Some Words
Electric Impulses
Emergentism is a paradigm that Juan has been exploring for some time through his artistic practice. To explain it, he often does so through the interaction between neurons: none of them, on their own, is capable of writing a poem; intelligence emerges from a participatory process based on synapses—the nerve impulses that enable the interaction of billions of neurons.
The nerve or electrical impulse is the signal transmitted from neuron to neuron, with the purpose of passing sensory or motor information until it reaches the body structure where the triggering stimulus was generated.
These impulses travel through the spinal cord, which Juan likens to a bamboo trunk—a plant associated with construction in many Asian countries, evoking support and stability.
During an emergency surgical procedure—in which two of his vertebral discs were removed—he dreamed of walking through a bamboo forest; or that a forest was passing through him. The cartilaginous cells of these two discs (chondrocytes) have been cultivated in the laboratory to be fused later with a stalk of the same plant, which appears to grow along the model of Juan’s spinal column printed in bamboo fiber.
Images of this microscopic connection process are magnified into a large canvas, allowing the artist to grant us access to realms beyond our senses’ reach.
A series of drawings created during his recovery, based on medical reports, enable him to enter and exit his own body, making us participants in this journey. These works function not only as an investigation into the nervous system—which provokes movement but also pain—but also as an experiment through which Juan materializes his persistent desire to hybridize with other living elements. Essentially, it is a study of life itself.
The same electrical impulses that enable the movement of our limbs are generated by the cardiac muscle (the myocardium), stimulating the heartbeat or contraction that keeps us alive. In previous works, Juan cultivated cells from his own heart to later introduce them into the structure of a spinach leaf, in an exercise that merges poetic expression with cutting-edge scientific research.
Here, Juan dissolves the boundaries between art and science, using music as a pretext. A vinyl record captures and mixes the sound recorded during the surgical procedure, the rustling of a bamboo forest swayed by the wind, and the music of a flute shaped like his cervical vertebrae, printed from images obtained through magnetic resonance imaging.
Completing this soundscape are the grooves translating the graphs of an electromyogram—a test measuring muscle response to electrical impulses.
Electricity, or light, 光, is a concept omnipresent in Juan’s work. In fact, the drawings in this project have been treated with luminous ink—as if his nerves emitted light. But ultimately, impulses—or nerves—are, by definition, desires that prompt action suddenly, without reflection. Like the need to create or, as Juan says, “to make art.”