Topology of a Cloud
Jerónimo Reyes-Retana

January 4th - 25th, 2020
Open Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 12-6pm

Google’s dictionary defines a cloud as a visible mass of condensed water vapor floating in the atmosphere, typically high above the ground, but also as a state or cause of gloom, suspicion, trouble, or worry. The recent development in cloud computing has triggered the ongoing acceleration of information flows, altering previous regimes of visibility and control, bringing omnipresent frameworks of data transmission and storage—such as the cloud— to the front. The complexity of the cloud topology and the secrecy in which its operations remain key for shaping a state of surveillance capitalism in which notions of data ownership, privacy, and visibility are called into question. While distribution infrastructures always have been designed to be transparent, transparency, as immaterialized in the cloud, has turned into an all-purpose political metaphor. 

Topology of a Cloud is an immersive 16-track sound installation materializing the imperceptible electric charges, radio waves, and light pulses that constitute data traveling. The vibrations emitted by transducers (a device that converts variations in a physical quantity into sound) travel through the metal bars emulating a kinetic force scribing a generic language, bringing up notions of information permanence, encryption, and accessibility. A parallel network composed of tape interwinds with the steel axes to create a multi-vectorial volume. A symbiotical and juxtapositional relation between the steel axes and the adherent tape renders a model of the cloud that frames it as a subjective figure of speech often thought of as an attractive, seductive, seemingly ephemeral abstraction.

Jerónimo Reyes-Retana (Mexico City, b.1984). As an artist primarily working in the field of sound installation, Reyes-Retana utilizes multi-track audio settings as a medium to create atmospheres of multiple associations that point out the ways we imagine, organize, and interact with digital information. Reyes-Retana recently presented a solo project at OMR, Mexico City (2019), and Salón Acme, Mexico City (2015). His work has been featured in group exhibitions with Efraín López Gallery, Chicago (2019), Masa, Mexico City (2019), and Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York (2018). Jerónimo is an MFA (Sculpture and Extended Media) candidate at the University of Texas at Austin.