I remember correctly you are you and the rest is history

galerie PLUTO

Summer 2025

The exhibition, I remember correctly you are you and the rest is history, features new works from Gonzalo Reyes Araos. The work and enriching academic dialogue with University of Bonn scholars began summer 2024 during his residency at galerie PLUTO.

The show is informed by Reyes Araos’ research on pareidolia, the psychological phenomenon where one perceives a meaningful image or pattern where none actually exists. Questions about how our minds perceive and construct the world through optical, sensory, and suggestive phenomena are woven throughout the works. In his series, Clouds, the artist explores the tension between spontaneous perceptions—in this case, interpreting random shapes in clouds—and the unknown.

His series “Clouds,” are based on images first taken from walks along the Rhine during his residency summer 2024 at PLUTO. 

Algorithms in computer programming are paths for machines to follow instructions. The relentless order of algorithms and structures that shape our perceptions are poised for thoughtful encounters. For his series 676 instances of 8 and Mechanical Narratives, Reyes Araos creates compositional grids that become structures for auto-generated poetic and textual visual patterns. He uses the idea of an instructional pathway to create these pieces in both a generative and iterative process. 

Reyes Araos created the works in Mechanical Narratives by concentrating on the rhythms—the pattern of touch and sound—made while he was typing the keys on a vintage typewriter. In these works, he follows an algorithm that results in the organization of text. This shaped text has no direct bearing on the actual meaning of the words. Reyes Araos likes to identify a conversation between the algorithm in Mechanical Narratives and the forms in Clouds: “When I read the text in a Mechanical Narratives Poem, it begins to feel like a description of what was already present in my cloud images.” This instance of paradoleia is reflected in the arrangement of works from each series next to one another on PLUTO’s South Wall.

The artist’s intricately cut small pieces of paper in 676 instances of 8 resemble a bit-map screen using dot matrix fonts. He begins each composition by painting the same large character and letting the algorithm he has created dictate his cuts, creating fractals of the larger character. Revealing multiple ways that one thing can exist reflects a being’s innumerable possibilities for existence. At initial glance, the pixel-like squares of color or information seem to be recognizable characters, or even words. Upon attempts to decipher the characters and arrangements, any textual perception, even any recognition of an exact alphabetical character, is pareidolia.

Gonzalo Reyes Araos is a research artist interested in the intersection of light, communication, and human perception. His transdisciplinary and conceptual works use painting, light installation, AI poetry and digital programming while challenging the Anthropocene and its control over reality.

Reyes Araos was born in Quiplué Chile, in 1980. He completed a degree in Fine Arts at the School of Fine Arts of Valparaíso and moved to Europe in 2006. He divides his time between Berlin and the Atacama desert in Chile. His work is represented and collected internationally, including Europe, Asia, South America including his native Chile, and the USA.

Special thanks to Frau Johanna Tix and the researchers at University of Bonn: Prof. Dr. Brigit Mersmann, Prof. Dr. Anke Grutschus, Iris Ferrazzo, Dr. Merlin Monzel, Prof. Dr. Jens Schröter.