David
Lamelas

The conceptual artist David Lamelas (b. 1946 in Buenos Aires) came to Berlin in 1998 as a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (BKP). His artistic oeuvre defies categorization, encompassing minimalist constructions, site-specific interventions, large-scale installations, mixed-media sculptures, drawings, photographs, films, videos, and interactive performances. All of Lamelas’s works revolve around issues of time, space, and language, as well as alternative communication processes and models of knowledge.

In the context of his BKP residency, Lamelas created a video work that consists of aerial footage of busy intersections and public squares in Berlin. He shot the images from a helicopter, flying over the chosen locations several times a day, at different times of day. Lamelas was one of the pioneers of conceptual art in the 1960s and 70s, and this work is connected to his ongoing series “Time as Activity,” which began in 1969 as a series of experimental films in Düsseldorf. Lamelas documented everyday life in three different city locations. He continued this project until 2017 and extended it to Los Angeles, Warsaw, and New York. In these films and videos, Lamelas linked his artistic practice to the cultural and social surroundings in which he was living.

David Lamelas studied sculpture in Buenos Aires and moved to London in 1968; here, alongside his sculpture studies at Saint Martin’s School of Art, he began making films. He gained international recognition in 1968 when, aged just 21, he represented Argentina at the Venice Biennale with the conceptual piece Office of Information about the Vietnam War at Three Levels: The Visual Image, Text and Audio (1968). This work also brought Lamelas to the attention of Marcel Broodthaers, who introduced him to the European art scene.

Lamelas moved to Los Angeles in 1976, then relocated to New York in the late 1990s. As a restless, cosmopolitan figure who is often described as “nomadic,” he has moved with ease around the international art worlds of South America, Europe, and the United States. Lamelas is particularly interested in exploring how a work of art is perceived and achieves its impact through the viewer, because for him, public interaction is key. He believes that the audience makes the work. This has led him to compare viewing an artwork to reading a book: the book only becomes a book when somebody reads it and gives meaning to the text.

Lamelas favors an expanded notion of sculpture. “I think sculpture can take any dimension, form, or medium,” he once wrote. This statement reveals a great deal about his notion of art, which is based on the premise that the medium of a work is determined by its concept and derives from the idea. Lamelas believes that artworks have a life of their own, which can also change over time. He even goes as far as to compare his artworks to friends. Like friendships, they can come and go: some you keep for a lifetime, others only for a few meaningful moments.

Text: Laura Windisch
Translation: Jacqueline Todd