Starting February 4th, Daniel Canogar will present his new series Echo at Galería Max Estrella. The works that compose the series are made with flexible LED tiles, a technology that allows the artist to create curved screens. Visible behind their sinuous shapes are dangling cables and electronic components, the exposed entrails that are usually hidden. For the artist, these screens have stopped being windows that frame reality to become sculptural objects that illuminate and communicate with their environment.

The artist has observed a substantial change in our relationship with screens. From small wrist devices that monitor our biorhythms to monumental LED billboards that wrap around buildings, we are surrounded by their flickering and bright surfaces. Screens are acquiring a new materiality, a membrane quality that extends over multiple surfaces, objects and buildings. The Echo series responds to this new concept of screen-skin.

The screens feature abstract animations generated by algorithms. The animations react to real-time data of different phenomena happening around the globe, including earthquakes, fires or environmental pollution collected by various web pages. The result is a series of sculptural screens that listen to the planet through an Internet connection.

Echo’s screens seem to melt, drained by our overzealous need to represent the world. In their undoing, they discover a new role as creatures that no longer represent, but sense their ecosystem. Connected to the Web, they perceive planetary phenomena that escape our sensory possibilities, and yet are so vital to our survival as a species.

Daniel Canogar has created numerous public art pieces, including Waves, a permanent sculptural LED screen for the atrium of 2 Houston Center, Houston; 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; Asalto, a video-projection presented on various emblematic monuments including Union Station in Toronto, the Puerta de Alcalá in Madrid and Durham’s historic viaduct; Storming Times Square, a public-performance video installation screened on 47 of the LED billboards in Times Square, New York. Presently, Daniel is creating a large-scale permanent installation for Tampa’s International Airport, Florida, to be installed May 2017.