooses drawing as a learning tool that allows him to carry out an artistic research regarding the way in which supports used in art are affected, in order to mediate in creative processes between surfaces and viewers, over time. As a result, his work develops in the context of projects defined through images and activities that encourage a two-way- exchange of reflections, and at the same time evince intermediate stages of transformation, both at the operational level and at the representative or metaphorical ones.

Galleries 7 and 8 of the University Museum of Contemporary Art will present simultaneously an exhibition and an experimental educational project by Nicolás Paris aimed at integrating the visitor in the process of production that the work implies, on the basis of the experience itself. While every creative process, insofar as it takes place in a social ambit, results in an aesthetic experience that is not restricted to the finished product, the artwork is a process within the social fabric insofar as it is activated and acknowledged as relevant to artistic practice, transforming the sphere of art into a social experience characterized by its practical indetermination.

Nicolás Paris conceives this project as a “temporary school” that puts into circulation exercises that activate or generate work methods. The proposal is structured around three axes: architecture as a model, education as a system, and drawing as a tool. Within this framework, the process will be assembled on the basis of educational experiences or exercises that propose different ways of producing and sharing knowledge. It consists in a re-interpretation of collective work, utilizing words and diagrams, assuming the uncertainty and the challenge implied in group work.

The resistance exercises will take place in the framework of an architecture conceived by Nicolás Paris specifically for this project, which is structured into two phases. The first of these takes place in Gallery 7: a temporary school for teachers and a school of mediation for the area of public programs of MUAC and other similar institutions. In a second stage, Gallery 8 will feature a series of laboratories (meetings with teachers, artists, architects, thinkers from the city, who will share with the public their different work methods) and the para-exhibitions −temporary micro-exhibitions − that will make it possible to explore and provide visibility to educational material and documents on the relationship between education and art.

Nicolás Paris lives and works in the same city. His solo shows are “Algo tan simple como una línea y un círculo”, Laboratorio 987, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC) León, Spain, 2008; “Doble faz”, Valenzuela Klenner Gallery, Bogotá, Colombia, 2008. Among his group shows, special mention may be made of Sanbam studio, Beijing, China, 2008; Cige- Beijing, Polígrafa, Beijing, China, 2008; Scope, Valenzuela Klenner Gallery, Basel, Switzerland, 2008; Artist’s Book, International Book Fair, Bogotá, Colombia, 2007; Art Basel Miami Beach, Polígrafa, Miami, USA, 2007; “N.N. Retratos de Siglo XXI ”, El Garaje Sala de Arte Joven, Bogotá, Colombia, 2006. He engages in educational projects such as drawing laboratories and workshops aimed at supporting the work of museum education departments and the development of academic CVs in educational institutions, in the framework of exhibitions.

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* curator, ** adjunct curator