Armando Andrade Tudela works across a range of media, tracing the flow of objects, images and materials between different aspects of culture such as architecture, social or political movements and history. Born in Lima, Andrade Tudela trained first in his native Peru and then later at the Royal College of Art, London and the Jan Van Eyck Academy, Maastricht. This experience, of moving between the influences and artistic cultures of Latin America and Europe was formative to his practice. As a result he chooses to explore various manifestations of broader cultural ideas within more localised contexts, questioning particularly the history and processes of modernity. By treating found imagery as recovered fragments that, if reconfigured, might open up new ideas across history and geography, Andrade Tudela creates a process he calls ‘retroactive deprogramming’; using traces of the past to allow new, imaginative possibilities for the future.

The exhibition at Ikon consists of new work that extends Andrade Tudela’s interest in materials, value, scale and the relationships between them. A number of sculptures derived from minimalist objects, are made from rattan. The weave of this material, layer on layer, produces a psychedelic effect that is characteristic of how the artist employs repetition, rhythm and colour in order to suggest a hallucinatory way of seeing. Thus the artist signals his interest in the possibilities of transforming human perception, making strong reference to sixties counter-culture.

Underpinning Andrade Tudela’s Ikon project will be an installation in a suburban villa in Lima, reflecting the influence of vernacular Peruvian architecture upon his practice. Organised in collaboration with MALI, the Museum of Art, Lima, it will take place in October 2009.

A new publication, the artist’s first, is co-published by Ikon, FRAC Bourgogne and DAAD. To coincide with his exhibition at Ikon, Andrade Tudela has also produced a limited edition.

Armando Andrade Tudela’s exhibition is organised in collaboration with FRAC Bourgogne and is supported by The Henry Moore Foundation and Paris Calling.