Possession is an impulse that quickly settles into control. Inevitably, what is not understood is captured, examined, and when it presents some exploitable quality, it becomes a tool, a possibility. Wind is a strongly romanticized element, allowing heroism to be injected into moments that might otherwise seem tasteless. At the same time, its manifestation has a revealing quality. It dusts off what is latent and shows us that our environment is not pristine—that there is the precarious, the hidden, the forgettable, the unfixed. This duality forces its will upon us; we cannot stop it—it is there whether for our convenience or not. We can try to simulate it in forced controlled conditions, but it is well known that that’s not wind.
The exhibition consists of three exemplary objects—Fig. 1, Fig. 2, and Fig 3. Each one aims to recreate, with different processes and materiality, the tensions between misinformation and the drive to capture.
Mauricio López F. is a Chilean artist currently based in Chicago. His practice explores the entanglement of visuality, sound, and motion by carefully tensioning them into unexpected social synchronizations. With a foundation in music, he has expanded into a broader material territory, which he navigates by subverting their expected roles. This seemingly unattached praxis distills aspects of his Chilean heritage, where discomfort often finds refuge in sardonicism. His pieces engage with themes of cultural friction, labor, and translation, mainly through sculpture, installation, performance, photography, and drawing. A recent graduate of the MFA in Sound program at SAIC, his work has been featured at SITE Galleries, Expo Chicago, and in spaces across the Americas and Europe.