Steve Turner is pleased to present “Pescando Con Dinamita,” a solo online exhibition by Medellín-based Camilo Restrepo. This new exhibition introduces two new series of work – Pescando Con Dinamita and Juegos Finitos / Juegos Infinitos.

In Pescando Con Dinamita, Restrepo continues his practice of creating large scale drawings that bear numerous scars. When he completes the drawing phase, he perforates the paper with a soldering iron before causing all the colors to run by spraying water at high pressure. He then meticulously repairs all the damage. The title refers to the brutal practice of fishing with high explosives, something that is done in Colombia. Restrepo sees this as another aspect of our hyper-masculine culture, one that mostly relies on violence to solve its problems.

In Juegos Finitos / Juegos Infinitos, the artist first downloads a photograph from the Internet of someone who was killed in connection with drug trafficking. He then digitally erases the background and prints it in the 1 x 1 inch format of a passport photograph. Then, he aggressively draws upon the image in red ink, re-photographs it with a macro lens and finally, prints out the image in a larger size. These steps render the subjects largely unrecognizable, as though their faces were obliterated by violence. In so doing, Restrepo aims to draw attention to the Colombian practice of glorifying death while hastening to add that the war on drugs has caused deaths on all sides of the issue. Good people are killed by narcos and narcos are killed by the police and each other. In this series, every mutilated face is nearly the same.

On view: August 23–September 19, 2020

Where: online
When: August 23–September 19, 2020
Phone: 323.460.6830
Website: http://steveturner.la