Sebastián Díaz Morales

Sebastián Díaz Morales’s examination of perception and reality is based on the assumption that reality itself is by nature highly fictional. Thus, his films do not simply transport the viewer into another, surreal, or phantasmal realm, but they strip reality of its familiarity and distort it, making it seem like something else. With Díaz Morales, the viewer’s imagination does not function as a basic counterpart to the real. Rather, it operates as a force capable of evoking space and producing it diegetically, one that, beyond generating a direct visual impression, fills in the gaps in seeing and, as the film unfolds, gradually reveals to the viewer the constructedness of what we call reality. Reality is presented here as a phantasm, as something that always eludes its defining in images. It is therefore always “a little bit ahead” of the image and the viewer’s gaze.

In 2009 he was awarded with a Guggenheim Fellowship. Díaz Morales has exhibited in venues such as Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; De Appel, Amsterdam; De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg; Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; MUDAM, Luxembourg; STUK Museum, Leuven, Belgium; Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Siegen; Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing; CAC Vilnius, Vilnius; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; Art in General, New York; and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon. He participated in DOCUMENTA Fifteen, Kassel; the 57th Venice Biennale; the Bienal de São Paulo; the Biennale of Sydney; the Shanghai Biennale, among others. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; Fundación Jumex, Mexico City; Foundazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Sammlung-Goetz, Munich; and the Fundação de Arte Moderna, Museu Berardo (MAC/CCB), Lisbon.