SK

Juan Pablo Echeverri – Works is the second solo exhibition following Identidad Perdida at Between Bridges in 2023. Over the past few months of preparation, we have had many conversations about the selection of works and the possible directions for the show — where to begin, what to include in terms of content, and which formal, conceptual, and aesthetic dimensions felt most important to explore more deeply.

Before we get into that, however, I hope you will allow me a more personal question. Identidad Perdida was understandably shaped by the shock and grief of Juan Pablo’s sudden and unexpected death in the summer of 2022. Now, three years on — and with the experience of having worked together to advance his legacy — how do you find yourself approaching this new exhibition?

ME

Identidad Perdida was above all an exhibition designed to celebrate Juan Pablo’s life and work as an artist, organized by his closest friends. When we came together to conceptualize the two simultaneous shows, one at James Fuentes Gallery in New York City and the other at Between Bridges in Berlin, I recognized that I had a distinctive perspective to contribute: both as his sibling, with the particular closeness and depth of memory that entails, and as a historian. Drawing on my background as a researcher has proven especially meaningful in approaching my brother’s legacy over the past four years: digging into his body of work, reconstructing his archive, and building a narrative around his art that honors its complexity and breadth. By this I mean embracing the full multiplicity of interests, networks, themes, and forms that defined his work on a global stage. By the time the exhibition closed, a miss fotojapón diptych had entered MoMA’s permanent collection.

Participating in Gallery Weekend 2023 proved to be a turning point in another respect as well, bringing us together and launching our collaboration with Klemm’s. I have found it a fascinating experience to engage with the art world at its highest professional level. Since then, momentum has continued to grow. Museum acquisitions, art fair presentations, and visits to collectors’ homes have all reinforced that Juan Pablo’s work resonates far beyond his immediate circles. While his work had primarily been exhibited in Spain, France, and the UK during his lifetime, its institutional reach has since expanded significantly — now held in the collections of the Pinakothek in Munich, the V&A, the Reina Sofía, and the Deutsche Börse Photography Collection. His critical recognition has grown in parallel. Phaidon has featured him twice — in their 500 Self-Portraits book and, most recently, as one of the most influential artists from Latin America in their 2023 publication — a testament to his enduring place in the broader history of the medium.

SK

One of the most remarkable qualities of Juan Pablo’s work, to my mind, is his immensely precise and empathetic study of human behavior — particular gestures, facial expressions, modes of self-presentation, and even the desire to disappear — whether in relation to the inner world of the individual or to the dynamics of the group and society at large. These distillations of observation, woven together with his own persona and the layered embodiments that characterize his practice, carry an almost typological quality, frequently touching on something essential about what it means to be human.

And yet, alongside this depth, Juan Pablo always preserved an important space for openness, humor, and playfulness in his work. In your view, was this quality something consciously cultivated and built into his practice — or would you describe it more as an organic outcome, perhaps even an expression of who he was as a person?

ME

That is an interesting question. I believe the two are connected and evolved together through the process of his art-making. Juan Pablo placed great value on precision in his work, and he was also consciously committed to certain formal concerns — the self-portrait, seriality, make-up, and the personification of others.

Take seriality as one example: when working through a theme, he would explore and develop it from multiple angles, while simultaneously containing those varied perspectives within a grid of geometric harmony. Often this took the form of a square, as in MUTILady, or a rectangle, as in futuroSEXtraños (2016). But in PRES.O.S. (2017), the organizing structure is a hexagon — each of the 37 individual parts is delicately framed on its own, and together they form a larger hexagonal composition, like the cells of a honeycomb.

As for the humor and playfulness, these were certainly central to his practice. He took genuine delight in building characters and producing the works, as much as in bringing them to their final form through framing. One telling example: the clothes he wore across many of his series were borrowed from people in his life, which imbued each photograph with a particular kind of meaning — a social meaning, one might say — as every garment carried with it a trace of his network of friends and acquaintances.

It is worth considering another element central to Juan Pablo’s work that will also be represented in the exhibition: gender. In a text he wrote for the Colombian magazine Errata No. 12 (2014), titled “YOSOYTUERESELESELLA,” Juan Pablo reflected that, despite having made only two works explicitly addressing gay subjects, he was widely stigmatized within the Colombian art world simply for being openly gay.

