Elysa Lozano: A Contract with Fantasy

A Contract with Fantasy, vinyl lettering, 2006.

© Elysa Lozano

My work takes as its subject my artistic practice, which attempts to establish an autonomous position through architectural interventions. My work records encounters with individuals and organizations. The adversaries in my search for the unattainable, both internal and external, create a friction that results in negotiations. These negotiations, endemic to the process of making art, are enacted and made visible in the space where they actually occur. Although based on real situations, the intentions of each character lose their purpose in the theater of the work, becoming absurd and existing simply as an articulation of means.

In A Contract with Fantasy I attempt to secure a space for an ideal studio, but only succeed in highlighting its unobtainability. In the exhibition The Dream of Reason, this piece was shown in the manner of a curator's wall text at the entrance to the gallery. While the content of the contract implies an artist's private negotiations, the format suggests an explanation of the intent of the exhibition. However, rather than clarify the intent, it proposes several conflicting arrangements of the relations between the physical space of the gallery, its proprietors, the curators and the works in the exhibition.