Juan Pablo Plazas
Bogotá, Colombia. 1987
he/him
I was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, and I have been living in Brussels, Belgium since 2012.
As an artist I’m in a constant search for those instants where life feels like a book by written a sequence of unexpected, interconnected moments. I love crossing situations, people, stories and things that make this reality seem magical, pre-written, and simply out my hands. This means that I’m constantly looking for the unexpected side of what is apparently obvious, what is certain in misunderstandings and the mistaken answers to the questions that no one ever asks.
This is why I’m specially attracted to coincidences, which I take as the thread that guides any kind of project I’m doing, as the only proof that something ties this world together. For me, coincidences are the most magical kind of encounters, unexpected meaningful encounters. The problem is that you can’t really produce coincidences. You can’t really control the birth of a coincidence. Instead, you need to create the right environment for them to happen, then you need wait for it and accept whatever it brings. To intentionally meet coincidences is like the recipe for the perfect storm: if you want to be hit by a lighting, you need to make yourself available to it.
In this way, in my work, I create strategies to make myself available to unexpected moments. This often involves creating sculptures, performances, installations, videos, audio pieces, photographs, drawings or whatever other medium the circumstances of a project demands. Using a medium in my work involves often learning something new which in itself calls for an unexpected situation. This is why you will see me often collaborating with other people, performing outside the art world and switching between styles and ways of working.
I’m looking for coincidences because I want to understand the poetic nature of places, people, situations, contexts, ways of thinking, things that are thin and fragile enough to see, ambiguous enough to be declared or treated as facts.
In 2011 I graduated from Anthropology and Art at the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. In 2013 I graduated from the Master’s program at LUCA School of Arts in Brussels. In the last two years I have been to the HISK programe in Ghent among other projects and residencies.
Dear Wim,
Sincerely,
Juan Pablo Plazas