Aramis Navarro: algorithmic-mega-death-superspell.exe

Do we believe in our devices? Network-based technologies such as ChatGPT or Google Maps have become our closest companions: They know every path and every answer. While these algorithmic intelligences increasingly elude our comprehension, we still believe they may bring salvation. Sometimes, their workings seem so inscrutable that we take them for magic. This ambivalent relationship is at the heart of the exhibition algorithmic-mega-death-superspell.exe by St.Gallen-based artist Aramis Navarro (b. 1991 in Zurich/CH).

In his most comprehensive solo exhibition to date, Navarro explores algorithms as media of revelation and contemporary oracles. Language runs through his kaleidoscopic work as both material and method: Spoken lines of code turn into poems, fragments of algorithms into neon signs, letters into holy figures. His practice of typing thoughts and observations with a typewriter on recycled paper sheets often lays the groundwork for his pieces. From this evergrowing archive, Navarro develops works such as his ongoing series II (Inflected Introspection): As an alchemist might, the artist casts his paper notes in resin and hangs them on the wall like precious amber inclusions. In his installation Ratking's hyper-sanctum, specifically developed for the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Navarro turns mirror-smooth surfaces into display-like altar pieces. And in his series Defixio, the young artist draws on the milleniums-old custom of curse tablets: inscriptions carved into thin sheets of lead, buried near graves or temples, intended to bewitch people. Navarro transfers these occult practices to aluminium plates, into which he incises fragments of fictitious algorithms. With such works, Aramis Navarro draws connections between magic rituals, notions of the sacred, and digital technologies. In this way, «algorithmic-mega-death-superspell.exe» questions the role which algorithms play in our current belief systems.

The exhibition by Aramis Navarro is supported by Jubiläumsstiftung der Schweizerischen Mobiliar Genossenschaft, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Stiftung für Ostschweizer Kunstschaffen, E. Fritz und Yvonne Hoffmann Stiftung and Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim Stiftung.