This exhibition, held in partnership with MEIAC, inaugurates an exchange program between the two institutions, which includes selected video works exhibited in Sala Sonae in recent years, and which will now be part of the Badajoz museum program.

Daniel Canogar (Madrid, 1964) is one of the most important international artists in the field of multimedia arts and a pioneer in the use of new digital languages ​​that for over 25 years have embodied an extensive and continuous path. There is a richness of technical and thematic diversity in Daniel Canogar's work. However, the issue of social change caused by the technological development of digital and the consequent impact on the daily world, on the relationship with others and with ourselves is presented as a crosscutting issue. His artistic approach reflects a critical duality reflection that explores the dichotomy between Technophilia (immediate and uncritical adherence to technological innovations) and Technophobia (fear and rejection of new technologies), and the changing perspective on the understanding of human beings on planet Earth.

Teratologies is an art installation in which the visitor is surrounded by a set of 24 still images projected by a web of suspended optical cables. The images reveal enigmatic figurative elements with fascinating shapes and chromatism that we first associate with nature, yet without being able to easily discern its real origin. The etymological origin of the term comes from the Greek and relates to the study and report of monstrosities. Teratology is a field of medical science devoted to the study of environmental influences in altering normal prenatal development. Several teratogenic agents include viruses, bacteria, fungi, worms, parasites responsible for various congenital anomalies.

Claiming the concept of the artist as a researcher, Daniel Canogar establishes a connection between art and science, using real images of these microscopic agents that he projects individually, giving them a photographic dimension of strong plasticity. Such images spread across the walls attracting and engaging the audience in an immersive experience. If, on the one hand, the visitor is metaphorically contaminated by receiving the virtual projection of these biological organisms, on the other, he or she becomes an integral part of the whole, being another image/organism agent. As the artist draws these images from darkness and brings them to light, he also provocatively projects a critical reflection on another pressing question of today's world: Is not the human being the main virus on the planet?

Adelaide Ginga

Curator