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| Ciudad Encajada (Boxed City). acrylic and crayon on cardboard, dimensions variable, Intervention at Plaza Gerardo Barrios, downtown San Salvador, 2001 |
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| The drawings depicted houses saturated with gang graffiti in Ciudad Delgado, a dangerous area where I worked. The boxes were moved during the intervention, reconfiguring the overall shape, reflecting on the city's unstable nature. Presented at the first Adobe Colectivo exhibit in 2001, then at Todo Incluido, Imágenes Urbanas de Centro América, curated by Virginia Pérez Ratton and Santiago Olmo, it was featured at the IX Havanna Biennial in Cuba in 2006. |
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| Shanty Mall found materials, 100 x 160 x 80cms. installation at MAP Gallery, Maryland, 2006  It fused modern Shopping Mall design and Mesoamerican pyramids with informal architecture. It was presented at the exhibition Material Matters, curated by Jason Hughes in 2006. 
Imperium Precarium. Installation for the Young Art Prize, Centro Cultural de España (1st Place)
Wood, cardboard, architectural model, found materials. 2009   Arquitecturas Híbridas y Construcciones Mentales (series), 23 x 29 cms. each. acrilyc marker on paper. 2013 |
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| Whitney Slum Market Watercolor and ink on canvas, 60 x 60 cms. 2011 |
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| Juxtaposed Architectures watercolor and colored pencil on canvas, 60 x 60 cms. 2011 In this series of drawings, Mesoamerican temples, Spanish Colonial churches and Modernist buildings are juxtaposed to create multi level isometrics that deal with our hybrid, disjointed societies and the importance of recuperating our history and identity. Bauer's Whitney Museum in New York is rendered as a slum market obliquely addressing the art market in Central America. |
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| Lo que construyas para la eternidad también se perderá en el tiempo archival marker on paper, 50 x 70 cms. 2014 |
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| Temporary Map of Central America archival marker on paper, 60 x 120 cms. 2014 Elements from Mesoamerican Pyramids, Colonial churches and Modernist buildings are projected as isometrics and constructed using wooden pallets and found materials, referring to the way power structures are built and supported by the lower echelons of society |
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| Tropical Cargo Building (foreground) wood, plastic, light, found materials, 250 x 160 x 160 cms. 2012 |
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| Aerial View wood, plastic. wall installation at Marte Museum, San Salvador, 2010 |
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| TropiSpiral wood plastic, studio wall installation at Legal Art Residency, Miami, Florida. 2012 
The Whitney Museum of Central American Art
A Post-Apocalyptic Dream (project sketch for Pulse NY 2014)
The Whitney Museum of Central American Art, a Post-Apocalyptic Dream ” offers a ‘third world’, futuristic and tropical version of Marcel Breuer's Modernist masterpiece, which is soon to begin a new cycle of life as the Whitney Museum moves to a new building. Created from easily discarded and repurposed material the sculptural installation speaks of a moving, nomadic, temporal and unexpected future for Marcel Breuer's building. Vega sees this moment of uncertainty as echoing the historical instability of Central America and Central American contemporary art. In this way, Vega work underscores the impossibility of Central America having its own museum in New York, and responds by humorously imposing his own Central American Whitney Museum in to the New York art scene.
This project was exhibited at Marte Contemporary booth at the art fair PULSE in May 2014 in New York. It was curated by Claire Breukel and sponsored by Michel Langlais, Galerie Hilger Next, Vienna, Dan & Kathryn Mikesell, De Buck Gallery, New York. Special thanks to Pulse director Helen Toomer.
 
Front view. Breuer windows
   
The Whitney Museum of Central American Art, a Post-Apocalyptic Dream
Wood, cardboard, light, live plants, found materials
160 x 160 x 160 cms
2014
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| Downtown & The Bronx Installation at Bronx River Art Center, New York, found materials, 2009 |
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| Downtown & The Bronx (detail) this tower was inspired by the raised subway structures in the Bronx area in New York, the "rails" go through the wall and into the next exhibition room, where a small bed finalizes the journey |
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Downtown & the Bronx was created for the exhibition Bartered States, curated by José Ruiz at the Bronx River Art Center in the Bronx, New York Sculptural Shack and light maquette. Wood, translucent roofing sheets, tropical plants, icebox with cold beverages, seats. 2010    
two of the seven sculptural interventions throughout Managua, photos: Jorge Cabrera/CCE Managua
Inverted Surveillance
Panopticam Project
  Fake surveillance cameras elaborated with cardboard, wood and plastic bottles. Intervention at Zona MACO, México D.F., 2007   This series of urban interventions and sculptural installations appropriate and interpret the Panopticon, a social theory developed by Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish (1975). Applied in prison architecture by Jeremy Bentham and later on other institutions, they are ever-present in our societies as surveillance cameras. In Central America, real armed guards in surveillance huts are still more numerous than their technological counterpart, but the social condition that they inflict is the same, wether its real or suggested as in these fake objects.    Private collection, London. photo courtesy: Hilger Next Gallery The chandelier was created for the exhibition Panopticams /The Politics of Art as Life, curated by Claire Breukel at Hilger Next Gallery and part of the "Curated by Vienna" city festival, 2012. Drawing from the city's chandelier tradition, this ephemeral sculpture comments the way surveillance has entered our domestic life and become part of our everyday. The spectator is invited to gaze back and question who watches us and why. |
simón vega
Simón Vega creates drawings, ephemeral sculptures and installations inspired in the informal, self made architecture and vendor carts found in the streets and marginal zones of El Salvador and Central America. These works, assembled with wood, cardboard, plastic and found materials often parody famous Modernist and mythological buildings and cities, surveillance systems as well as high-tech robots and satellites developed by NASA and the Soviet Space Program during the Cold War, (see: www.simon-vega.blogspot.com) creating an ironic and humorous fusion between first and third world, while commenting on the effects of that conflict in today’s Central America.
Born in San Salvador, El Salvador in 1972, Simon Vega graduated in Fine Arts at the University of Veracruz in Mexico in 2000 and received a Master´s degree in Contemporary Arts from the Complutense University in Madrid in 2006.
He has exhibited extensively in Europe, the United States and Latin America, including the 55th Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Italy; the IX Havana Biennial, in Cuba, El Museo del Barrio's "The S-Files" show in 2011and at the Bronx River Art Center in 2008, both in New York City, as well as at the BROT Kunsthalle and Hilger Next (2010 & 2012 respectively) in Vienna, Austria. He currently lives in La Libertad, El Salvador.
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| Studio, La Libertad, El Salvador. photo: Walterio Iraheta |
Simón Vega is represented by:
- Galerie Hilger Next, Vienna http://www.hilger.at/832_EN-artists-Detail_artist.htm,Simón,Vega
- De Buck Gallery, New York www.debuckgallery.com
- Lokkus Arte Contemporáneo, Medellín
All photos: Simón Vega, except where noted otherwise
