GABRIEL SIERRA, Before Present
installation view at Kunsthalle Zürich 2015
photo: THOMAS STRUB

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GABRIEL SIERRA, Before Present
installation view at Kunsthalle Zürich 2015
photo: THOMAS STRUB

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GABRIEL SIERRA, Before Present
installation view at Kunsthalle Zürich 2015
photo: THOMAS STRUB

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GABRIEL SIERRA, Before Present
installation view at Kunsthalle Zürich 2015
photo: THOMAS STRUB

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GABRIEL SIERRA, Before Present
installation view at Kunsthalle Zürich 2015
photo: THOMAS STRUB

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GABRIEL SIERRA, Before Present
installation view at Kunsthalle Zürich 2015
photo: THOMAS STRUB

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GABRIEL SIERRA, Before Present
installation view at Kunsthalle Zürich 2015
photo: THOMAS STRUB

all images courtesy the artist and Kunsthalle Zürich

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GABRIEL SIERRA‘s work destabilizes our perception of apparently familiar objects and situations. His precise interventions subvert our initial observations and highlight the unexpected interstices between sight, reality, language and perception.

The Colombian artist tackles the three rooms on the first floor of the Kunsthalle Zürich with a solo exhibition entitled Before Present. On show is a series of new site-specific works that play with the architecture of the institution and its succession of spaces. The first room includes a black watch tied to the heater, two loopholes, two wall pieces made of yellow construction wood, as well as a large sculpture and a passageway both in plywood.

After entering the second room via the passageway, the visitor has the fleeting sensation that he has been there before since the second space is the exact repetition of the first one. The unique difference is the time set on the watch: in one, time lags behind, while in another it runs ahead.

Third passageway. Third room. And again the visitor stands in the copy of the first and second space. The watch in this last reenactment seems to give the correct time. Finally the exhibition ends like it starts: with a light situated intentionally at the height of the eyes of the viewer with the function – according to the press release – ‘to erase the images of the retina before entering and after leaving the exhibition’.

With an austere and quiet simplicity, SIERRA‘s installation seems to be playing a game of hide and seek with visitors thwarted expectations and denied certainties, which open up new ways of perceiving objects and situations. Eventually the visitor is invited to play a part of the exhibition by how they behave in the setting.

Before Present by GABRIEL SIERRA is on view at Kunsthalle Zürich until February 7, 2015

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