“BREATH”

Performance-Happening by Jorge Restrepo

With photographs by Mateo Muñoz

“United we stand,” an oft-repeated phrase and allusive to the desire of doing something and carrying it out together. But behind these three words, there is a much stronger reason, one that in the case of this project is gradually shaped to form a symbolic figure of a numerous family that unites their breaths and breathing to execute an action. The evidence of history shows us that joining the strength of several people is much more powerful than that of just one individual.

This project has a visual impact that goes hand in hand with the name of the work. The fact of uniting breathing, the air and the breaths of a group of people?in this case the entire family? reverberates far beyond the bursting of the balloon at the end of its process of expansion. A meaning that involves many ideas and theories: We are and form part of a whole; and it is the strength of several that makes the difference.

The purpose of the artist?besides managing to expand the balloon by means of the breathing of the members of this family?focuses on the reflections of both the participants and the observer public...it is the union, it is the last breath, it is the joint strength that makes us think beyond the act itself and enter into a reflection about a planet that in this day and age is faced with the uncertainty of lasting, surviving and enduring these times just as humanity does. We human beings are fragile, and every day that goes by we are becoming more vulnerable in the face of too much desire for power and so much selfishness. Humanity’s expectations are ever greater and more ambitious, which unfortunately are not seen from the positive standpoint of growth and development but rather from that destruction and deterioration. We want more but without caring about what it costs and who gets stepped on; and that sensation of a self-destructing planet is frustrating. The hope of the union of some people makes this project a shout from on high to awaken those who need it. What can be more explicit and carry greater weight than the union of the entire extended family? It is from the family where the changes start; and in Jorge Restrepo’s work, which is the result of a long process of experimenting doubts and sensations, where he accomplishes in an incredible way what has been tried to be said with words.

Scarcity, vulnerability and fragility go hand in hand when we talk in terms of entropy; the tendency of a system to exhaust itself, to weaken itself and to fall into a state of disorder. Throughout history and time, human beings have been evolving in various aspects; but at the same time they have been moving backwards in many others. The need to live side by side and to join forces have lost importance. The selfishness of mankind has led to destruction and extinction and to the solace of a new planetary hope; negentropy is converted into the search for hope in a new place for mankind.

This work, in addition to being esthetically impeccable, goes beyond the act itself of breathing through a hose. The apparatus that the artist built for this work was designed to collect the breaths of 42 people at the time. A highly decorated instrument that gives the illusion of an octopus, which through its tentacles?in this case the hoses?feeds from the air in order to survive.

I would like to pause in the description and analysis of the apparatus in this work given that it has a why and a wherefore that are very clear and thought out. It is not simply the result of assembling industrial parts; on the contrary, the artist dedicated himself to understand it thoroughly and familiarize himself with it in order to come up with an apparatus that enhances the activity itself and gives it a more poetic, esthetic and critical meaning.

The act called life consists in inhaling and exhaling, not only the air that gives us vitality but also each part of life itself. It is curious; we are born and we die; we grow and we get old; and in that same way, we inhale and exhale. That routine cycle, which on occasions turns into irony, given that the last breath of one is the first inhalation of another.

In his works Jorge always opts for altering the usual way of doing things; spontaneity and interaction with people are key points in his work. Both the work and the spectator are at a point where sometimes the limits are indistinguishable; the one and the other are the complements that trigger the success of his work and its raison d’être.  It is conceptual or idea art that works for this artist, where the concept and the generating idea are more important than the object of the work itself.

It is the idea and the concept of this work that makes me think immediately of the artist Bill Viola and his work The passing, which has a common core with Jorge Restrepo’s work, is the documentation of a latent state of the human being, inhalation and exhalation of the last minutes of a person’s life (Viola’s mother), contrasted with the harmony of a family that repeats the same rhythm, the same acts of exhaling and inhaling in order to give ‘life’ and/or metaphorically ‘feed’ the balloon that is connected to the apparatus made by the artist. Two artists and two concepts that complement each other and generate ideas and concepts that go beyond the simple fact of constructing and making for harmonizing...the art here is constructed from the sustenance of the idea, which steals the role of the work itself and leads us to reflect upon our very existence.

“Breath” appeals to the event in itself; and it is at that moment where the artist, the work and the external public, which also form part of the functioning of the work, become a lucid and unrepeatable moment that is captured in the camera and in the memory of those who were lucky enough to be part of it. Jorge’s works always form part of active processes and doing. The experience of relating with a very well chosen group of people to carry out each work is a characteristic of this artist who engages in a constant and arduous exploration of relating to his work and with others, of involving and re-creating each concern, each doubt in order to alter his perspective and that of others and reach the important process of feedback.

With this work the reasonings and the questions become more frequent. Life and death, above and below, light and dark…all these dichotomies personify the reality of the world that we inhabit and that is being extinguished more rapidly every day.  These three universal experiences?birth, life and death?are the elements that generate tension.

The photographic document brings to life again each moment of pulsation that occurred in the work. Each unanimous breathing that adds to that of 42 people who carefully and to the sound of one rhythm reaffirm that oft-repeated phrase “united we stand,” a symbolic act in which the union of one family responds to many concerns raised by the artist. 

Jorge Restrepo, throughout his career as an artist, complements each of his works with detailed planning and deconstruction. His works imply a highly detailed process, where he carefully breaks up each part in order to accomplish the impact he seeks. The role of the artist is to raise concerns that are capable of being answered based on his works that take the observer beyond the evident, to reflect and conclude a personal experience that does not have to be the same for all human beings. We have the capacity to reason through our own ideas and thoughts and at the same time start from a personal experience to receive, in turn, a universal one that can respond or, why not, trigger our generator of thoughts.

Melissa Ángel Cabrales

Cali, Colombia, 20 January 2009

Translated by Gertrude Brekelbaum, PhD