Exhibition: “3” by Dani Umpi

Inviting a prominent artistic personality from a little known side of the world to an urban intervention such as antipodes café DEG15 and moreover to a context with a spoiled timorous contemporary art scene, was with no doubts a challenge. But a nice one to go throughout and keep exploring boundaries of the doing with the whole context. Precisely, if an Uruguayan –born in Tacuarembó during times of the Operation Condor; raised in a Catholic family dedicated to ecumenical activities; passing through Jesuit school, and arrived to Montevideo to study art in the middle of the 90s’ without any economical support but the opposite– could achieve all that so far Daniel Umpierrez has done from early times at the pathfinder “movimiento sexi” (artistic group he formed with the megalomaniac Martin Sastre), to his prolific and multifaceted career build from his alter ego “Dani Umpi” –which is a writer, singer/performer and visual artist–, there is still hope for every child growing up between safety boxes.

The first solo show of Dani Umpi in Norway attempts to introduce the colourful artist with a measured intensity, presenting multifarious works related to those three main areas of work with an specific narrative. From city to the frame and from it to the wall and then to the space. From those static lights, reading corner and internet television to a lift as a temporary stage in the city under construction.

The exhibition was mounted in several open-door days with the artist, who also participated in the gathering “Kaffe med…Dani“, and it counted with a homemade catalogue including rests from collages in its cover and printed on demand (±1.000 copies)

Open Virtual tour

LECHEGUANA

“In the beginning there was performance, and then everything else. This principle not only applies to 20th century avant-garde performers, but also to promiscuous, pagan symbolists like Dani Umpi.

In a rare synthesis, Dani Umpi engenders characters with an approach analogous to Cindy Sherman, explores the conceptual-sensorial participation of the audience in the vein of Lygia Clark, while scrutinizing the mainstream, folk, and avant-garde world in a manner akin to Helio Oiticica.

Dani’s world is a Tropical Neo-Concrete repertoire amalgamated by a glitzy conceptualist. Dani is not only a popular iconographer, but also aspires to become a “mainstream experimentalist”, an oxymoronic, genetic crossover between Yoko Ono, and Cris Morena.

Dani’s work encompasses collage, cabaret, music, literature, and visual art which modulate between the culture industry, and popular culture. The manufacture of a pop-star persona has enable Dani Umpi to compose songs, while melodramatic procedures sets a framework for writing novels that most certainly will share book shelves with authors such as Manuel Puig and Hebe Uhart.

Dani’s poetic sensibilities have enable him to style paintings and installations out of paper, which become interwoven on stage through a kaleidoscopic turmoil to form his onstage costumes, and scenography. His books, which serve as the basis of his songs, deal with subject matters such as love, friendship, and the ridicule.

Dani Umpi overflows with pop-culture references, geometric motifs, archetypes, and esoteric symbolism. Dani’s process deconstructs the ideological discourse while replacing it with chromatic scales, and random speech patterns.

Dani Umpi transmutes the cut and sew of his costumes from the inane discourse present in glossy magazines further devoiding them of both shape, and meaning. The easiest way to categorise Dani’s universe is within the realm of pop, even though; he is without a doubt a romantic revivalist of glam-trash, pastiche, and carioca. Truly a Duchamp of artistic self-help.”

Syd Krochmalny, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2016
[Artist and writer. He is involved in the Center for Artistic Investigation and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the Argentinian Research Council CONICET at the Institute of the Theory and History of Art Julio Payró in the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts at the University of Buenos Aires. (more)]

Exhibition

DANI UMPI

Born in Tacuarembó, Uruguay, 1974.
Lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

daniumpi.bandcamp.com

THANKS

Thon Hotels
Oslo Pride
Syd Krochmalny
Alvaro Miranda