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Gabriel Sierra
Born in 1975 in San Juan  Nepomuceno, Colombia / Lives in Bogotá, Colombia

Adriano Pedrosa (AP): What is your interest in modern architecture?

Gabriel Sierra (GS): For me, modernity is an abstract idea, an entity that expands to contaminate everything that approaches it. I am interested in exploring formal codes that exist in art, architecture, decorative arts, design as a pure language. For me, it is important to understand how concepts that give origin to objects evolve when they change their time, context, and place—how ideas, form, and matter are manipulated and grow old. I think of architecture as a channel, a great container where we deposit information related to our lives and the particularities of the time in which we live. Probably all the events in history are directly or indirectly connected to the idea that to represent the work of the architect in culture, somebody must have an enormous power to alter the perception of the reality that surrounds us. Something that influences my work is the primitive complexity of Japanese architecture, and the form and function of objects in the spaces produced by the Shakers. All of this makes me think that the idea of modern architecture as we know it already existed before the invention of modernity.

AP: And you are somehow blending architecture, design, and sculpture with object making?

GS: The projects that involve furniture and design derive from my interest in the space that architecture creates. The history of architecture is largely grounded in the tradition of sculpture, thus I understand design as a development of the specific necessities of architecture and of objects. But what really interests me in art is that it does not really have a specific function that is different from that of architecture and design. However, I believe that art’s greatest mystery is to be as functional as a building or a lamp!

AP: You have worked with exhibition design and art installations. How are they different?

GS: The major difference is in the fact that working to develop the ideas of others restricts the development of your own ideas. Sometimes this can be good, sometimes not. It all depends on the context and on the level of experimentation. The responsibility is different when you work in collaboration; there is a commitment to give form to an Idea shaped by many other ideas, and it is not easy to put yourself in agreement with more than two characters. My work, most of the time, emphasizes the concept of function as a kind of energy that provides sense to the object and the space, to the object in space, and to the space within the object.

AP: You’ve spoken to me about some of your references in architecture and design. What are some of your references in contemporary art?

GS: Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Bruce Nauman, and Lygia Clark are just a few who have influenced me strongly.