WANDERING WALLS, PABLO PONCE’S MULTI-DISCIPLINARY INSTALLATION

Galerie De Witte Voet is pleased to announce Wandering Walls, an exhibition of visual artist Pablo Ponce’s latest multidisciplinary installation on view at Kerkstraat 135 in Amsterdam, Saturday 5 September – 24 October 2015. Wandering Walls is a projected interaction of dance, acting, mime, visual art and music in an installation built in ceramics. This is Pablo Ponce’s first solo show with the gallery following his inclusion in two group exhibitions in the past year. 

Wandering Walls is a dynamic, multi-media installation that invites voyeuristic participation in a politically charged, public dreamscape. Surreal architectural structures textured by time through the artist’s own hand seem locked in blocks of city and sea segments that could be crossed or at least emancipated, by a shift in perspective.

A poetic metaphor about immigration and identity, Ponce uses symbolic elements, such as giant thumb-towers with protruding fingerprints and rocking ladders of spiritual ascension to propose a shifting, psychologically tiered relationship between personal geography, biography and borders. His carefully crafted ceramic territories evoke a metaphorical obstacle course, a playground, and prison simultaneously.

Like an abandoned archeological excavation animated by the light and music of a projected theatrical/dance performance, Wandering Walls provokes an unease of purpose and identity in the viewer- who am I here? Or here? Or when I am/was here? Inspired by both the political and universal, Ponce invited dancers from Suriname, Portugal, Japan and Mexico to create their own personas for their performances in the projected film, offering multiple perspectives on borders to immigration and within the self.
"Walls have always existed in the history of humanity,” says Ponce. “These walls have separated territories, countries, empires, family and friends. There are also mental walls; walls that are built by human beings in their minds. The walls appear motionless, but they are in constant movement. They are wandering giants that want to be redeemed."


Born in La Plata, Argentina, Ponce studied scenography in the Fine Arts Department at Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP) and received his degree in 1998. He spent three years honing this craft professionally in Mexico before moving to Amsterdam, where he received his bachelor's degree in ceramics from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2012.
Ponce brings his extensive experience as a professional scenographer to play in his work as an independent visual artist, innovatively employing the techniques of theater and clay to create moving, multi-dimensional worlds where the psycho-political constructs of boundaries and walls can co-exist, clash and collapse freely.

Ponce lives and works in Amsterdam and was recently awarded a subsidy grant from Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst (AFK) to complete this project. International collaborators include: Tine Grgurevic "BOWRAIN" (composer), Ana Ladas (choreographer and dancer), Risa Takita (dancer), Keops Guerrero (dancer), Linar Ogenia (dancer), Robert Gent (mime and actor) and Diego Ospina Melo (cameraman and film editor).

For more information about Pablo Ponce, please visit his website:
www.pablo-ponce.com. For more information about Galerie De Witte Voet, visit www.galeriedewittevoet or contact info@galeriedewittevoet.nl. AGENDA CULTURAL. CíRCULO D.M.