February 23 – March 23, 2019
Steve Turner is pleased to present El Bloc Del Narco, a solo exhibition by Medellín-based Camilo Restrepo that will feature new works from two ongoing series, El Bloc Del Narco and A Land Reform.
El Bloc Del Narco consists of pairs of drawings that address the effects of language on the Colombian war on drugs. In each work, Restrepo highlights a word that has the prefix “narco” and that appeared in popular media. He has collected scores of new words including “narcobuns,” “narcohippos” and “narcoanguishes,” and has vowed to continue the series as long as new “narcoticized” words are introduced. In each work Restrepo collages newspaper clippings of criminal aliases and words related to the Colombian armed conflict that are found between quotation marks in El Tiempo newspaper.
In A Land Reform, Restrepo collages newspaper clippings of criminal aliases. He then draws characters to represent the aliases in comic-strip fashion using Google image search results as a guide. To complete the work, he distresses the drawings with a knife or water and then carefully repairs some of the damage with minute pieces of paper tape and more layers of drawing. The process of damage and repair alludes to the havoc caused by the war on drugs and the way people must constantly deal with its consequences.
Camilo Restrepo (born 1973, Medellín, Colombia), earned an MFA from CalArts (2013) and a master’s degree in aesthetics from the National University of Colombia (2008). He has had solo exhibitions at Steve Turner (2013, 2014, 2015 & 2017); ArtBo, Bogota (2016); Arco Madrid (2015); Untitled, Miami Beach (2013); Galería Santa Fe, Bogotá (2011); Casa Tres Patios, Medellín (2010); Galeriá de la Oficina, Medellín (2010) and LA Galería, Bogotá (2009). In 2010, Restrepo was nominated for the Premio Luis Caballero, the most important prize in Colombia for artists over 35.
