PRESENTATION
Recent works | «Infinitisations»
The artworks presented are part of the "Infinitisations" series. They find their inspiration in the imaginary relationship between what I can call "the singularity of being" and that of a “gravitational singularity” or "black hole".

These works establish a relationship of approach and visual tension between finiteness, that of the observer and the infinity of black, the one that evokes the end of space.

In this movement from one to the other, the two singularities will coincide in time but without necessarily getting lost in each other as predicted for any object as a "black hole" approaches.

From this imagined and unpredictable experience in the face of the inexorable force of gravity emerges, like an apparition, a kind of new metaphysics of the presence to oneself.

This feeling serves as a sketch to describe a paradigm for any phenomenon of the possible, of the future, of desire...

"Appearance" suggests a potentially unfoldable presence at "infinity" that now questions the visible.

Sight ignores the eye. The "infinite pulverence" in the work is an internal experience of intensities that are accomplished without context: a kinesthetic process of absolute fragments.

Singularity is in a way the meaning itself as Jean Luc Nancy can formulate it in "The enigma of singularity"

In the work, on the other hand, it is the gestures of the hand that bring out the image of a space in the abyss. A "perforated mirror" of the collapse of the conscious / unconscious self that never stops recovering and questions itself to infinity.


Biographical notes, artistic influences, trajectories, and projects
Born in 1956, César Henao began his artistic practice and his first self-taught paintings at the age of 16 in Colombia. He was influenced by the sculptures of Edgar Negret and the paintings of Omar Rayo, then by the works of Jesús Soto and Carlos Cruz Diez.

In 1976, on the occasion of Julio Le Parc's solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota, he discovered the GRAV (Groupe de Recherche Audiovisuelle) catalogue, which presents the group's principles and concepts of action and the works of its members, Horacio GARCÍA ROSSI, Julio LE PARC, François MORELLET, Francisco SOBRINO, Joël STEIN and YvarAL.

After graduating with a bachelor's degree, he studied architecture and management at the University of the Andes and founded his first communication and image company in Bogotá.
At the age of 24, he decided to pursue his artistic training and travel to several European countries and the United States. 

Later, in France, he passed the painting competition and was admitted to the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he followed a five-year training course in the painting section. He cultivates his curiosity for emerging information systems, technology, communication and the use of new materials in industry.

In 1986, he obtained the diploma of plastic artist and received the highest distinction from this institution with Summa Cum Laude, unanimously judged by a jury led by the Belgian kinetic sculptor Pol Bury. This distinction will allow him to be selected among the 12 best students in the class. He participated in several group exhibitions and met art critic Pierre Restany, who wrote about his work. During the year, he also designed the title and theme of the group exhibition "L'instant abstrait" which will be presented at the Espace Pierre Cardin in Paris and is actively involved in its organization.

Polyestructure
On the occasion of «L’instant Abstrait» exhibition, César Henao presents a series of works to introduce to the public the «Polyestructure» movement that he co-founded and conceptualized with two other artists, Gustavo Nieto and Mauricio Gomez in Paris and who were also invited to exhibit in this event.

In addressing "materiality" in his work and the break-up of the formal framework of the canvas, César Henao exposes his "polyestructures". Composed of beehive panels, metal balls, revolver sockets, hooks and fishing line weights that are often bound, embedded or included in concrete, synthetic resin or molded with new technical coatings such as staturoc. These objects attached to the walls form relief installations.

By theorizing on the nature of the work of art, the group «Polyestructure» sought to go further, towards a rupture and to oppose the critical formalism practiced in the mid 80's in France to define the value of the figurative aesthetics facing the non-figurative art production.

For the group, art criticism was imbued with the principles set forth by anthropological structuralism that Claude Lévi-Strauss had developed since the 1960s as the only method capable of analyzing and understanding any social production or societal relationship.

Levi-Strauss defined the structure as a set of invariant relations (correlative or antithetical) that express the organization of the system. In his words, « the notion of social structure is not related to empirical reality, but to models constructed according to it ». It is therefore not directly observable, but the reality it constitutes is made intelligible in logical form: the model.

For structuralists, it is a matter of tracing phenomena through models and finding the hidden structure.

In the «Polyestructura», the work of art is conceived as an opening in opposition to the principle of immanence of structuralism, which means that every object of study must be regarded as a closed system in its present state.

The work of art is a «Polyestructura», it is protean, it is a hybridization with multiple grids of reading acting for the emergence of an individual consciousness. In direct opposition to the other great principle of structuralism which sees the primacy of «the whole» over the parts, where the elements of each set taken in isolation have no meaning.The elements are conceived only in their mutual relations.

In the thought of the «Polyestructura», the emergence of the individual consciousness gives a freedom to the individual in relation to the collective unconscious structure.

Individual consciousness linked to the individual's consciousness of being for oneself, that is to say to the consciousness of existing and therefore to die, leads to a personal search for happiness through passions which express the will to power, that is to say, the will to absolute happiness.


«Aerostatus-The eye of Minerva»

Even more than the debates and the effervescence of new ideas within the artistic group, it was the events of early 1986 that marked a new turning point in Caesar Henao's artistic production.

This year, he is designing "Aerostatus-L'Oeil de Minerve", his first large-scale ephemeral installation, in response to the ecological and human disaster caused by the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, which dispersed a cloud of highly polluting radioactive particles throughout Europe.

In a break with the artistic practices of the moment, César Henao decided to use the first SPOT-Image1 satellite for terrestrial imaging.

