GHENT, BELGIUM.- S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, presents Carlos Navarrete – City-Scan, on view through December 17, 2006. Carlos Navarrete (b. 1968, Chile) travels the world as a contemporary explorer who goes on expeditions using his own methods and various media to study such topics as identity and culture.

Navarrete is constantly entering into dialogue with the cities and cultures he seeks out. Using photos, drawings and ephemeral interventions, he views each place he stays through the frame of his own perspective as a traveller. Even when he makes use of several media, his work is always linked to painting, more especially the tradition of geometric abstraction. His photos often include a domino block which has travelled around with him for years. He sees it as a ‘portable painting’ that refers to Malevich’s black square and by which means he tries to position and document the order of geometry in today’s chaotic world.

In Ghent, he will be analysing the stratified landscape of the city on a micro level, reflecting on the relationship between man, art and nature. He is fascinated by the concept of order and chaos, and will try to construct a poetic labyrinth in which the viewer can deliberately get lost and acquire a different view of the space around him and the marking of his own identity. The starting point for this interaction in the city is the ‘garden’, more particularly the principle of the eastern Zen Garden. The results of his observations will take shape in the exhibition, which takes the form of a travel diary.