For its first participation in Loop Barcelona, DS Galerie is pleased to present “Participant” (2021) by Andrés Barón (b. 1986, Colombia).
“Participant” takes place on a blue athletics track located in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. On this singular stage, which functions both as a space for physical exercise and a symbolic platform for public speech, a young man performs a series of enigmatic gestures: he reads a painted newspaper, hops on one foot over a painted newspaper, observes the world through an eye drawn on a ping-pong ball, and walks while carrying a bouquet. Each seemingly simple action becomes a poetic ritual, transforming the track into a space for reflection and projection.
The athletics track, originally designed for movement and competition, gradually transforms under the artist’s gaze. It becomes a place of contemplation, a theater of otherness, and a space for inner dialogue, inviting the viewer to question the meaning of gestures, social codes, and the ways in which bodies occupy and animate space. Through this oscillation between familiarity and strangeness, “Participant” challenges conventions of imagery and visual narrative while revealing the poetry of everyday life and the human gesture’s capacity to generate multiple layers of meaning.
“Participant” is an invitation to suspend judgment, to observe and feel, and to perceive the everyday from a perspective that is at once unexpected and profoundly human.