Fields of Porosity

‘Fields of Porosity’ is the first solo show in the UK of Peruvian artist Luis Enrique Zela-Koort. Working across a variety of media, Zela-Koort blends technological aesthetics with ancient artifacts. As part of the exhibition the artist will present a new body of work including a mobile glass sculpture.

‘Fields of Porosity’ aims to create spaces of understanding where the hermetic nature of “being” within Modernity is destabilised. In physics, a field is defined as a region under the influence of a universal force such as gravity. Similarly, Zela sees the exhibition as a conceptual field in which the barriers between beings are undone, exploring new dynamics between the inside and the outside. A field of universal diversity, where organisms are capable of transcending the binary categories with which modernity attempts to administer reality, underscoring the infinite mutability and potentiality of life.

The works propose to reset, or reboot, the infectious, zero-sum narratives that industrial modernity imposes on the history of nature, imagining new and porous relationships between bodies using scientific and technological resources to reverse anthropocentric hierarchies. The exhibition extends Zela ́s research into a ‘Queer Metaphysics’, observing desire as the productive agent of reality, and the embodiment of divergent knowledge.

Within the exhibition we are confronted with the vast universes in and outside of us, releasing all the possibilities for existence across space and time, replacing notions of virality with symbiosis, or of infection for coexistence and interconnection. Zela creates a yearning for worlds that go beyond the exploitation and suffering that is imposed on us and that we impose on the planet.

Zela-Koort’s solo show is presented in collaboration with N.A.S.A.L, Mexico and Ecuador. It is the third show in VITRINE Bermondsey’s gallery collaboration programme and opens over Frieze week 2023.