Summary: The history of art shows gradual improvements in technique for representing our earthly reality. But over a hundred years ago, some artists began to throw out this long-standing tradition to turn canvasses with nothing or just one colour into art. Then they started to exhibit invisible sculptures. There was no skill in any of this, but the artists did need powerful patrons in art galleries and amongst the critics to convince potential buyers that it was art.

It never ceases to amaze how irrational and herd like we human beings are. We lack courage when it comes to obeying the trends imposed on the world, no matter how absurd, banal, or silly they may be. Fashions in clothing and footwear demonstrate this to us every day, but also in the commercial and art worlds we find countless examples.

In 1883, the French artist collective “Les Incoherentes” proposed the concept of the empty canvas as a work of art. Later, in the 20th century, artists and those who validate them before the public and institutions abandoned traditions. A defiant attitude prevailed, the main idea of ​​which was to innovate and transgress.

Artistic movements sprang up like flowers in fertile soil. Today’s movement replaced yesterday’s. Artists entered a game where each invented their own rules. The imperative was to forget the past and its works. Until then, art had been the result of a slow superposition of achievements and subtle changes within tradition. Dadaism, a European movement of 1916, opened the door to many trends.

Before some artists proposed emptiness, nothingness, as a work of art, others had already explored extreme simplification. Artists like Kazimir Malevich proposed single-color canvases, something akin to not painting anything at all. In 1918, he created his work White Square on a White Background, an extreme example of the movement (pure concept). Then, in 1921, Aleksander Rodchenko presented his monochromatic paintings: Pure Red, Pure Yellow, and Pure Blue.

In 1940, Ad Reinhardt’s Black Paintings arrived. More than 20 artists, from different parts of the world, have demonstrated their creativity by painting their unique paintings in a single colour. In Colombia, Ana Mercedes Hoyos was not far behind. There are still those who continue to propose the same thing, such as paintings with invisible ink.

In 1953, Robert Rauschenberg erased a drawing by Willem de Kooning and presented it as a work of art. Little by little, everything was eliminated, until the object and meaning were avoided. Then a term was needed to describe this. Minimalism was the term coined by the philosopher Richard Wollheim in the 1960s. After minimalism, conceptual art appeared. In conceptual art, the concept was everything. Often, the work was nothing more than the title.

It doesn’t take much talent to make a conceptual work, but it does take a lot of connections to get it “noted.” Without a doubt, one must be well established in the world of art power, whether in museums or galleries, or be famous in magazines or the media, to be valued. In many cases, the only difference between the work of an established conceptual artist and that of anyone reading these lines is their name.

Ideas are copied, proliferated, and spread to new worlds. Let’s look at a series of famous works in which there are only ideas, but no physical work.

Yves Klein was perhaps the first artist to explore the theme when, in 1958, he presented the first exhibition completely devoid of visible content, The Void. The American artist Robert Barry held empty exhibitions from 1969 to the late 1970s. The galleries remained empty and closed, physically inaccessible. He took the idea—what else could he take?—to Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Turin. Robert Irwin proposed himself as a work of art. It was located inside an empty gallery at the Ace Gallery in Los Angeles in 1970.

Chris Burden had the same idea; it seems he was the work of art. In 1975, he exhibited White Light / White Heat. The artist stood on a platform above the viewer and spent 22 days without eating or speaking, and the viewer could enter the space, but couldn’t see him (seeing is believing). Artists such as Simon Pope and Santiago Reyes Villaveces exhibited their empty galleries, the former titled Galería Espacio Recuerdo (2006), and the latter titled El Hueco (2025), where there is only a gap.

Andy Warhol also exhibited his empty work, which he called Invisible Sculpture, from 1985. We know the date because the pedestal and the technical sheet were in the gallery. At the Hayward Gallery in London, in 2012, 50 “invisible” works by famous artists such as Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, and Maurizio Cattelan were exhibited. More elusive was Tom Friedman’s work: 1,000 Hours of Staring. It was a blank sheet of paper that the artist claimed to have stared at for a total of 1,000 hours over the span of five years.

