| PRESENTATION
Daniel Canogar’s exhibit Ingrávidos, which the Fundación Telefónica is pleased to be hosting, can be considered an essay on modernity rooted in a desire as ancient as our own existence: the search to escape our own limits, a desire for the infinite. Critic and researcher of contemporary phenomena, uncommonly brilliant, Daniel Canogar is at times an anthropologist, at times cultural critic, and always an artist. He quotes Timothy Leary, guru of the psychedelic movement, very effectively in his current exploration: gravity – the fall from grace described in Genesis – is a curse which has been borne by humanity throughout history, but now, thanks to our technology, we are beginning to escape from the planetary hole we inhabit. Mediated by the mechanization of movement this evolutionary phase of our development is transforming us from homo sapiens to homo astronauticus. To support his claim, as does the anthropologist, Canogar has visited and now describes for us, all those mechanical simulations of modern invention to bring us closer to weightlessness: roller coasters, amusement parks, the controlled suicide known as bungee jumping, giant swings (Skycoaster), flight simulators, cinema of attractions, etc. Canogar, using an archival approach, shows us a series of works of arts created especially for the weightlessness of space or related to our desire to travel in space. Both Canogar’s essays and his exhibition on the phenomenon of weightlessness our examples of the Fundación Telefónica’s aim to bring the general public in closer contact with the possible applications of the world of science and technology to contemporary cultural and artistic developments. We hope we have contributed to this process. Fernando Labad
Photos: Daniel Canogar
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