NOTHING ELSE

New York, August 9 – 24, 2001

Artist: Luis Felipe Ortega

In his first New York solo exhibition titled Nothing Else featuring video works, Mexican artist Luis Felipe Ortega creates highly complex environments of which the viewer becomes an active part and is being challenged to define the meaning of art. Formally less reduced and minimal than previous work, the new videos maintain an ambiguous nature avoiding the notion of a false romanticism. Ortega invites the visitor on a disturbing journey through time and space, different geographies, the worlds of literature and philosophy, absolute silence and frightening noise. He tells parallel stories about the unintentional relationship between desperate spaces, forms and sounds. The multiple layers of understanding leave the spectator insecure; there is no clear cut message or belief system to be found, which in turn seems to reflect the inherent necessity in Ortega’s work to expose the fragile state of the artwork itself. Raising more questions than giving answers, Ortega leaves the viewer with the nihilistic and disappointing feeling “So what does it mean?”.. “Nothing!”.. “So what happened?”.. “Nothing…else!”