14 refrigerators make up Hvidevarer*, an exhibition by Javier Tapia about access, identity and images.

One refrigerator stands out significantly from the crowd. It is painted and hundreds of pictures are stuck on to it. Images from books, magazines and catalogs collected by the artist himself from the storages of various art and cultural institutions. The cut-outs show, among other things, the boxer Mohammed Ali, the Colosseum in Rome, an artwork by Jason Rhoades, a fisherman from Skagen, an American car, the basketball player Shaquille O'Neal, illustrations from Theodore de Bry’s America, portrait busts, masks, soldiers from the American Civil War, Johann W. Goethe’s Theory of Colours, pre-colonial works of art, human eyes, fragments of Christoffer W. Eckersberg paintings, maps, star formations, birds, octopuses, lions, tigers and snakes.

Why this accumulation of refrigerators? Why this individualised one of a kind? And why here, in an art gallery under a supermarket full of refrigerators?

Javier Tapia works with an awareness of context and is concerned with how and why objects and images are experienced differently in different contexts? For him, it is not important that you recognise the individual images used in the decoupage. Rather, the interesting part lies in why one knows something and not something else. Tapia is Chilean, has strong ties to California, and lives and works in Denmark. His artworks draw on references from the various pictorial traditions. Specifically for this exhibition, Tapia's method almost constitutes a collage in itself. Hvidevarer is composed of ready mades, elaborated ready mades and found images.

At the same time, the exhibition’s statement is more than formal. Through the decoupage's associative and contrasting juxtapositions, otherwise stubborn hierarchies and power structures are set free. Like when Goethe's Theory of Colours turns into the ball in Shaquille O'Neal's hand. Or vice versa, when the often invisible networks/causality of oppression/violence are made visible when the peasant’s walking stick is transformed into a conquistador's killing spear. The exhibition is a political act that raises questions about who has access and rights. Access and right to learning, to write the history and produce culture.

In Hvidevarer, Tapia presents the possibilities of rewriting history through what he describes as deconstruction and desacralization. The 13 remaining refrigerators…

*Hvidevarer means appliances. Translated word by word it means white goods.

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). Recent exhibitions include: The MexiCali Biennial (Riverside), Vincent Price Art Museum (Los Angeles), Lagune Ouest (Copenhagen), Du.al (Svendborg), CAT Cologne (Cologne), Huset for Kunst & Design (Holstebro), Gl. Strand (Copenhagen), Tranen (Gentofte), The National Museum of Fine Arts (Santiago), and Danish Architecture Centre (Copenhagen). Upcoming exhibitions include: Viborg Kunsthal (Viborg) and Cisternerne (Copenhagen). Tapia is the recipient of the 3 year working grant from The Danish Arts Foundation. Currently he is part of Art Hub Copenhagen’s residency programme. 

14 refrigerators make up Hvidevarer*, an exhibition by Javier Tapia about access, identity and images.

One refrigerator stands out significantly from the crowd. It is painted and hundreds of pictures are stuck on to it. Images from books, magazines and catalogs collected by the artist himself from the storages of various art and cultural institutions. The cut-outs show, among other things, the boxer Mohammed Ali, the Colosseum in Rome, an artwork by Jason Rhoades, a fisherman from Skagen, an American car, the basketball player Shaquille O'Neal, illustrations from Theodore de Bry’s America, portrait busts, masks, soldiers from the American Civil War, Johann W. Goethe’s Theory of Colours, pre-colonial works of art, human eyes, fragments of Christoffer W. Eckersberg paintings, maps, star formations, birds, octopuses, lions, tigers and snakes.

Why this accumulation of refrigerators? Why this individualised one of a kind? And why here, in an art gallery under a supermarket full of refrigerators?

Javier Tapia works with an awareness of context and is concerned with how and why objects and images are experienced differently in different contexts? For him, it is not important that you recognise the individual images used in the decoupage. Rather, the interesting part lies in why one knows something and not something else. Tapia is Chilean, has strong ties to California, and lives and works in Denmark. His artworks draw on references from the various pictorial traditions. Specifically for this exhibition, Tapia's method almost constitutes a collage in itself. Hvidevarer is composed of ready mades, elaborated ready mades and found images.

At the same time, the exhibition’s statement is more than formal. Through the decoupage's associative and contrasting juxtapositions, otherwise stubborn hierarchies and power structures are set free. Like when Goethe's Theory of Colours turns into the ball in Shaquille O'Neal's hand. Or vice versa, when the often invisible networks/causality of oppression/violence are made visible when the peasant’s walking stick is transformed into a conquistador's killing spear. The exhibition is a political act that raises questions about who has access and rights. Access and right to learning, to write the history and produce culture.

In Hvidevarer, Tapia presents the possibilities of rewriting history through what he describes as deconstruction and desacralization. The 13 remaining refrigerators…

*Hvidevarer means appliances. Translated word by word it means white goods.

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). Recent exhibitions include: The MexiCali Biennial (Riverside), Vincent Price Art Museum (Los Angeles), Lagune Ouest (Copenhagen), Du.al (Svendborg), CAT Cologne (Cologne), Huset for Kunst & Design (Holstebro), Gl. Strand (Copenhagen), Tranen (Gentofte), The National Museum of Fine Arts (Santiago), and Danish Architecture Centre (Copenhagen). Upcoming exhibitions include: Viborg Kunsthal (Viborg) and Cisternerne (Copenhagen). Tapia is the recipient of the 3 year working grant from The Danish Arts Foundation. Currently he is part of Art Hub Copenhagen’s residency programme.