Juan Camacho
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Juan Carlos Camacho Vega (born February 13, 1977, in Bucaramanga) is a Colombian sculptor and writer. His artworks explore the use of words as a way of construction of mind sculpture. Influenced by artists such as Joseph Kosuth and Yves Klein, he does not consider himself a conceptualist art, but as a traditional craftsman who works with words.
His main sculpture, entitled “Conversación con Juan Camacho” exhibits, in a hypothetical way, the theoretical implications that may have the construction of more than 20 pieces.
[edit] Works
The importance of Juan Camacho's work takes root more than in the construction of objects, in the reinterpretation of the same ones by a contemplative attitude capable of creating in them a sufficient foundation-speech to support the idea of this one as sculpture. In 2000 he proposed “Patente de la nada” (Patent of the Nothing), in a symbolic act that made him known internationally. In such preposition, he was demonstrating clearly his artistic attitude by this time: "My contribution to the art is not to do anything, just let it be in status quo".
The above mentioned contemplative attitude led him to the construction of "The Biggest Museum of the World " in 2001; a perfect white cube of 3 meters of edge where the spectator was entering and perceiving emptiness, but that to the moment to go out was discovering an advertisement that was an invitation to enter in fact, so that the walls were delimiting it on the outside. According to his initial idea, the world was full of objects and could be understood as a gigantic museum in which the only thing that would be needed would be an interpreter: the artist.
In 2002 he proposed the conversation as a sculptural space in which the essential thing already is not the ideological content of the idea materializable, nor the speech that it supports, but the same act in itself as conscience of a daily relation in which the communicative experience is loaded with an additional expectation and can be understood as a sculpture. Since then, he adopted the oral mechanism as form of materialization of the ideas and his exhibitions were consisting of speech acts in galleries and museum spaces of those that a voucher of assistance was delivering to the attendees as certificate of acquisition of the work.
His most polemic work is the supposition of sculptures that only exist in the mind of the artist, which are supposed and assume the credibility of the buyer towards the same one.
Since the middle of 2004 he has left the artistic intentional creation and has devoted himself to remember and document previous events, in a qualified text " The contemplative act of the memory sculpts the mind ", that is not any more than a variation than the contemplative attitude in the perspective of the time and thanks to which he has devoted itself to sell his recollections as sculptures
