Deluge. Moa Alskog, Javier Tapia - with text by David Cendales. January 21 - February 12, 2022.

Javier Tapia works with accumulation and juxtaposition of images and objects of various kind and from various sources. Often the images or objects are found in the storages of art and cultural institutions, left-over prints from educational material, outdated publications, photos of ethnographica, scrap construction material, magazines, at markets or even stuff collected from the bin. His art is always being produced in relation to- against- or on top of something existing and has reference points to how societies produce content, (art) history and share or hide cultural heritage. Questioning traditional scientific western methods of categorising, hierarchising, and periodising Tapia is consciously using his non-western gaze to reimagine, recreate, renegotiate and rethink predominant so-called objective knowledge and narratives surrounding exhibitions of art and culture.

Tapia works in various media such as installation, sculpture, film, and collage. Accumulation and juxtaposition seems to be the two artifice that bridges the different expressions. And not at least his believe in the beholder’s own ability to look, experience, think and sense without being directed or forced in a specific direction serving a specific agenda. 

Javier Tapia (CHL, 1976) holds a MFA from The Danish Art Academy of Fine Arts (2010). Tapia has recently been showing works at Vincent Price Art Museum (Los Angeles), Du.al (Svendborg), CAT Cologne (Cologne), Huset for Kunst & Design (Holstebro), Tranen (Gentofte), and Danish Architecture Centre (Copenhagen).