The work Io Sono (I Am) is an invisible sculpture by the Italian artist Salvatore Garau and sold for over €15,000 (approximately $AUD26,500) at a Milan auction in May 2021. The sculpture has no form or physical matter, and its existence resides in the thought and imagination of the viewer. The buyer receives a certificate with instructions to display it in an empty space approximately 1.5 x 1.5 meters, representing a void filled with energy.

I quote some excerpts from the Guardian newspaper:

“In that category is a work by Robert Barry in which he released different noble gases into the atmosphere at different locations in California, taking a photograph of the empty canister and the gas.”

There will be much to provoke laughter, particularly a work that mocks absurd bureaucracy, consisting of a police report investigating Cattelan’s—taken seriously—claim that an invisible work of art had been stolen from the back of his car. There’s also the film that Jay Chung took over two years to shoot without film in the camera—amusing to some, perhaps not so much to the actors.

A much more serious exhibition is a work by Teresa Margolles in which she took the water used to wash the bodies of murder victims in the Mexico City morgue and then evaporated it. Visitors walk through a room, aware that this superfine mist has a connection primarily with the people killed by drug cartels. To which the critic Rugoff says: “We see photographs all the time, but this is much more intimate. You feel it in your skin.”

The visual arts are not the only realm of minimalism. Let us recall John Cage’s much-heard work, Four Minutes 33 Seconds. A composition for piano in which the pianist sits motionless and the audience remains silent for 273 seconds.

There are many examples in literature, such as: Collective Poem by Robert Filliou, from 1968; Chapters 18 and 19 of the final volume of Tristram Shandy; Essay on Silence by Elbert Hubbard; What I Know about Women; What Men Think Beyond Sex, translated by José Gómez Benito (more than 1,000 copies sold). Fortunately, these works are read quickly, as they only contain blank pages.

Not everything can be art, but everything can be sold as art. Some works do not satisfy our most natural criteria for art, but respond to hierarchical and herd instincts. They are so strong and decisive when it comes to emotionally engaging us that they can confuse us. If you’d like to read more about the subject in depth, look for my book El arte en desnudo (Undressing the Arts), published by P&P.

Comments by Kieran Tapsell:

As Ana Cristina Vélez notes in this column, art not only encompasses painting and sculpture, but also literature. An important art form in literature is satire. It is therefore possible to turn this “nothing art” into something artistic by making fun of it. For example, in a littoral rainforest park at Stanwell Park, south of Sydney, there are the MATE Exhibitions (Modern Art Tributes on Eggs) where, during Covid when we could not go to art galleries, copies famous artworks were painted on porcelain eggs in giant nests constructed from invasive weeds and fallen sticks. But one day a vandal builder dumped buckets of old plaster in the bush along one of the tracks. We put up a sign next to it: “Conceptual Art. This apparent example of bush vandalism by a rogue plasterer may be an exquisite example of ‘conceptual art’, entitled Plaster with Bucket. It has been described by art critics as a ‘striking masterpiece, whose place is already cemented in modern art.’ Its meaning is clear: you have to get plastered before you kick the bucket.’ In 2001, the Italian conceptual artist, Salvatore Grau sold a vacuum, that is nothing for €15,000. The ultimate future of Plaster with Bucket will have to be made by Wollongong City Council whose curators may decide that it may be replaced by a copy of Salvatore Grau’s masterpiece, Io Sono, namely nothing.” The photos show the original artwork of the plaster and bucket and then the substituted copy of Grau’s masterpiece, nothing.

At the dawn of life, the first brains were nothing more than small groups of neurons capable of interpreting the direction of a light source, and thus starting a flagellum that could guide its owner to the source of food, abundant in the surface of the primordial oceans. Those same structures, simple at first, became more intricate machines as primitive photoreceptors evolved into more and more complex eyes. The binary world of light and darkness gradually gave way to a universe of shapes, backgrounds, colors, textures… Each of the four dimensions, time and space, should have been represented in larger neural networks, in wiring of axons and dendrites that as a whole constitute an abstract, crude and poorly approximate internal representation of that elusive phantom that we call the “external world”.

In the words of neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás, “We have eyes that evolved to generate images of the external world through the bouncing properties of photons. But what is an image? An image is a simplification of reality. The brain constantly simplifies reality; furthermore, it simplifies the external world, but in a very useful way. An image is a simplified representation of the external world written in a strange way. Any sensory transduction is a simplified representation of a universal emanating from the external world. The brain is very Kantian in terms of the essence of its operations”.

