Berlin-based artist, performer and curator Andrés Galeano could just as well have become a prolific collector instead of a visual artist. Walking into his studio is akin to entering a cabinet of curiosities, with antique figurines, a dead jarred lizard, and other atypical objects neatly arranged on shallow shelves and thousands of photographs in clean piles in boxes, seemingly to no end. The Catalonian Kunsthochschule Weißensee graduate shared some insights into his upcoming exhibition of found photography.
What kinds of motifs interest you?
I’m interested in portraying human ways of ascending to heaven, but on Earth, and the desire to fly. I like using mistakes, like over-exposures, or fingers on the lens. I don’t think it’s a mistake, rather a new way to approach it. For example I look at a mistake and say, OK, this is not a mistake, this is great, how can I highlight this, elevate it, take advantage of it?
The works are often quite humorous.
Humour? I think it’s horrible when you try to be funny or try to be ironic. Humour is important to me, but the humour comes from the poetry in seeing something differently than how it was originally intended.
Why rescue trash?
I like the sensibility of used things. They have a history, a life. Some galleries asked me to scan images and enlarge them, but that perverts the original spirit. I’m saying, look at this the way it is, intimately. It’s an alchemist way of working to turn trash and shit into gold. It has no value until I give it value.
Unknown Photographers Jun 13-Jul 18 | Pavlov’s Dog
