Nodding to what has become known as the 'Stargate' sequence in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Pablo Vargas Lugo's Atlas (2018) pays homage to British filmmaker's 1968 film, in which early special effects and the influence of psychedelia coalesce, pointing to a historical shift in pop culture's manifestations of conscience and perception. Using this as a kind of template, Vargas Lugo projects the obsessive research he has carried out for the past ten years on anomalies in the identifying wing patterns of different butterfly species. As if reversing Kubrick's early depiction of outer space, the artist offers an amplified vision into a microcosm that dislocates hierarchies of scale, lineage and time, over an original soundtrack commissioned by composer Juan Cristobal Cerrillo.
- Magalí Arriola