| Composed with the intent to create a sort of survival guide for humanity, Federico Diaz’s collection of work for his exhibition Adhesion at Frederieke Taylor Gallery, explores relationships between the natural world and our ever-evolving manufactured world, through a range of different mediums, all asserting a heavy inference of one side outweighing the other. In his video, Sakura, Diaz makes his clearest proposal of technology’s succession of our minds, our bodies. The artist asserts this initially with some introductory text, the first caption mentioning the philosophy of the Samurai and its view of a cyclical and symbiotic relationship between creation and destruction. |  |
Claire Feely
Composed with the intent to create a sort of survival guide for humanity, Federico Diaz’s collection of work for his exhibition Adhesion at Frederieke Taylor Gallery, explores relationships between the natural world and our ever-evolving manufactured world, through a range of different mediums, all asserting a heavy inference of one side outweighing the other.
In his video, Sakura, Diaz makes his clearest proposal of technology’s succession of our minds, our bodies. The artist asserts this initially with some introductory text, the first caption mentioning the philosophy of the Samurai and its view of a cyclical and symbiotic relationship between creation and destruction. Following this caption, phrases juxtaposing terms of technological description and bodily associations stand by themselves on screen. Their impact quite jarring, maybe even more of an impact than the computer-generated screenplay that follows involving an advertised technology that ends up destroying its host salesperson. “Virtual bleeding”: the uncomfortable combination of something we consider almost imaginary or unreal with something representing our very life and essence not only provokes a slight distress, but confusion and contemplation as well. Other phrases and statements pursue something yet deeper. “Hyper exteriorization” and “digital salvation” appear as something alluding to a corrupted, or perhaps from a neutral standpoint, an at least, shifted spirituality. These suggestions paralleled with the Samurai philosophy show ourselves seeking the greatly aspired, ever-craved utopia not through an imaged nirvana or state of being, but through creating our own sort of fantasy-like perfection through technological creation. This perhaps insinuates a quite revolutionary replacement of the need for virtue, the pursuit of purpose through religion, and the mythology of creation, with the actual act of creating itself.
On a much less literal note, Diaz’s 2D work stands as an eloquent visual reinforcement to the concepts explored in his videos. The works largely contain hard-edged geometric qualities: slick, sterile, and of modern design. Minimalist depictions of branches or trees are the main focus in some; contained and centralized, they are shown through the clean, unpainted, transparent surface. In other works the facade of the pieces present a design resembling something of a map, a digital diagram or tracing of information. Between these lines that compose the readings of trees and digital charts, the transparent material allows for the viewer to discover an underlying layer of bound cloth wrapped into spirals. Upon further inspection, the viewer may also come to notice the built-up layers of cardboard raising the plastic covering four inches from the wall. These natural materials lay separated and distanced, underneath this plastic ground, like artifacts of a remembered time. The surfaces of these pieces are thermo-sensitive, moving and altering themselves slightly in color when confronted with changes in temperature. These seemingly very cold, contrived, inanimate objects actually move, respond to stimuli, are capable of a sort of perception on some level. When considered, they almost seem alive! These pieces, in junction with his videos, reiterate the thought of our creations taking on and possessing their own vivacity.
His sculptures, Liquid Trees, seem to convey this transfer of energy the most obviously. Although they do not actually or literally move as do his videos or 2-dimentional works, these pieces translate the most movement most simplistically, through aesthetic value. Contrary to the medium’s natural properties, Diaz makes the steel sing and soar, moving on an imaginary breeze. These pieces, moving a tad away from the heavy cerebral quality of the rest of the layered and complex pieces, offer the strongest visual translation of his intent to communicate vibration, movement, and life through the otherness of inanimate matter.
Diaz’s Adhesion collection holds together a broad range of translations of life and vibration into the visual. He is able to bring something of such an intangible association into our physical understanding and perception, and he does it not only with aesthetic grace, but with a grounded contemporary concern and pointed perspective, connecting our evolved need for creation and the life that we pass on to our creations.
