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Miler Lagos
Author: Estefania Sokoloff
ArtNexus No. 69 - Jun 2008
|  | The exhibit El papel aguanta tsodo (Paper Endures Everything) by Colombian artist Miler Lagos and presented at the Nueveochenta Gallery in Bogotá is without a doubt one of the most interesting exhibits presented in the Colombian capital 2008 to date. Consisting of seven pieces of different disciplines – sculpture, installation, and video – these works convey the manner in which the artist confronts the same theme at different levels of literality.
In his personal life, Miler Lagos had experienced what is probably and will remain one of the most difficult episodes he ever had to face: His mother, an honest and generous person, devoted to good causes, was unjustly accused of something with which she had nothing to do. The entire family went through the painful process of dealing with a prison term served because of false allegations. Lagos had to confront situations he never thought he would have to face: courthouses; penal codes; laws, and attorneys, among others.
This infamous situation extracted Miler from his world and bore him away from the state of affairs of his country, as he also stopped reading newspapers and watching the news on TV. He is submerged in a painful reality that is difficult above all because he must manage to learn a new language in a very inhospitable environment: God knows what He is doing. The popular saying rings true when this hard-to-resolve and complicated plot occurs in the life of a person who has such a positive moral outlook that he is capable of transforming all the energy surrounding him into pure life.
El Papel Aguanta Todo is both witness to and the result of this process, presented in three parts that reflect the artist’s wager on life. The first part of the exhibit shows three sculptures constructed of piled-up books that are molded by subtracting one half of their content. They remind us of a column or a tree trunk that has acquired a formal autonomy that renders the book and therefore to the word as things. Its formal potency is obscured by the strong dose of opinion rendered in the form of three melancholy titles: Sin Título. 55 Libros de Arte (Untitled. 55 Art Books); Sin Título. 134 Libros de Jurisprudencia (Untitled. 134 Jurisdiction Books), and Sin Título. 72 Libros de Religión (Untitled. 72 Books on Religion).
To modify the books represents not only a subversive act, but also a risky move against certain sectors of society. The three themes are not chosen casually, and Miler Lagos is conscious of the effect they produce. He knows that by intervening in them, he is also meddling with words, a primary ally of the powers-that be. Law and religion are the points of departure because of two fundamental reasons: To begin with, they obtain from the same root deriving from philosophical treaties, and secondly, because they are based on the continued use of two incredibly powerful words: judgment, and guilt. It is curious that although art is that which the artist is involved every day, art at the same time generates in him the least affection and contradiction.
The process of selecting and gathering books prompts the artist to implement a strategy; he resolves the process by defining several levels of proximity and relationships to the texts. Some of these he had read and studied, others he consulted while in college in encyclopedias and philosophy treatises, while still others, such as The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster by Bobby Henderson, were recommended by a gallerist. Many of these comprise works on the shelves of trade-in book stores, especially those with Catholic and Christian books. Last, he ends with his most impersonal relationship, i.e., using books he orders through the internet. This plot he constructs leads him to create yet another column – to call it something – communism. It gleams throw a mirror that has been incorporated – essential to the aesthetic of an installation – as an essential artifact for observing this column.
The second body of works is included in an installation entitled Fragmentos del Tiempo (Fragments of Time). In suggesting a dream-like image of trunks carried by the river’s current and that are then at left at the riverside when the water recedes, the artist presents the most honest and determined proposal within these groups of works. Their aspect of organic objects that are horrendously similar to crawling animals conveys a grotesque aesthetic quality that is very different from the other works shown in the exhibit.
These works are constructed from thousands of pages of newspapers that lie on the gallery floor in the form of mutilated contortioning serpents. The use of El Tiempo, the oldest newspaper in the country, plays a defining part in this series. Why use this newspaper? Several reasons are found in the work’s structural and formal plane, others are seen in the opinions offered on journalism, and a personal reason in which the newspaper published a poorly researched and corroborated article that worsened the situation of the artist and his family. These series not only defy sectors of the ruling power, but are also coherent with the artist intention to approach a theme from different levels of literality.
Last, we must highlight the subtle and poetic image of the trunk slowly vanishing with the involuntary rhythm created by the wind ad portas of the Durero Museum. This video clearly demonstrates that despite the unpleasantness this artist has had to endure, the work proceeds from a great human being capable of releasing of what is not good and built thinking on the future.
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