• Born in 1972
• Santiago, Chile
• Based currently in Brooklyn, NY
• Medium: lights, mirrors, neon, glowing glass tubes etc
• Themes & Ideas: Social & political matters, especially in reference to the Chilean government
• Types of works: Sculptures & installations
• Art Style: Conceptual, Contemporary

A lot of his work relates to the politics of the Chilean government that he grew up under. Living in Chile, under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (between 1973 and 1990), became Navarro’s most prominent subject matter, Electricity was one of the primary tools used in the dictatorship, to gain political dominance over the country with power being cut off and limited to the Chilean citizens. Navarro uses electricity in his work to represent this. For example, Homeless Lamp, The Juice Sucker 2004-05 in which a florescent shopping cart is lit up with electricity from a municipal power outlet of new York’s Chelsea District. This is in relation to the stark difference of power source/wealth between the rich and the poor (homeless). I like this work because it has a sense of activism, in which the electricity used to power the shopping cart (signifies the homeless), is actually taken from an actual municipal outlet.

Another one of his earlier famous works is You Sit, You Die 2002. It was his first version of an electric chair but he has dome more since then like Electric Chair 2005. You Sit, You Die has all the names of the people who have been executed by electric chair in the state of Florida. It’s interesting how the electricity that was limited to the Chilean country is now the medium he uses in his work. I don’t particularly like the idea of using too much electricity because it is a non-renewable energy source. However, Navarro uses it in a important way to bring focus on the political issues of the government. I was particularly interested in his work because a lot of his work looks very cool, especially due to the florescent lights and mirrors. Using light in my work is something I’m interested in aswell.

After looking into his work, I’ve decided that it’s not something I like. Not because of the medium (as I too am interested in working with these specific media) but because of the minimalist aesthetic that Navarro has. His work apparently echoes Dan Flavin (use of florescent lighting) and the minimalist approach. I don’t think that Navarro is as a minimalist as Flavin, as Navarro creates more conceptual works that signifies important challenging values and ideas. But it doesn’t it enough. It has a minimal approach in a sense that the concept is transparent in the visual aspect of the works.

As opposed to just florescent light sculptures, I do prefer his mirror sculptures more. For example, his series Drums 2009-2018 are florescent words fixed around the interior of a drum that has mirrors in the middle. The mirrors make it look like the inside is endless and the word is reflected infinitely. It has a sense of ambiguity because of the endless space created by the mirror. And the fact that words such as ‘BOOM’ are used as an alternate to sound, reflected infinitely. instead of sound coming from the drum, sound is suggested/represented in a way the light is bounced/reflected and echoes in the space. This is really interesting and I like how he uses light to represent something else. It’s really interesting to see how he uses light to represent something else (sound) and how he uses mirrors to manipulate light in a contained space.

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