Sandroni Rey is pleased to present Odd Sympathy, an exhibition of new works by John Espinosa. This will be Espinosa’s first solo show with Sandroni Rey.

“Odd Sympathy” is a term coined by the 17th century physicist Christiaan Huygens to denote inexplicable natural synchronicity. One example of this phenomenon can be found during a crowd’s applause—at first the clapping is unorganized, but rapidly that randomness strangely adjusts to a synchronized rhythm. This type of unusual and often inexplicable synchronicity involving sentient beings negotiating natural phenomenon and supernatural energies has often been a thematic preoccupation present in John Espinosa’s works.

For this exhibition, Espinosa will present two new large-scale sculptures. “Seconds After, Years Later” is the second phase of an ongoing sequential sculpture project begun in 2002. In the first phase of this project “Frozen Upon Entry,” three fawns positioned in a triangulated pattern negotiated an inexplicable energy presented as a retinal burst that formed a three-dimensional symbol alluding to electrical energy flows or a telepathic-like cognition. The second phase of this sequential project presents a nearly exact scenario; only the fawn’s bodies have turned to a smooth nebulous colored stone. Their legs have begun to crystallize into translucent amber where the electric current can be seen leaving the fawns’ bodies and lifting them off of the ground. These material transformations are utilized by Espinosa to create a ‘sequential object’. In Espinosa’s sculptural project, time-lapse occurs such that the narrative of the original sculpture has advanced by mere seconds but in real time five years have actually passed. This type of sequential structure normally exists in the world only in two dimensions. In Espinosa’s project, this structure becomes kinesthetic, a sequential image experienced in a three-dimensional world and slowed to the point where seconds are years.

In the second sculpture, “This Wreckage (The Long Count)”, chronology is not a device but the subject. Espinosa presents a set of wooly mammoth tusks that thrust out of a rocky Mayan-like ruin shaped like a geometric mammoth skull. The back of this skull/ruin opens to a cavern whose interior walls are quadrangular panels airbrushed with galactic formations of deep space. This sculpture alludes to the infinite parallel expansion of time and knowledge; time expands backwards as we move forward; the more time and human understanding progresses, the further back we can imagine.

John Espinosa, born in Bogotá, Colombia, is a graduate of Yale University (MFA Sculpture 2001). His work has been exhibited internationally including a solo show at the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art. He has participated in shows at The Renaissance Society, Chicago; The New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY; Metro Pictures, NY; Marianne Boesky, NY; Vilma Gold, London; and Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris. John Espinosa lives in Los Angeles.