Sebastián Díaz Morales

Born in 1975 in Comodoro Rivadavia (Argentina)
Lives and works in Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

Sebastián Díaz Morales was reared in an isolated place between the Atlantic Ocean and the Patagonian Desert. He believes his upbringing led him to a particular way of perceiving reality. He uses a number of different formal strategies to create his videos, ranging from the digital manipulation of appropriated news clips to lengthy, film-like narrative works made from footage filmed by himself. Díaz Morales explores the relationship between large-scale socio-political power dynamics and individual action in works that create a sense of uneasiness for the viewer. His films are often surreal, establishing a tension between a depicted social reality and its representation in a visually abstract or phantasmagorical way. Throughout his works, multiple forms of dependence are explored, including interdependent relationships between people, the environment and social structures. Díaz Morales’ works can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; Fundación Jumex, Mexico; Sandretto Foundation, Turin; Constantini Collection, Buenos Aires; Pinault Foundation, Paris; Sammlung-Goetz, Munich; and the Fundacion de Arte Moderna, Museo Berardo, Lisbon, among others.

Pasajes I and II are the first two films in a series of four. In the two videos included in KB17, a lone man, played by Federico Zukerfeld, opens doors, climbs stairs and ladders, walks corridors and turns corners. Like a sleepwalker, he searches the interior spaces of Buenos Aires for a seemingly elusive destination. In the videos, Buenos Aires, which appears at times both shabby and elegant, reveals itself to be an endless maze in which an alternative image of the viewer can potentially materialize. As Díaz Morales states, “These works, its surroundings and characters picture at first a reality that sometimes can be interpreted as oneiric or dreamlike. Another way to see them is by thinking of them in the opposite way: The characters who populate these realms are those who envision us; I see our reality being dreamed by them and in their dreaming, shaping our world.”