GONZALO JAVIER MORALES LEIVA
Visual Artist - Chile.
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Biography
Gonzalo Morales Leiva (1985), Chilean artist, studied Film (Argentina), Analogue and Digital Photography (Mexico and Chile) and Visual Arts at Dardo Studio (Chile). His practice involves photography, video, drawing, sculpture and performance, to archive ritual experiences inside and outside his studio, in urban and natural environments, alone or with an audience he chooses to call community. He has had solo and group exhibitions in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, USA and Germany, including the solo exhibition Khipukamayuq, at Vorfluter project space, Berlin, Germany (2023) and the performance ‘Mancharikuy’ at the Contemporary Art Museum of Buenos Aires, Argentina (2023); and the duo exhibition “See you in my room” at GlogauAIR project space, Berlin, Germany. He has carried out artistic residencies in Chile, Argentina, Mexico and Germany, including his artistic residency at GlogauAIR, Berlin, Germany (2022) and Reset Residency at Proa Foundation, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2023).
Statement
Morales Leiva’s artistic work emerges from a personal method entitled ‘Methodology for transiting from the surface to the body through the materiality of drawing’. Through processes of physical improvisation and meditation, he explores subjective states where responsiveness takes shape in sculptural objects, drawings, videos, and photographs. His actions are built around his body as the primary medium, communicating through memory and haptic perception rather than conceptual invention. These actions link his personal and communal experiences with Latin American history, fiction, and poetry—creative fields he draws upon to enrich his aesthetic explorations, notably influenced by his interest in Quechua culture. This cultural interest is shaped by the literature of Ecuadorian writer Jorge Icaza, Peruvian writer José María Arguedas, and the Quechua poetry and linguistic studies of Peruvian poet Odi Gonzales. With this approach and these materials, he creates installations that convey his multi-sensory and collective perspective on art, dissolving disciplinary boundaries and establishing affective and political connections with the contextual realities present at the moment of creation.
Gonzalo Morales Leiva’s work is part of an experimental performative language that tries to bring together the tensions between fiction, representation and action. His works generally combine the participation of different materials and elements, such as charcoal, graphite (powder and pencils), paper, metals, his own body; active agents of artistic action in a space largely constructed through the collage of performative patterns rehearsed as well as improvised during the limited time of his performances. In this sense, Gonzalo provokes with his actions the questioning of the real limits of expectation as an experience, and gives the audience a broader role that goes beyond mere passive testimony to the action performed. In Morales Leiva’s performances, the need to work beyond the space delimited a priori by the performance itself is perceived, and the interest in continuing to create once the action has ended is evident, which has led him to work artistically with the phantasmatic residues of the disappeared action. In this sense, the recordings, texts, photographs or other types of sculptural objects generated during his actions, which the spectator encounters outside the time of the performance, contain a high degree of ambivalent performativity: their status transcends the documentary.
Resumen CV
Studies
2021 / Annual tutoring in visual arts at Taller Dardo, Santiago, Chile.
2019 / Laboratory of art criticism and curatorship, Página en Blando Art School, Mexico City, Mexico.
2019 / Diploma in artistic photography, CamaraLucida School, Valparaíso, Chile.
2018 / Diploma in Creation of photographic projects and curatorial solutions, Página en Blando Art School,
Mexico City, Mexico.
2007 - 2011 / Film directing, Universidad del Cine de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Art residencies
2023/ Reset Residency, Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2023/ Culterim Gallery artist residency, Berlin, Germany.
2023/ LabNL, Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico.
2022/ Glogauair, Berlin, Germany.
2022/ Creative Nucleus, Regional Government of Maule, Talca, Chile.
2022/ Página en Blando, Mexico City, Mexico.
2021/ Creative Nucleus, Regional Government of Maule, Talca, Chile. 2020/ Cámara Lúcida, Punta de Choro,
Chile.
Solo exhibitions
2023/ “Mancharikuy”, Performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2023 / “One One One” Culterim Gallery, Berlin, Germany”.
2023 / “Khipukamayuq”, Vorfluter Project space, Berlin, Germany.
2023 / “Flanquear”, Página en Blando Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico.
2022 / “It could happen”, Página en Blando Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico.
2022 / “A Thousand Fragments of dawn”, Civic Gallery, Curico, Chile.
2021 / “Tactics” Lucid Camera Gallery, Valparaiso, Chile.
2020 / “The truth is a suspended object”, Universidad Católica del Maule Gallery, Talca, Chile.
2020 / “Interrogation” Página en Blando Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico.
2019 / “Vanitas” University of Talca Gallery, Curico, Chile.
Group exhibitions
2024/ “See you in my room” Duo exhibition with Emily Kelly (Belgium), at GlogauAIR Project Space, Berlin, Germany.
2023 / “Gruß aus Biesenthal”, Culterim Gallery, Berlin, Germany.
2022 / “The abstract image”, Praxis Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
2022 / “Docum3nta” Futurama Cultural Center, Mexico City, Mexico. 2022 / “Envío 0,1” Gallery Kastanien Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
2021 / “Casi sin Querer” Taller Dardo, Santiago, Chile.
2020 / “Objeto Paisaje” CENTEX Gallery, Valparaíso, Chile.
Catalog
2024/ Catalog “(Des) Límite: Paisaje Infinito”, Simbiotika Studio in Chaco 14.
2022/ Catalog “Visual Cartography”, Maule Region, Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage, Chile.
Curatorship
2024/ “See you in my room” Duo exhibition with Emily Kelly (Belgium), at GlogauAIR Project Space, Berlin, Germany.
2023 / Curator of “Delineate” Solo exhibition of Nasia Papavasiluou at Vorfluter Project Space, Berlin, Germany.
2022 / Curator of the Visual Arts Catalog, Maule Region, Chile - Seremi de Cultura Artes y Patrimonio Maule Region.
2022 / Curator of “Inmensa Sustancia Pequeña”, solo exhibition of Constanza Albornoz, Estudio Simbiotika, Talca, Chile.
Editorial Photography
2021 / Publication “Ni Talca, ni París, ni Londres”, Metropolitan Gallery - Estudio Simbiotika, Chile.
Artistic Workshops Given
Workshop creation of artist’s digital portfolio
2024/ Municipal Corporation of Culture and Arts, Molina, Chile.
2023/ Autonomous University of Chile, Talca, Faculty of Visual Arts.
Drawing and Performance Workshop
2023/ Página en Blando Art School and Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico.
2023/ Cultural High School, Talca, Chile.
Sculpture and Performance Workshop
2023/ Página en Blando Art School and Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico.
Artist talks Given
2024/ Making See you in my room, GlogauAIR Project space, Berlin, Germany.
2023/ Expanded Drawing and performance, Museum of Art and Crafts, Linares, Chile.
2023/ Expanded Drawing and performance, Margot Loyola Palacios House of Culture, Linares, Chile.
Texts by the artist
2024/ See you in my room a duo exhibition by Emily Kelly and Gonzalo Morales Leiva at GlogauAIR Project space, Berlin, Alemania.