Cayetano Ferrer
American, 1981-
Interventions, 2015
Carpet remnant recomposition with classical architectural fragments
Cayetano Ferrer - undated photograph
"Ten years ago I had this experience of walking through a casino and looking at a carpet with a friend who actually lays carpet for a living. I had this feeling of not knowing where this thing ends, and then there was this moment when he saw the seam and reached down and pulled it up. You can almost sum up the whole architecture of Vegas that way -- this very shallow illusion." – Cayetano Ferrer
COMMENTS
Although currently based on the west coast, visual artist Cayetano Ferrer spent many of his formative years in Las Vegas, a metropolitan anomaly that continues to be a subject source for much of his work. Ferrer’s visual fascination with the city began as a teenager barring witness to the demolition of casinos along the strip.
The Las Vegas real estate market has a proclivity for constantly reinventing itself. Spurred on by economic surges and the active imagination of hotel developers, the reconstruction of the infamous “strip” is hyperactive to say the least. For Cayetano, this resulting architectural mosaic has become symbolic of the regenerative and cinematic narratives that the city embodies.
Recently shown at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery (which was part of a much larger exhibition titled “Made in LA”, the inaugural biennial of Los Angeles artists organized by the Hammer Museum and LAXART) Ferrer explored these architectural tropes while simultaneously utilizing a very different visually schizophrenic icon: the casino carpet. Swatch for Remnant Recomposition was created by affixing different geometric fragments to develop a wall-to-wall carpet composed of oddly juxtaposed culturally coded icons. These mass produced textiles are easily recognized for their flamboyant and intricate designs, while the imagery and symbols embedded into casino carpets are often appropriated from various times and cultures. When combined by Ferrer the final product results in a conglomeration of contradicting and disparate meanings.
“Casinos are basically noisy colorful labyrinths and the carpets play a crucial role in this. The basic order of shape and color here is organized in a way to affect how your body moves, and if you look at it on a formal level this is a really powerful experiment. Pathways are inlaid into the graphics of the carpet but they seduce you in certain directions towards a state of disorientation more than showing you the way to anything specific. The paths might seem to be taking you to an exit, but actually draw you in circles through the gaming floor and to the spectacular shopping labyrinths. So we have this situation where aesthetics are sort of guiding movement in these subtle ways.”
“More recently I started looking at this imagery more closely, and I started feeling it was closer to mythology than outright deception. Something as dense with content as these carpets have fragments of ideas that amount to some sort of absurd myth, but I sincerely believe this myth is sort of crucial to understanding important parts of a global human condition. So I started on this equally absurd path to study of these fragments.”
“Even with these deceptive objects which are designed with a visual strategy that specifically asks me, the pedestrian, not to read into its meaning, there are plenty of speculations to be made into their mythological roots. This is most readily visible in the designs that reference the past and I choose to believe that even if these motifs are changed and flattened that these various visual elements that can be recognized are reaching into a deeper meaning. Corporate design on this scale integrates so much market research that our desires are finding their way into these places, and I’m privately trying to embody these spaces to better understand these desires. All of these effects are created to stimulate sensations and memories, and even if the designer is just a carrier of this myth there is some semblance of tradition taking place. In a way this is our new tradition. The internet works this way too and I see these lossy operations in Vegas as a physical kind of proto-internet, with hyperlinks and compression artifacts everywhere you look.”
“Remnant Recomposition was in progress for a couple years as I collected carpet scraps, which they call remnants in the fabric trade. I talked about this before but these cutoffs represent a powerful historical record stored in the patterns, and placing them all together it creates a matrix of contradiction and similarity. As a pedestrian is passing through this threshold, they are passing into a timeless space, not a space with no history as Las Vegas is often described. It’s a sort of convergence of many historical traditions into one location so it deals with time and location in a similar way as the wall.”
Excerpted from an interview by Devon Caranicas in “Los Angeles”, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012
http://www.berlinartlink.com/2012/12/18/cayetano-ferrer-las-vegas-life/
SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS
Cayetano Ferrer's sculptures and installations investigate concepts surrounding the fragment. Utilizing an array of technological methods, the artist works to "restore" such objects, not to their original appearance, but rather to the scheme of his imagination. For this exhibition, the artist was invited to work with objects related to the Museum's collection of classical Greek and Roman sculptures that are customarily on display in SBMA's historic Ludington Court. Taking advantage of the empty space [the statuary has been temporarily moved to prepare for SBMA's forthcoming renovation], Ferrer has installed new and existing works that interact with classical architectural fragments from the Museum's vaults. Highlighting these objects, which are normally considered unfit for display, the artist calls upon the viewer to reconsider them in unconventional ways.
A prominent feature of the exhibition is "Remnant Recomposition" (2012-2015), a sprawling carpet comprised of industrially-manufactured remnants from casinos. Contextualized within Ludington Court, it provides comparisons between art and entertainment. Representing a massive mosaic, this work serves as a platform for the compositions that Ferrer has constructed to support and re-envision the Museum's Greco-Roman fragments.
"Interventions: Cayetano Ferrer" critiques the display and continued resonance of artifacts from the classical era. Conversant in many forms of architecture and design, Ferrer's work operates just as successfully in the realm of conceptual art as it does in the arenas of fantasy architecture and museum conservation. Through this project, he expands his ongoing exploration of fact, fiction, and the limits of perception pertaining not only to the history of objects, but also to the complex history of the museum. As such, it is a most fitting exhibition for SBMA as it enters its 75th year of exhibitions and programs in 2016.
- SBMA Wall Text, 2015