Diego Samper, a Columbian who now lives in British Columbia, has chosen the tangible subject of skin for his first show at Toronto's DeLeon White Gallery. The exhibit uses skin as a metaphor for the physical body and likewise the earth's skin. Some of his works look like living tissue themselves, as their borders are less defined, and their content/subjects
are textural, with a variety of constituent parts including ink, beeswax, and the like. Referred to as the Codex works these hand made parchmentpieces include mineral, oil, and drawings. Near abstract, they are like maps with shapes that look animal or human within them. The Codex works at DeLeon White Gallery,  are made of parchment, used since ancient times to documentthe human experience. Its skin-like quality makes it a stable medium for commemorating the soul's journey, the myths and deeds of humans and gods.

The Codex series are made over goat skins. Nature provides the support for a human reflection on our place in nature, both in the microcosm and the macrocosm. They have layers, strata, and like skin, they are an epidermis.
The vegetal and mineral co-mingle in the surface of these works, and permutate, change, transform, even decay eventually.

Samper, who lived rough in the Amazon jungle, published a superb book of photographs of this experience titled Las Voces de la Terra. With a forward by William Ospina, this book again presents images of the natural, physical world.  Samper's Codex parchment works, like his photographs
(published in National Geographic and the book  Makuna, portrait of an Amazonian culture published by The Smithsonian) reflect a  sense of belonging to the earth, that it is our home. The identification with earth  becomes a universal metaphor, a vehicle for presenting these emblems of spiritual renewal, the Codexes.  The allusion to mapping could just as easily have to do with biological coding, genetic mapping. The surfaces of his Codexes can also resemble territories, as if seen afar.

When viewers look into the container/vessel Samper has made for the show at DeLeon White, they are surprised at its contents.  Life here is presented as a fragile vessel - hand made of parchment - in the centre of the exhibition. This container is filled with red seeds collected in the Amazon region of South America. The seeds inside are not shocking, not violent, nor avant garde, nor dangerous. They are simply there - rich and red and lustrous. The container is light and at odds with its apparent size. The lightness of the vessel is a metaphor for air and light, our life support systems, and the fragility  of life.

An actual section of ficus tree bark from South America extends across a gallery wall. An artist's book has been placed under the tree bark.

Parchment pieces hang from the ceiling, and float in space like illusions.They are very much like ritual objects. The titles like Codex Pulowi, Codex Aarash, Codex Amazonica, are ascribed to the art before it is made, and they reference sacred sites and nature spirits' names. For Samper the parchments are "an offering to the spirits of the Earth, and a transmutation of the animal into a cultural artifact".
 

John K. Grande

Vie des Arts #194 printemps 2004