Farol Santander, São Paulo, SP
2021
Executive Production

Curated by: Marcello Dantas

Born in Chile and based in New York, Iván Navarro has created a method of involving the viewer using elements that seduce the eye, such as mirrors, lights and glass. Electricity is also an essential element in his work: energised, the work reveals a parallel dimension and the possibility of the illusion of an infinity – which doesn’t exist, but is perceived. The play between the body and vision produces a doubt about which portal is in front of us.

When we enter a labyrinth of colour and mirrors, we find ourselves in front of a unique dimension of existence. The labyrinth is the place where we lose ourselves; the mirror, where we find ourselves. What if the mirror, instead of reflecting what we are, reflected what is inside us? This moment of revelation shows us the reverse side of the mind that reasons, the abyss that inhabits us.

The event in Iván Navarro’s work is in the territory of uncertainty. It systematically provokes our senses, making them doubt what they perceive. The idea of seeing in order to believe does not apply to this experience: in the presence of his works, there is, on the one hand, the certainty that one is seeing, and, on the other, the impression that one is being betrayed by one’s senses – because they defy reason. Seeing is not believing.

The artist works with a specific type of material called an interrogation mirror – normally used by police officers and market behaviour analysts, as it allows them to see the image from only one side. The name of the artefact is in itself a conceptual proposition of the work: a mirror that asks questions, that doesn’t offer answers, but demands behaviour or revelation from the observer. The questioning that arises with each glance is, in itself, a participatory act in front of the work. Deep down, we are all in life with an enormous curiosity to discover who we are and what we reflect. But above all, the question always remains: what’s behind the mirror?

The installation presented here was realised in collaboration with the artist Courtney Smith. It places us in this symbolic space of infinity, a place where we realise that we will never have enough breath to reach the end. Using lights, mirrors and ambiguous positions, Navarro creates a situation in which his work is consummated from our position in relation to so many reflections. This abyssal sensation, of voids, gaps and perspectives that open onto an unknown dimension, could be the awareness of a parallel universe, a secret plot or an altered state of perception. To travel through the labyrinth is to have a clear notion that there is something beyond the world of appearances; understanding the labyrinth enables us to see our end in infinity, and to learn what it is to be exfinite.