A look at: Gabriel Barcia-Colombo

April 13, 2022
  • Gabriel Barcia-Colombo at the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, NV
    Gabriel Barcia-Colombo at the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, NV

    Celebrated multi-media artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo has joined the growing roster of represented artists at C24 Gallery. He is known for creating immersive, interactive projects that combine technology and light, either through video, projections or most recently, neon. With roots in filmmaking and influenced by the rise of social media programs, Barcia-Colombo’s work ranges from small sculptures to large-scale, interactive, public installations that focus on memorialization, and the digital and cultural imprints we leave behind for future generations.

     

    C24 Gallery first exhibited Barcia-Colombo’s work as part of our 2019 group exhibition, Transfigured, where he presented a series of sculptures incorporating videos of people inside glass tubes set into fire boxes and an enormous ceramic egg, and on top of televisions and employee time clocks. The works channeled his documentation of life cycles and relationships, and honoring his mother’s Mexican heritage, implemented a novel technical update to the Central and South American folk art form of nicho boxes, traditionally used to display representations of saints and other religious icons.

  • Temptation in Paradise (Pink), 2022 Neon, Acrylic, Aluminum (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    DNA Vending Machine (detail), 2015 Delrin, Acrylic, Human DNA, Alcohol (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    New York Minute, 2014 52 Digital Videos TRT (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).

    GABRIEL BARCIA-COLOMBO, TEMPATIONS IN PARADISE PINK, 2022

  • Barcia-Colombo recently closed a solo exhibition, Simulations of the Sacredat the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, NV where he was the 2021 Artist in Residence. Inspired by the museum’s vast collection of neon signs, the centerpiece was a ten-foot neon sculpture of Adam and Eve holding cell phones, titled, Temptations in Paradise Pink. The show also included his signature nicho boxes depicting Las Vegas luminaries as modern day saints, as well as works that served as an homage to the dopamine rush of both slot machines and the constant refresh of our social media streams.

     

    One of his more ambitious projects, The Hereafter Institute was created with the Art + Technology Lab at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Designed as an exploration of what happens to the legacy of online data we leave behind, the walk-through experience included a series of installations allowing visitors the opportunity to plan their own digital afterlife. Another of Barcia-Colombo’s major conceptual works, DNA Vending Machine, was shown at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum as part of their exhibition, What is Luxury? It contained human DNA samples packaged as collectibles, bringing to light legal issues over the ownership of DNA, designer babies and other related implications. 

  • Memento Mori, 2021, Augmented Reality, Custom Software, Molded Plastic
    Gabriel Barcia-Colombo, Memento Mori, 2021, Augmented Reality, Custom Software, Molded Plastic
    Presented at Manhattan’s Brookfield Place last year, Memento Mori featured giant skeletons with oversized monitors, interacting via augmented reality with passersby. Barcia-Colombo’s large-scale, 52-channel video installation, New York Minute, created in collaboration with MTA Arts & Design, was the first video artwork to premiere at the Fulton Center station downtown. It filled the station with 52 extremely slow motion video portraits of everyday New Yorkers engaged in regular activities. 
  • Barcia-Colombo often tempers his obsession with memorialization and memory through his use of humor, as he tackles serious issues in works of all sizes. In addition to his own practice, he is an Associate Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he teaches Interactive Media Arts and Interactive Telecommunications.