Interdictory Spaces detail Digital image 180x900 cm 2007

Interdictory Spaces detail Digital image 180x900 cm 2007 Dionisio Gonzalez "Interdictory Spaces" solo exhibition: December 15, 2007 to February 9 at Xippas Gallery. Dionisio Gonzalez (born 1965) is one of today's most representative Spanish artists. His first Paris solo exhibition features a series of highly utopian digital large-scale images updating architectural plans, based on his recent two-year project reimagining architectural spaces in the suburban favelas of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil. These makeshift slums developed according to the logic of individual survival conditions without urban planning; all structures are built from received materials and constantly modified, forming unique signs of these slum cities. After the election of left-wing President Lula in Brazil in 2002, he declared recognition of these occupied slum areas and planned their redevelopment to reconstruct public housing apartments, aiming to improve residents' lives and urban landscapes. Against this backdrop, Dionisio Gonzalez engaged in this project, attempting to recommend reconstruction based on existing structures and to improve the uncertain living conditions of residents through imagined cycles of construction and demolition. The artist used photographed image data, processing them digitally to insert imagined utopian architectural forms. Under exploration of diverse forms according to residents' needs, he connects social and aesthetic aspects, attempting to construct new urban landscapes and improve living conditions. This utopian ideal plan approaches the visionary concepts of Bauhaus and De Stijl from the early 20th century.