The brain, we still don’t know how it does it, presents to that ethereal and elusive object that we call “I” a representation (our “reality”) of the world in which we inhabit. However, in the human brain, and to a lesser extent in that of some other higher mammals, something unusual has happened: that same internal representation is expressed externally, a mechanism without which communication would be impossible. Language itself, as the great linguist Noam Chomsky points out, did not appear with grunts and guttural gestures, as some naively suppose, but was probably in its origins an extension of that internal “mentalese” that must have appeared first in the wire of the neural network to make the same reality compatible between members of the same species.

But language is not limited to our linguistic capacity. Symbols, such as words, can also be abstract objects, characters created to represent categories, relationships, order, functionality… It is these symbols that allow us to discover and invent new worlds, unreachable to our limited senses, no less real extensions of our perceptual world. Mathematicians call this tool formalisms and philosophers, mental modeling. All human civilization, to a large extent, is the product of that “magic” wand in the hands of everyone.

In his book, How We Discovered Numbers, the writer Isaac Asimov offers us a palpable example. How does one hunter tell another that he killed a bear twenty-five days ago if he does not know the concept of “whole number”? Such a person could use, as children do, the fingers of the hands to simulate twenty-five consecutive events. And the mechanism soon runs out without appropriate symbols as what happened becomes more and more remote. The use of pebbles and other objects provides a first resource.

Some animals, such as crows, can make abstract representations of the smallest integers (positive and negative). In a famous experiment, a man enters a wooden house that is right next to a small feeder for the animal. From a tree, the raven watches him. Only when the man comes out again does the bird get close to the food that is left there. Then two men enter, and only one leaves. The raven, who knows that two minus one is not zero, and does not come close to his food until the second man decides to leave. The experiment is repeated with six, seven and up to ten men who enter at the same time, and then leave in groups of two, of three… The crow secretly keeps the accounts: 10 minus 2, minus 3… Only if the account remains at zero the animal risks entering. Larger groups confuse it; the animal errs when its mental representation system exceeds its limited, although extraordinary arithmetic capacity.

Positional number systems are paradigmatic examples of the first mathematical formalisms. In the decimal system, to cite an example, we use the Arabic digits to represent the first integers up to nine (including zero, representing the void, nothing). Then, on the left, the new digit represents the number of powers of ten. The next one to the left represents the number of powers of one hundred, and so on. The advantages with respect to the Roman numeral system can be appreciated when it is necessary to do any moderately complex computation. For example, let’s try dividing MDXXXV by DLIX, using the Roman numeral system.

Another positional system was invented by the Babylonians: in base 60, it used bars for units and wedges for powers of 60. It’s amazing, it’s still used to divide the circle into 360 degrees.

Another mixed system, based on 5 and base 20, was invented in Mesoamerica, by the Mayas. In it, the unit is represented by a point, and five units in a horizontal bar. The different powers of twenty are represented upright. Thus, for example, the first integers, from zero to nineteen are represented as follows:

1. In The Sand Counter, Archimedes tries to set an upper limit on the number of grains of sand needed to fill the universe. For this he invented the exponents. And he gave us an example: the symbol (108) ^ (108 ^ 108) represents a one followed by eighty thousand trillion zeros. For his purposes, however, much smaller powers were already sufficient, since according to his calculations the universe should have a diameter of 10¹⁴ stadia (approximately 2 light years) and therefore could be filled with 10⁶³ grains of sand.

Through a purely syntactic process, in which symbols are blindly manipulated while certain laws are respected (the syntax of each formalism), we can reproduce logical reasoning, as Aristotle first demonstrated. If I affirm, for example, “it is not true that it is not true that I went to the cinema”, we can easily conclude that I actually did go to the cinema. But if I affirm that “it is not true that it is not true that it is not true that it is not true that it is not true that I went to the cinema”, it would be almost impossible for us to know if we really went or not. The symbolism of the propositional calculus allows us, however, to know the answer: it would suffice to count the number of denials of the proposition P, which represents the affirmation “I went to the cinema”. In the first statement, for example, ┐┐P is stated, where ┐means not or negation. And since ┐┐P is equal to P, then we conclude that we did go to the movies. In the second example, it is stated that ┐┐┐┐┐P is equivalent to ┐P, and therefore we did not go to the cinema. The parity of the number of negation symbols “┐” then allows us to deduce the truth or falsity of the corresponding statement: if this number is even, it is because we did go to the movies; and we conclude that we did not go, when said number is odd. The “formal machine” calculates the answer for us.

