OPENING 31 JULY IN SANTIAGO.
"Dogs, in their historical complexity, matter here. [...] Dogs are not surrogates for theory; they are not here just to think with. They are here to live with. Partners in the crime of human evolution, they are in the garden from the get-go, wily as Coyote."[1]
Donna Haraway
Since 2019, my work has been deeply influenced by the transformative power of recent events that have redefined our existence. This power manifested in the uncertainty of the continuous protests every Friday in downtown Santiago during the Social Outbreak, followed by the new reality imposed by the pandemic, which restructured our daily routines. This power was also seen in the mobilisation of citizens in search of a new social pact, a movement that eventually ended in disillusionment.
As circumstances forced us to look from the streets to the interior of our homes, we began to observe the everyday with a new interest. This approach allows us to see how images of our everyday surroundings reveal the power we have to shape and benefit from our environment by manipulating the objects and beings that inhabit it.
The dog appears in my work as a symbol of how power manifests itself. Descended from the wolf, which shared hunting methods and social structures with humans in prehistoric times, it went from being seen as a threat to becoming a loyal companion. Today, the dog represents a variety of roles, each reflecting the personality that humans project onto them.
Do dogs represent human power over our environment? According to Byung-Chul Han, power is primarily an act of organisation, not destruction: 'To organise means to unite and mediate, to integrate the dominated into a moderately organised space that stabilises domination and makes it durable'.[2] Inspired by this idea, I present a series of paintings - with no title of their own - derived from images selected from digital media that I believe capture notions of power through the figure of the dog. This approach is in line with my previous projects, from the series Ensamblajes Territoriales, exhibited in Madrid in 2021, to my last solo exhibition, El Convulsionado Presente, in 2022, which showed both the traces of demonstrations and human and animal bodies exerting power over others. These pieces, in which power is revealed in acts of violence and force, encapsulate my exploration of the dog and power in general. Through painting, I examine how humans use their dominance to reorganise and reconceptualise the world according to their will.
Johans Peñaloza, artist.
July 2024.