The satellite, which only two months after its launch and in its test phase, had to be used to capture images of the nuclear reactor core from space, due to the very high level of radioactivity propagated on the plant after the explosion.

As an integral part of his new artistic proposal, this instrument is intended to observe the installation on the ground from space.

The installation will take place in the archaeological site of an ancient pre-Columbian lost city, nestled in the mountains in the middle of Colombia's subtropical rainforest, 1,300 metres above the cliffs.

The site, "Ciudad Perdida" or Teyuné, was built by the Tayrona tribe of the Caribbean, 650 years before Machu Picchu in Peru. It had to be abandoned in the 16th century because of the violence of the Spanish conquerors.

In the installation, the two disasters are linked by satellite: human error in the nuclear power plant and the extinction of populations due to greed for natural resources.

His idea is to give a framework to the symbolic value conveyed by his installation and to connect the two disasters caused by man's hand in order to alert by his message to the invisible dangers of technology.

Bifurcations, Fractal Manifest, Projection
Back in France, he settled on the French Riviera with his family. For a time, he moved away from entrepreneurial activity and devoted himself to new creative projects and also to his family.

In 1997, he responded to the invitation of Carlos Ginzburg and met in Paris the artists Jean Claude Meynard, Miguel Chevalier, Pierre Zarcate, and art critic Henri François Debailleux, who for four years, with the American writer and art critic Susan Condé and the gallery owner Mabel Semmler, organize exhibitions to show the works of these artists around aesthetics and fractal complexity.
Invited to exhibit with this collective, he prepares a new series of works. The program planned for the 24th edition of FIAC in November 1997 is a first stage of presentation to the press of the «Fractalist Group - Art and Complexity» under the supervision of the art critic of Libération daily newspaper Henri -François Debailleux and the writer Susan Cordé.

The group is composed of eleven artists, Edward Berko, Miguel Chevalier, Pascal Dombis, Carlos Ginzburg, César Henao, Jim Long, Steven Marc, Jean-Claude Meynard, Joseph Nechvatal, Yvan Rebyj and Pierre Zarcate world drawing inspiration from theories that account for patterns that organize nature. From the fractals of Benoît Mandelbrot to Thom's disaster theory, from the dissipative structures of Prigogine to the Chaos Theory.

César Henao is one of the signatories of the Fractal Manifesto assumed by the members of the group and which was presented to the press and the public on November 23rd of this year. The full text of the Fractal Manifesto is published in issue 229 of the journal Art Press.

The second stage of the operation consists of the inauguration in November of two exhibitions in two real places in Paris: the galeries Mabel Semmler and Yves Bugel with texts by Henri François Debailleux, Susan Condé and the philosopher Christine Buci-Glucksmann .

Projection
Today, César Henao projects through his new creations a vision enriched by his practices and his multiple experiences. This has been a constant development since its first works and interventions with the satellite which shows its marked interest in understanding and reacting as an artist on the impact of the technological and systemic advent on our modern societies.

INFINITISATIONS-Chamber 10, Installation, Supervues, Vaison-la Romaine, France 2017
RIEN A SECOUER, Performance, Paris Photo, Paris 2016
GRAVITTIS, Lyric Theatre, Miami, USA 2008
ALMOST ART, Slought Foundation Art and Theory, Philadelphia, USA  2006
GRAVITTIS - Performance, Métro Ligne 11,  Paris, France 2004
HUMAN / NON-HUMAIN Galerie Lina Davidov, Paris, France 2001
CRAPS NIHILO, Installation murale, Maison de l'UNESCO, Paris, France 2000
FRACTALISATIONS Villa Tamaris, La Seyne-sur-Mer, France 1999
FRACTAL ART Palazzo Economo, Trieste, Italie 1999
ART FRACTAL Espace Mabel Semmer, Paris 1999
ART FRACTAL Institut Français de Turin, Italie 1999
FRACTALES Abbaye du Ronceray, Angers France 1998
FRACTALES Nart, FIAC, Paris, France 1997
ZOOM Visual Arts Gallery, Purchase Collège, New York, 1997
ART'S MASTERS MUTTENZ Basel, Suisse 1997
AERO STATUS l'oeil de Minerve Installation, La Cité Perdue, Colombie 1987
L’INSTANT ABSTRAIT, Espace Cardin, Paris 1986
ARMERO, Hotel Drouot, Paris 1986
3 ABSTRAITS, Office de Tourisme de Colombie, Paris 1985
COLOMBIA 84, Ecole des Beaux Art- Paris 1984
EXTRA-MUROS, Le tombeau bleu, installation, Fort de l'Est, Saint-Denis, France 1984

Ongoing projects
«Thinking black matter», sculptures, installation
«Dark energy Industria Tenebris», sculptures, installation
«Lights from the wombs of The Triangular Trade», interactive monumental sculpture
«Supervulcano», sculpture, installation, performance, vidéo
«Icarus and the sniper», sculpture, installation
«Continental drift», paintings

AYITI,  Artistic Incubator, Galette Chambon, Haïti 2010 (concept, design & development model )
TAGH, The Art Gallery Hotel, Miami 2009 (concept, design & development model )
AATC, All Americas Town Center, Lauderhill 2007 (concept, design & development model)
URHAC, Universal Human Rights Art Collection, Miami 2005 (concept & development model)
AMCC, American Museum of Creole Cultures, Miami 2004 (concept, design & development model)