We have invented many types of models, many types of formalisms, let’s say languages: words, drawings, sketches, maps, diagrams, plans, scores, equations, algorithms. To understand is to have formalized a series of representations. With these we can literally go to the moon, we can go to the beginning and the end of the world, and at the same time to know that “real time” does not exist, and only exists as a world line in the timeless block of the 4-manifold that models the Einsteinian universe.

Thanks to mathematicians and their doodles in the mind and on the blackboard, we have been able to understand the laws that govern the world. Theories are representations that have a coherent relationship with what we are able to observe of reality.

As my father, Antonio Vélez, noted in his article Mathematical Modeling: “The goal of modeling is to construct representations that are physically isomorphic. This means that for each relevant element of the part of the world under study there must be a corresponding element in the model, and for each law or regularity observed, another in the model that imitates it with some fidelity. They are bold imitations, which we usually call theories. Virtual machines in which their elements are symbols, called variables, parameters, constants, functions, derivatives… Thus, a length can be replaced by a letter; a velocity or a gradient, by a derivative or by a vector; an economic system, by a matrix; a tree structure, by a fractal or by a recurrence equation; a work done or a probability, by an integral; the heat flux, by an equation in partial derivatives; the impedances, currents and voltages in alternating current circuits, by complex numbers… When modeling, we choose those mathematical elements that best copy or simulate the pertinent properties of the parcel of the world we have chosen, its invariants.”

It is in the world of symbols and mathematical equations where it is possible to explain the planetary movement. In this formalism we can understand the dimensions of the Sun and the Moon, and their relative distances. We can even weigh them!

It was in a mathematical formalism where for the first time infinite sums of sinusoidal functions appeared that represented unsuspected solutions of Maxwell’s equations. Later it was learned that they corresponded to electromagnetic waves, those objects that we had all perceived in the form of light, and that we never knew what they were.

And this discovery that made wireless communication possible was born from the mind of a “not very pragmatic” man whose interest was concentrated in matters as unearthly as deciphering what “the rings of Saturn” were made of, or knowing how to establish an elegant mathematical language. where one could write, and deduce from minimal principles, the empirical laws of Ampere and Faraday.

And from Einstein’s equations it follows as a corollary the existence of black holes, impossible places in the universe where there is not the slightest trace of matter, but where once there was a massive star, now converted into a dimensionless mathematical point, but with its very mass! And the existence of gravitational waves, which Einstein himself predicted, but which could only be observed a couple of years ago.

And the equivalence between mass and energy is also deduced, the most famous formula in all of physics, E=mc^2, from which follows the possibility of building the ultimate weapon capable of destroying human civilization as a whole.

And in the language invented to represent the impossible square root of -1, Schrödinger’s equation is written, and Dirac’s, which shows us the reality of the mysterious quantum world, and the existence of the positron and antimatter.

And with that other language, which is poetry, Borges meets, and we synchronize with him when saying:

“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.”

My brother expanded and corrected the mathematical information in this article.

En diferido,  viernes 12, por UniValle TV (Une 117 y Claro 104), 6:30 pm; y domingo 14, por TeleIslas, 1:00 pm (DirecTv 150, Une 62, Claro 127 y Movistar 167).

La compositora y cantante estará en la emisión 133 (octava temporada) del espacio que muestra dinastías, leyendas, estrellas y nuevos talentos de las músicas del Pacífico y el Caribe, entrevistados por destacados periodistas culturales del país.

Mimi Ibarra

Siendo menor de edad sale del país que la vio nacer y la salsa empezó a coquetearle.  La década de los 90 fue testigo del aporte  que Mimi Ibarra hace a la industria musical, cuando se suma al equipo de trabajo del sello disquero MP, Musical Productions, radicado en ese entonces en Miami y Puerto Rico. Es ahí cuando realmente la Salsa la seduce, la conquista, la atrapa.

