Materialising and visualising the digital

Daniel Canogar is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist working across photography, video, sculpture, and installation. Themes of memory and its loss are central to his art. In much of his earlier work, Canogar uses discarded electronic products of outdated technologies such as hard discs, telephones, VHS tapes, DVDs, and fiber optic cables and brings them back to life to examine technology’s impact on human lives and reveal who we were and who we are now. In a world that is constantly shifting and modifying by technology, Canogar attempts to reclaim old media seen as depositories of our personal and shared memory and identity, while offering a commentary on our throwaway society.

In his most recent data-driven artworks made with sculptural LED screens, Canogar examines the implications of technological changes from material-based media to online platforms. Connected to the Internet, these artworks use live feeds to capture the ceaseless flow of information in today’s world, materializing intangible yet ubiquitous data that affects every aspect of our lives. Through monumental and captivating sculptures and installations, Canogar seeks to activate an engaged viewer who not only sees but feels and experiences data. This way, he believes, we are better equipped to face the many challenges that lie ahead. “Data surrounds us, and yet we can’t really see it in a way that is tangible, physical, and that allows us to wrap our minds around the expanding field of big data. We need to find ways of better understanding how data has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, so as to better harness it and use it in useful ways rather than be used by it. I believe art can help out in this regard. As an artist, I am not interested in data visualization but in using data to make art,” says Canogar.

Daniel Canogar holds degrees in visual communications (Madrid, Universidad Complutense, 1987) and photography (New York University/International Center of Photography, 1990). He has exhibited extensively in major museums and galleries worldwide including Reina Sofia Contemporary Art Museum, Madrid; Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin, Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio; Borusan Contemporary Museum, Istanbul; American Museum of Natural History, New York; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; and Palacio Velázquez, Madrid, among others. Along with many exhibitions, Canogar has created numerous temporary and permanent large-scale public art installations including  Waves, a permanent sculptural installation made with LED tiles for the atrium of 2 Houston Center in Texas; Travesías, a sculptural LED screen commissioned for the atrium of the European Union Council in Brussels during the Spanish Presidency of the European Union in 2010; Constelaciones, the largest photo-mosaic in Europe created for two pedestrian bridges over the Manzanares River, in MRío Park, Madrid; Fluctuations in Sala Alcalá 31 in Madrid; and his largest participatory video installation to date, Storming Times Square in New York’s Times Square.