"A rose is a rose is a rose" said Gertrude Stein, a friend of Picasso's in his parisian years. Language plays with us and we try building shapes with it. There are numerous types of roses, starting with "Why not sneeze, Rrose Sélavy?" the renowned 'ready made' sculpture by Marcel Duchamp to the roses in the fabulous El Rosedal Garden in Palermo, Buenos Aires.

What is the function played by language in art pieces?

Since egiptian antiquity or maya codices, elements have been employed to represent what we now call 'word'; later on, the written word appears in works of art , whether it be as means to denote certain origin or to make sense of a particular content, as it is the case with 'Las monjas coronadas' exhibited as "La Muerte Barroca" in Banco de la República. The contemplation of tension between materiality and concept, and even so the materiality and language itself (or the dematerialization of the work of art, when this one is composed solely of written language, like in Yoko Ono's list of instructions), have motivated us to review the way in which a group of contemporary artists incorporate text in their work.

"Contexto" aims to highlight the linguistic and/or conceptual turn in contemporary production.

Ana Patricia Gómez - Director