Guillermo Mora: Now, Soon, Then, Tomorrow

Continuing with his challenge to the nature and current state of artistic disciplines, in “Now, Soon, Then, Tomorrow,” Guillermo Mora playfully presents an inventive, almost surreal, conception of contemporary painting in four site-specific installations.

In this exhibition, Spanish artist Guillermo Mora (b. 1980, Spain) fantasizes about the idea of disrupting the politics of spectatorship. He aims to upend “museum behavior” —the way in which we learn to walk, talk and move inside museums— and the strong legacy of viewing large-scale, classical painting in museums influencing how we see art today.

Mora imagines a scenario in which the traditional art-spectator relationship is reversed. He proposes that it is the artwork that moves back and forth to analyze us with paintings that act like creatures. Bright colors and gradients appear to seduce but also entrap the viewer. Departing from this fictional premise, Mora has created the exhibition Now, Soon, Then, Tomorrow, featuring four site-specific installations commissioned by the Scad Museum of Art that transform each of the museum’s Jewel Boxes into abstract, layered dioramas. Demarking the space’s different planes, Mora’s intervention plays in and out of the spaces, creating volumes and layers, each one with a different set of elements and colors.

The title of the show is used to suggest two modes of time, one that is specific and one that is undetermined. Also, these words could be regarded as deictic expressions, terms like “now” or “soon,” words whose meaning is conditioned to a changing context. By using such allusions, the artist points to the multiplicity of ways to perceive his work, as it can simultaneously appear flat or multilayered depending on the point of view or the viewer.