Itinerant Cross Urban – Paris
Text written by Estefania Sokoloff
Paris, the city of light and of urban landscapes frozen in time, is the perfect backdrop for the launch of Itinerant Cross Urban, a photographic project with important international dimensions. If we could trace a city protocol, Paris, without a doubt, would top the lists for its historical tradition and great cultural institutions. Additionally, it has a well-versed audience, who is also intelligent, sagacious, demands quality and exquisiteness, and does not stand improvisation. The reasons and references that link us to the city are multiple, but it is necessary to explain the why of the decision and for it we will mention some of the particularities inherent to the structure of Itinerant Cross Urban.
The starring roles of our story are Klaus Fruchtnis, Colombian, artist, traveler, expansive and in charge at the side of Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, Colombian, artist, traveler, educator, and in charge. The script consists of the application of a methodology to develop the contents and of a system for conceptualizing defended by the continuity in the communication between the characters. The secondary roles are played by us, the professionals traveling as curators, critics, cultural producers and our inseparable Web 2.0 which allows us to ignore the geographical distances that separate us.
The story begins in 2008 with the development of a working methodology which is simple in its framing yet infinite in possibilities, which has a wide route as a starting point, international and inclusive because collaborative work while immersed in an individualistic world is in and of itself, a win-win. It consists of the visual interpretation of an unusual word picked at random from www.merriam-webster.com through two photographic responses. A visual play in which the individual characteristics dig their own grooves while the collaborative principle enriches the result in that it does not represent the end but the means via which the goal is reached. A work that demands continuity and which harmoniously integrates the particular interests of two artists committed to their practice. The ever-changing backdrops according to the mobility of the authors, enriches the proposal by continually renewing the rhetoric for each triptych and establishing new paradigms that are made visible in the interpretive ability of each work. In 2009 with the printing of the first book, we sailed the ocean of conceptualization while holding hands with the photographs, accompanied by the certainty and security of a project framed by contemporaneity and the solidity offered by these two serious artistic courses, observers of urbanity.
Paris, our first stop represents a great step for the future development of this trip. Not only because it concretizes the reaches of a discipline evidenced in a portfolio with more than 100 triptychs, but that additionally involves the professional action of a group of Cross Urban lovers.
There is a peculiarity with regards to the learning – an inescapable reference when considering this work formula. A routine becomes a habit and a habit becomes a discipline. This is Cross Urban – a discipline that itinerates around the world exhibiting the relationship between the visual and the written language.
Considering the multilingual character of Cross Urban, its curation contemplates, for the Paris catalogue, to only highlight a word that in addition to being easily understood in different languages, is ambassador of each artist’s mark, witness of their visual acuity y additionally carrier of the conceptual character of the body of work.
inexorable \i-NEK-suh-ruh-bul\ adjective
not to be persuaded, moved, or stopped: relentless
About the images: the majesty present in the architectural forms that pose in front of the camera as urban models. The importance of the multi-reflection as an element that highlights the landscape quality, widely treated, in the artists’ work.
The sonority, the silence, the gaze’s rhythm and firmness and the accompaniment of a definition that describes the tenacity of a group of Colombians passionate about the same objective.
Our trip contemplates five additional destinations and one great editorial project that will become the visual manifestation of a group of words dragged by the wind. Travel with us.
Estefania Sokoloff © 2011
