Triangle-Astérides

Center for contemporary art
and Artists’ residency

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isaac_contreras_portrait_2014__triangle-asterides
Portrait of Isaac Contreras, 2014 © Triangle-Astérides

Isaac Contreras

Session #1
01 January to 01 April
isaac_contreras_portrait_2014__triangle-asterides
Portrait of Isaac Contreras, 2014 © Triangle-Astérides

Isaac Contreras was born in 1984 and lives and works in Mexico.

I see my work as an evolving system of forms in which instability, precariousness, and emptiness exist not only as given conditions but as triggers for the work to be created. This involves learning to negotiate with emptiness, what makes the void, searching for material in empty spaces, and using available materials and unstable situations as mechanisms to open space for the uncertain, the neglected, and the fragile.

I am interested in the tension between the virtual and the material state of existence, and in working within the interval between the captured image and sculpture, the imaginary and the real, conceptual content and emotion, and ultimately between the mind and matter. I often begin with a question that unfolds in a speculative process of inquiry and the material of thought. For me, paying particular attention to materials is a way of observing the world and seeking to understand my time in a physical dimension.

I am also interested in open systems that form within the work and allow it to exist in motion during the exhibition. This approach, using discarded materials and responding to a system that does not depend on me, allows me to develop a practice in which negotiation plays a central role—a constant search for confrontation with the materials and current conditions. Given the open nature of my practice, the work can take many forms but most often navigates between photography, sculpture, and installation. (artist’s statement)

Isaac Contreras was a member of the Young Creator National Fellowship FONCA 2010–2011, the Baja California State Program for the Arts PECDA 2010–2011, and a part of the Independent Study Program SOMA in Mexico from 2012 to 2013. Recently, his work has been presented in Notes for a Desert (Culiacán, 2011), III Poly/Graphic Triennial of San Juan, Puerto Rico (San Juan, 2012), Sarai Reader 09: The Exhibition (New Delhi, 2013), and Proyectos Ultravioleta presents, Costa Rica (San José, 2013).