Artists

Nicolás Lamas

Press release

Bringing together sculptures, photographs, assemblages, and installations, The Failure of Order investigates themes of entropy, cognition, material transformation, and the instability of meaning. The exhibition proposes that uncertainty is not a flaw to be overcome, but an intrinsic condition of our relationship with the world; revealing that what escapes classification, measurement, and representation is not beyond our systems of knowledge, but constitutes a hidden dimension within every structure we create. Rather than depicting the collapse of systems, the exhibition focuses on the inherent limits of representation and knowledge. It examines the gap between reality and the models we construct to comprehend it, revealing how each attempt to impose order simultaneously exposes new layers of complexity. Calling upon everything from great founding myths (such as Icarus or Plato’s allegory of the cave) to historical periods, cosmology and archaeology, he assembles and connects elements to form systems. Every system for understanding the world (language, the sciences, religion, mythology,…) produces intelligibility at the cost of reducing and distancing itself from other systems. Lamas observes this with interest, exploiting its anomalies and paradoxes as much as its proximities and similarities. One could say that he is attuned to a certain kind of “noise”: to the sound of the chaos humanity generates within its own ecosystem. Some works are more confrontational or somber, evoking humanity’s extractivist stance (Scar, Hubris, The scattered remains of our certainties), others temper the fantasy of eternity (Agonic god, Parallel worlds, Excess of light), while still others reveal more open-ended connections (Inner space / outer Space, Palimpsest of the unknown). Whether by bringing together a silicon wafer (used to make electronic chips) and a Roman emperor; insects and technological artefacts; a nature ravaged by human activity in the paradoxical attempt to better understand it (Mondes invisibles, Excess of light); or a fixed representation of the world (The illusion of stability, Transient body / Latent vision), Lamas opens up a wide field of possible connections. Never literal, he offers paths of thought and interpretation. He speaks to us of a world in constant flux, one that seems ever harder to apprehend in order to live together within it. He reminds us of the risks at stake. Yet beyond this warning, he shows that it is the collective and intelligent interaction (between individuals and organisms, between humans and their environment) that will allow us to meet the challenges that inevitably stand before us all.