
Gallery façade. November 2016.

Exhibition view.

Cercas. 2016, typed text on old notarial paper.

Exhibition view.

Planos (Bogotá). 2008, 35 x 43 cm, handwritten ink on paper.

Exhibition view.

Palabras voraces. 2016, 61,3 x 57,4 cm, typed text on mulberry paper.

Exhibition view.

Exhibition view.

Agujas. 2015, 53 x 53 cm, industrial needles and copper on mdf.

Concierto 5o48, Concierto g07h. 2016, found wooden objects and black lacquer .

Exhibition view.

Exhibition view.

Fuga (del 1 al 5). 2009, 59,5 x 43 cm, steel needles on printed paper.

Canción sefardita. 2009, 47,3 x 62,3 cm, typed text on paper.
Information
Johanna Calle (Bogotá, Colombia, 1965) started to deal with art through painting as a way to name and give name to the ideas that language simply couldn’t achieve. She belongs to that generation that have positioned Colombia as a great source of artists and creators of unique significance, which includes, amongst others, Doris Salcedo, Leyla Cárdenas o Antonio Caro. This generation of artists belonged to the boom of the Colombian art scene and have acquired a leading position in international contemporary art. In Semantics, Calle advances with techniques and themes, that are already fundamental to her artwork, a certain unwavering condition of her point of view, translated into disagreement with reality. Here, language takes on a new significance and the act of drawing is addressed as a raison d’être.
In Semantics, the artist, who is based in Bogotá, delves deeper into themes that have coexisted within her artwork since her very beginnings: social injustice, environmental issues, gender roles and fundamentally, the conventions of language. Her work is concerned with how words demarcate or strangle the edges of reality that we all inhabit, how as humans we are dependent on what we can name and how all else is left outside, commonly known as reality. The different methods that Johanna Calle uses when approaching drawing revolve around various techniques she has been working on and researching for years. In some artworks in Semantics, she creates drawings using all kinds of materials such as industrial sewing needles, copper, wire and surgical thread and pushes drawing into new and multiple aesthetic functions. Among others, the influence of Colombian drawing masters such as Miguel Ángel Rojas, Óscar Muñoz y Luis Caballero can be seen in Johanna Calle’s work. A tradition the artist keeps very much in mind.
Calle, student and assistant of the artist Doris Salcedo for some months, spent 3 years in London concentrating solely on the medium of painting until her return to Bogotá in 1995. While in London, she discovered the work of the artist Rachel Whiteread and explored art and new ways to approach sensitivity which affected to a degree her creative instinct. On her return to Colombia she took on some long-term projects, such as Nombre propio (1997-99), in which she used embroidery as a medium and took two years to knit the faces of abandoned children into a great album of pain. Calle’s career is unique and outstanding career and this exhibition displays all her classic artistic features: subverted structures, lines as the metaphor of strict and normative teaching or alphabets that have lost their communicative purpose.
Daniel Fernández-Cañadas