Algunas de las canciones escritas por Mimi Ibarra que le dieron la vuelta al mundo y la dejan en el top 3 de las escritoras de salsa entre hombres y mujeres más importantes del planeta.

Juguete de nadie – Puerto Rican Power // Si me dejas amarte – Roberto Lugo
Déjala – Tito Rojas a dúo con Tito Gómez // Comparame – Roberto Lugo
Te propongo – Héctor Rey // No pude evitarlo – La Mulenze
Te necesito mi amor – Maelo Ruiz // Cúlpame – Luisito Carrión
Por qué te quiero tanto – Tito Rojas // Eres la única – Nino Segarra
Por esa mujer – Tito Rojas // Ganas – Tito Gómez
Señora – Tito Rojas // La va a pagar –Pedro Conga
También nos duele – Tito Rojas // Tu forma de amar – Pedro Conga

Lloraré – Tito Rojas // Nunca te fallé – Anthony Cruz
Por qué te niegas – Roberto Roena // Dile a él – Anthony Cruz

Después de apoyar con su talento la carrera de otros artistas, Mimi Ibarra hace su primera aparición como intérprete de sus propias creaciones, respaldada en su primera producción por 8 temas todos de su autoría entre los que se encuentra el tema que la da a conocer a nivel internacional como intérprete “Qué Tiene Ella”, tema que aún continúa en el gusto popular y pasando de generación en generación.

Además se destacaron en la misma producción temas como No Puede Ser a dúo con Anthony Cruz, Pasó Pasó y Marinero De Amor.  Le siguieron 2 producciones más con el mismo sello disquero desde donde se desprende “Duele” a dúo con Tito Rojas.

Después Mimi Ibarra como artista independiente grabó varios sencillos y para el deleite de su público sigue con la misma tendencia de hacer temas en otros géneros como ya tiene acostumbrado a sus seguidores.

Esta cantautora salsera tiene en su repertorio 2 Bachatas, 1 Balada y 2 Cumbias Urbanas, impregnadas con su sello personal con mucho sentimiento, con buen ritmo y como si fuera poco ahora Mimi Ibarra canta, interpreta en sus presentaciones las composiciones exitosas que escribió para otros artistas.

Su éxito como cantautora traspasa las fronteras, Republica Domicana, Perú, Ecuador, Cuba Puerto Rico, Chile, Panamá, EE.UU, Europa y obviamente su amada Colombia.

Ventana musical Pacífico y Caribe

En 2022, conversaron en Ventana Hugo Carlos Granados, Rey de Reyes vallenato;  Roberto Solano, compositor de clásicos de la salsa; los cantantes  Víctor Hugo Rodríguez y Mónica Castillo,  GiBlack, de El avioncito,  Rolando Ochoa, líder de Zona 8;  Elio Boom, y Jaider Mondragón y Leidy Salgado; percusionista «Billo» Quiñonez, y Víctor Campo y Juan José Vásquez, ganadores en el Festival Pedazo de Acordeón; Almes Granados, Rey de Reyes del Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata;  Kike Riascos, el Rey de la Marimba, la cantante Antombo,  Luis Eduardo Acústico, líder del Ritmo Exótico,  Criss & Ronny, gemelos de la champeta; Ovy on the Drums, productor musical y cantante; Los K Morales,  Willy García con su nuevo sencillo, Mentiroso.

También Fabrizio Bornacelli e Iván Martínez, ganadores del Festival Mar de Acordeones de Santa Marta, y Los Alegres de Telembí; Brayan Minota y Candelaria Beltrán, cantadores de bullerengue, salsero Gustavo Rodríguez, Alexis Play en modo Petronio, maestro Octavio Panesso de Grupo Saboreo, Los Dioses del Ritmo (Exótico),  Afrolegends, Funkcho de El Caribefun,  Rafa Manjarrez, compositor vallenato,  Junior Zamora, Leysong y De la King, líderes del Ritmo Exótico;  Leonidas Valencia,  Mr Black, el presidente de la champeta, Mabiland, rapera colombiana,  Zaider, el que nunca falla (champeta), y Keke Minowa, artista cartagenera de afrodancehall.

