This text sheds light on how Juan Pablo Echeverri (b. 1978) envisions his artwork, including his audiovisual pieces. In it, Echeverri asserts that his production method is “intuitive” and innate to his personality. Rather than voice a political, social, or artistic discourse, his work reflects his life; like a written diary, it provides an account of his experiences from the time he enrolled in art school in 1998 until the present (2010). Echeverri recognizes the central importance of autobiography and gay themes to his work. He states: “What I want to see in my work is simply a reflection of what I like seeing […]. It’s true that I have been strongly influenced by the artists we mentioned, but not on a formal level. I am not really interested in formal issues. I am never completely satisfied with my works; I am always left with a sense of longing. If that weren’t the case, I doubt I would ever make anything else.” Hence, the artist voices a sense of dissatisfaction, an obsessive quality, and a belief in his image and personality as a single “construction” that makes it almost impossible to separate the artist from his work. Indeed, this notion of construction is a constant in texts that address gender issues, among them “Cuerpo final: el máximo lienzo” (2009) by Colombian artist Santiago Echeverry (b. 1970) [see doc. no. 1133932].
Echeverri’s attitude evidences a certain indifference towards the art world, perhaps due to how well his work has been received by the general public which, in Echeverri’s view, finds a comic and rebellious reflection of itself in his work. This critical position in relation to the art milieu, which is evident in Echeverri’s efforts to forego conventional art circuits and represent himself as an artist, leaves some conceptual tendencies of his production open to interpretation. This attitude could be seen as another construction of the “self,” a concern crucial to Echeverri’s art, especially in works like miss fotojapón (2000?2010) [doc. no. 1134598].
Juan Pablo Echeverri is a visual artist with a degree from the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá. In 2006, he was selected to participate in a Colombia-England artists’ exchange residency run by the Colombian Ministerio de Cultura’s Programa Nacional de Estímulos.
Ivan Ordóñez (b. 1976) has a degree in social communication from the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá. After studying in London, he is currently (2010) the editor and moderator of Privado: entrevistas con artistas, a blog on visual art from Colombia.