Gabriel Sierra

Born 1975 in San Juan Nepomuceno, Bolívar (COL)
Lives and works in Bogotá (COL)

“My work is based in exercises of representation that depend on situations arising from context and observation. I would say that the process of thinking about and making art is amorphous; we can play with an idea on multiple levels, and connect it to a specific problem. I think every project is different and also the same at a certain point. I start working with ideas about language, then I try to represent them physically and the evolution of an idea goes through several stages of representation. Some ideas take years to find the proper shape and context, or a single idea will take many shapes over time. It all depends on the circumstances that resolve the work. A small idea can grow with the characteristics or signification of a large exhibition space, or the opposite can happen, a big idea can become physically smaller to find its identity in an ordinary object.  Something important to consider here is the life of a concept; many of the small objects I create are experiments, pieces of a system, or simply a model to explain something. When ideas take the format of architecture or objects, they establish a commitment to the experience of the viewer. I’m obsessed with the idea of time and its complexity and how culture represents duration in different disciplinary fields, such as architecture. In this sense, I’m particularly interested in representing the experiences of spending time in the spaces where we live.”

— Gabriel Sierra, 2011