Juan Peréz Agirregoikoa

In his art practice, Juan Peréz Agirregoikoa invites us to critically reflect upon the socioeconomic, historical and political context of our time, while addressing it with humour. In this exhibition, his work – a mural stretching across four rooms of the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana – seems bright and clear at first, capturing viewers' attention in the same way that a billboard ad might. It is only after reading the words and understanding the relations between them that we can process their possible meanings.

The work Who keeps the zoo? is a wall drawing divided into four parts. The piece represents four Venn diagrams that address topics such as monotheism, the white man, violence and art, among others. Venn diagrams are used to represent set theory, which studies, among other things, the properties, functions and relationships between sets, such as inclusion, equality, non-inclusion, inequality, bigger than, smaller than, and so on. The diagrams help the artist understand the world and those who perceive it as multiple and those who perceive it as One.

He works with logical systems because he believes that one of the major problems we face as language-using animals is the failure of communication, since the signs we use in language are tied to associative chains. His intention with this work was to speak in a logical and clear manner, but paradoxically, his Venn diagrams once again become polysemous, rendering the result associative, variable and ambiguous.

Supported by Etxepare Euskal Institutua, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and the Embassy of Spain in Slovenia.