Este 2023, Nidia Góngora, la reconocida maestra cantora del Pacífico, premio Shock y nominada a Grammy Latino en 2019, tras brillar en el reciente Festival Estéreo Picnic; Oscar «El Gato» Urueta, en los 50 años de una vida musical que comenzó con La Protesta de Colombia, orquesta pionera de la salsa en el país; Sergio Bermúdez, en antesala del 34 Festival Pedazo de Acordeón; Omar Geles, juglar contemporáneo del vallenato.

La producción técnica está a cargo de AXTV Producciones (desde el 29 de junio de 2022), y la producción y dirección general en cabeza de Fundación  Color de Colombia.

*Trazador misional de esta publicación de Fundación Color de Colombia: Línea estratégica 1:  Reconocimiento, cultura e integración. Iniciativa 1: Periodismo cultural. Proyecto:  Músicas e identidad afrocolombiana. 

La maestra Nidia Góngora estará en el inicio de la octava temporada y la emisión 129 del espacio que muestra dinastías, leyendas, estrellas y nuevos talentos de las músicas del Pacífico y el Caribe, entrevistados por destacados periodistas culturales del país.

Nidia Góngora

Directora, fundadora y voz líder de la agrupación musical Canalón de Timbiquí, ganadora de numerosos reconocimientos  del Festival Petronio Álvarez.

Con más de 4 discos donde la maestra Nidia inmortaliza su voz con canciones  como “Quítate de mí escalera” o “Molino mi molinete”.

Góngora, también llamada “la guardiana de las tradiciones”, ha
colaborado con diferentes agrupaciones y proyectos musicales como AleKuma, Bahía, Herencia de Timbiquí, Dizzy Mandjeku, Pacífico Sinfónico, Ondatropica, The Bongo Hop, Búho, Montoya, Malecón, Orishas, La Pacifican Power, y con el productor británico Quantic, con quien creó el proyecto más trascendental en su carrera musical.

Esta versatilidad le ha permitido posicionarse como un referente entre las
comunidades de músicos tradicionales y del resto de la región afrolatina, al tiempo de hacerse al reconocimiento de múltiples escenarios internacionales en Europa, Asia y Estados Unidos, a donde ha llevado su canto.

Ventana musical Pacífico y Caribe

En 2022, conversaron en Ventana Hugo Carlos Granados, Rey de Reyes vallenato;  Roberto Solano, compositor de clásicos de la salsa; los cantantes  Víctor Hugo Rodríguez y Mónica Castillo,  GiBlack, de El avioncito,  Rolando Ochoa, líder de Zona 8;  Elio Boom, y Jaider Mondragón y Leidy Salgado; percusionista «Billo» Quiñonez, y Víctor Campo y Juan José Vásquez, ganadores en el Festival Pedazo de Acordeón; Almes Granados, Rey de Reyes del Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata;  Kike Riascos, el Rey de la Marimba, la cantante Antombo,  Luis Eduardo Acústico, líder del Ritmo Exótico,  Criss & Ronny, gemelos de la champeta; Ovy on the Drums, productor musical y cantante; Los K Morales,  Willy García con su nuevo sencillo, Mentiroso.

También Fabrizio Bornacelli e Iván Martínez, ganadores del Festival Mar de Acordeones de Santa Marta, y Los Alegres de Telembí; Brayan Minota y Candelaria Beltrán, cantadores de bullerengue, salsero Gustavo Rodríguez, Alexis Play en modo Petronio, maestro Octavio Panesso de Grupo Saboreo, Los Dioses del Ritmo (Exótico),  Afrolegends, Funkcho de El Caribefun,  Rafa Manjarrez, compositor vallenato,  Junior Zamora, Leysong y De la King, líderes del Ritmo Exótico;  Leonidas Valencia,  Mr Black, el presidente de la champeta, Mabiland, rapera colombiana,  Zaider, el que nunca falla (champeta), y Keke Minowa, artista cartagenera de afrodancehall.

La producción técnica está a cargo de AXTV Producciones (desde el 29 de junio de 2022), y la producción y dirección general en cabeza de Fundación  Color de Colombia.

*Trazador misional de esta publicación de Fundación Color de Colombia: Línea estratégica 1:  Reconocimiento, cultura e integración. Iniciativa 1: Periodismo cultural. Proyecto:  Músicas e identidad afrocolombiana.