For their debut in Italy, N.A.S.A.L. is excited to present Signs and Spectres, a collaborative project by Luis Enrique Zela-Koort and Pablo Andino.
This proposal investigates the unseen forces of Desire, mobilizing production and consumption in the self-actualization of collective realities. Their works reflect on how these energies inhabit objects and materials through ghostly and ritualistic forms, exploring the possession by Desires constantly flowing through us.
Andino transforms remnants of nightlife into textured tempura drawings and sculptural compositions. His work recontextualizes everyday waste as relics of human interaction, creating hypnotic shrines that memorialize yearning and solitude. Brought from an imagination of empty bars and smoky alleys, these objects remain as witnesses of decadent leisure, repetition, and altered states of being.
Zela’s works engage with the containment and release of Desire, assembling objects in metal and glass, inflatables, and silicone. By challenging the boundaries between body and context, Zela creates organic forms in industrial materials. Bulging through metal, expansive compositions reminiscent of organs, smoke, and fluids speak of excess and Desire overflowing modern control. These works distort the symbolic membranes separating inside/outside, culture/nature.
Together, both artists emphasize the transit of Desire through capital, into our bodies, and transmitted to objects now haunted by this otherworldly force. Sustained in their work through dedicated material research, Zela’s specters are unrelenting, at the edge of climax, utilizing kink and technology to manifest alternate social configurations from a queer, techno-ritualistic sensibility. Andino’s entities evoke animism, with objects given life by collective energies—cigarette butts and crab legs unfolding into nocturnal altars. This collaboration allows new worlds to flourish beyond binary thought, as they let desires leak beyond predetermined structures.
