Omar Barquet is a Mexican artist based in Mexico City. Born in the Caribbean city of Chetumal, Barquet’s upbringing, surrounded by wildlife, family, music and the sheer force of nature, made his curiosity a way of relating to the environment, and his childhood, marked by hurricanes, freedom, chaos and joy, a primary source for building his artistic practice.
Barquet’s interests cannot be reduced to a single artistic discipline. He is way more than a visual artist. His work includes fragments of poetry, dance, music, performance, painting, sculpture, architecture, jewelry among other fields.
His approach to art is deeply influenced by music, and his largest project so far, The Ghost Variations, started in 2012 and still on-going, is organised like a symphony, with different elements interacting in time and space creating something much larger than its separate parts.
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Omar Barquet’s Work
Sound Improvisation made with a collection of symphonies on vinyl records intervened and cut into 4 parts to generate an incidental disarticulation between the compositions. The piece evokes the sounds of a flock of birds during their flight before the arrival of a hurricane. Watch the performance here
Re-articulated score for a sound improvisation session with two instruments: tuba and trombone, based on the piano work “Geistervariationen” by Robert Schumann. This score was conceptually modified, dividing it into its two keys, compacting its content and proposing two different instruments to reinterpret this work: Tuba and trombone, instruments with a long tradition of sacred and funeral music.
the Opernhaus Zürich)
Re-articulated score for sound improvisation with two instruments: tuba and trombone. The tuba player will play from outside the gallery and the trombone player from inside, facing each other and using the glass as a filter, where both scores will be placed, dividing the composition into two hemispheres. the piece can be interpreted freely and simultaneously, following some technical parameters. / Duration: 12 min. Watch performance here
Performance where a series of recovered chairs are broken to articulate the word
“shipwreck”, with the splinters resulting from the fracture of the chairs. This action is elaborated in a sound dialogue in a sound improvisation session, collaborating with sound artist and musician Santiago Pillado on drums and Omar Barquet on electronic oscillator, turntable and objects. Duration: 15 min.
More about Barquet´s work
Omar Barquet shared with us this amazing presentation of his work with focus on the Ghost Variations projects. To learn more about his process and ideas, download this pdf and enjoy!
