2020 will be remembered as a year of reflection and self-examination, a year that urged us all to assess our actions and our way of life. The exhibition Cold Open by the artist Hugo Avigo at Galerie Chloé Salgado, places the audience right in the middle of contemplative landscapes transporting us to farther lands, where sun and sand are evoked through the colour range of the exhibited artworks. Pastels and warm colors inhabit thus the exhibition space creating pleasant sensations, and pieces such as Closing Credits or Collateral function as balms soothing and reassuring us about the future. Try your luck on the Suspended Light 2–an installation placed on the gallery’s second room–furthers the idea of playfulness and invites the viewer to aim at a hook with a ring that is suspended by a thread. As we try our luck like the name of the work suggests it, we are transported to simpler times recalling childhood memories, kindling our longing for the past.

But carelessness is not all, Avigo’s meditative works delve on the potential of landscapes and what they can trigger. When we see compositions such as How to train yourself to think differently and permanently rewire your brain, we are not facing a classical depiction of nature but rather a mental image pushing us to see things through a much more disjointed perspective. The title of artworks like Katastrophe or Karma gives us a hint of the artist’s inner concerns and reveals a less cheerful view on the future. However, this is mere speculation for his work remains abstract and pretty puzzling, leaving us pondering about what we just witnessed. It seems that Avigo joins together opposing forces while teasing us: figuration and abstraction, color and black and white, optimism and hopelessness. 

Cold Open sets us in our current temporality where it is yet difficult to determine whether our fate is bright or dark. Like cinema’s homonymous narrative technique, the exhibition is a condensed and uncertain preamble of what is to come. 

This is your last opportunity to visit Cold Open, the gallery will be open February 13th until 5 P.M

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