Once entering Benjamin Ossa’s workshop, you can smell coffee and hear hammerings. Photos hung up on the corridor and underway works on each corner. Books, materials, work tables: every piece is used with something that seems to be in process. Now, he is working on an individual exhibition, “there is no way for losing time,” in Arte Espacio Gallery, which will be opened for the first on March 10th. He is also making a piece that will go to Paris, to a Chilean artist exhibition in Sobering gallery, curated by Rodrigo arteaga. Although, he will not be able to travel as his second child will born on that period.
Besides, he won an art contest organized by CorpArtes Foundation and Autopista Central along with the Public Works Department, Renca municipality, and Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD). Amid many proposals, the best intervention that helped to recover the underpass located in Puente Gran Envergadura, General Velázquez with the Highway, was chosen.
He studied Arts at Finisterrae Univerity and studied Design for one year at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, where he sought lo learn more about materials. “I felt a lack of technic when handling certain things, for example, polymers works and illumination. I believed that there was a vast universe of unknown materials and a work methodology I could not perform as art schools have a traditional way of teaching, not a technical one,” states the artist.
He has been two years in his workshop, which is small according to him. “Sometimes I use too much space. Before I had a room as a workshop, now this apartment is small.” For Oscar, this year has started in a nice way: many underway projects and the launch of his second book.
Ossa tries to work with ideas and tries that these, somehow, become independent at will; at the end, he grants them the process of self-questioning. “It is not up to me what the final state of each work will be; the resulting form has to do with body, gravity and time.”
Ossa felt this once saw the space in Renca ready to be modified. By means of this contest, the winner willhave funds to do his proposal. Ivan Navarro, Sebastian Errázuriz, Catalina Bauer, and Macarena Ruiz Tagle were the other participants, burt judges chose Benjamin’s proposal as he works with his team to develop his project. Agustin Infante, the chief architect, and Bernardo Becerra de Acerotek are those who will build the design.
“Once I came to the place, I realize there was a transcendental factor in there, it was not the place itself, it was the fact we were under the highway. So, there was a brutal noise, an incredible energy.” Ossa realized that when cars and trucks pass, the place moves and vibrates. That was the factor he would take advantage to create a work hung up on the highway which, thanks to vehicle movements, La and Re notes would be played.
This first semester, this project should be finished and ready to be visited.
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