The first of those two works is ojo de loca (2006), in which every male figure presumed to be gay is framed by a rainbow flag. The second, boYOs (2008) — on display here in Berlin — is Juan Pablo’s embodiment of 25 lesbians, drawn from a wide range of types and shown engaged in a variety of activities, each set against a bright pink background with triangle shape. Together, the individual portraits form a large inverted pink triangle, a reclaimed symbol of LGBTQ identity. The framing is simple yet bold: a wooden box, its sides also painted pink. Inspired by some of his lesbian friends, the cast of figures includes a woman playing drums, a waitress on rollerblades, a mother with two children, a tennis player, and a blonde woman in a pink dress and green boots carrying a shopping bag. As with much of his work, formal experimentation — here with color and framing — is inseparable from the human and political content: a joyful, unapologetic assertion of these women and their identities.

SK

Looking closely at Juan Pablo’s profound body of work, one notices two defining tendencies. On the one hand, there is the sustained focus on his own face — the self-portrait in its most diverse forms — often rendered with an almost abstract quality. On the other hand, each group of works employs a deliberately chosen formal language that draws on classic conceptual techniques and display strategies — sequences, grids, text-image tableaux — while simultaneously stretching and expanding them, pushing them into unexpected and surprising configurations. The making of the image and its presentation on the wall always appear deeply intertwined, as though content, material, and form were inseparable by nature.

In selecting the three wall works and two cinematic works for the exhibition, we were guided by this intentional diversity, which, alongside the thematic dimensions of his practice, became a key point of reference for the show. The works trace a temporal arc from the early videos juveniles to the pivotal MUTILady (2003), through to boYOs (2008) and Club of the UnLoved (2015) — works that most emphatically embody the formal discoveries described above.

From your perspective, or perhaps from memory: can you identify a moment when this visual world — with its thematic and deeply personal weight — gave rise to what I suspect was both an urge and a necessity to claim and develop such a distinctive formal language?

ME

The answer to that question might seem counter-intuitive: the moment was, quite literally, the very beginning. Juan Pablo reflects on this himself in the article cited earlier. As early as his first work in which he appeared as his own model — 1 x 2 en 10 (1998), made for a class at Javeriana University in Bogotá — he deliberately decided to use himself as the subject of his photographic work and to continue exploring self-portraiture. For that piece, he chose an unusual frame: a long, rectangular metal box with a handle. This choice ignited a lasting passion for creating singular, purpose-built frames for each work or series, something that would become a defining characteristic of everything that followed.

This sensibility is already evident in another early work, zooMetidas (1999), in which seven figures are individually framed in thick, rectangular turquoise frames of varying sizes, all brought together within a single, expansive horizontal frame. What these early works reveal is that Juan Pablo approached every aspect of the work with equal attention and intention — discovering, from the outset, the expressive potential that bold color, from the photograph itself to the frame, could generate in combination.

As you note, the arc of time offers an illuminating lens through which to trace the recurring and evolving strategies Juan Pablo employed in transforming himself into others. One particularly crucial element was hair — central to his embodiment of personality and variation. Among his earliest works, the focus on hairstyles and haircuts is immediately apparent, and this exploration reached its culmination in MUTILady (2003), the work that will feature in the exhibition. MUTILady also marks a turning point in his use of body paint: his torso is rendered to resemble bare musculature, stripped not merely of clothing but of skin itself — more than naked. And yet, as he holds a steady, unflinching gaze toward the camera in each image, it is his hair that emerges as the true bearer of identity and singularity — cut into different shapes, styled and dyed, worn long or short, and at the center, absent altogether.

After MUTILady, Juan Pablo returned to body paint in SUPERSONAS (2011), this time painting his face and body to conjure the costumes of nine Marvel superheroes. Across many other works, wigs and clothing served as essential props, each one a means of bringing an entirely new character to life.

The Club of the UnLoved (2015) was created during a residency in Provincetown, Massachusetts, over a long, cold winter in which Juan Pablo became a regular at the local karaoke bar. Drawing on that experience, he produced this singular work that weaves together the musical and the performative. Each of the 49 parts is scaled to the size of a vinyl record cover, and alongside every image of Juan Pablo dressed as a character in party attire — drinking, singing, inhabiting the world of the karaoke bar — appear fragments of lyrics from dramatic, love-themed songs. What makes the work so remarkable is the way it finds visual languages for music itself: through the format of the record, the presence of lyrics, and the act of karaoke singing.

Accompanying this photographic work is the video YOKO HOMO, also produced in Provincetown. It returns to the theme of heartbreak and shares certain visual elements with the Club of the UnLoved — most notably, the same typeface used for the lyrics — creating a subtle but deliberate dialogue between the two works.

SK

The exhibition has a certain temperature, if you will — or perhaps more precisely, a distinctive energy. It begins downstairs, where the videos juveniles establish an atmosphere of intimacy combined with an immediate directness and authenticity. Ascending into the main room, the visitor is confronted with three wall works, each strikingly different in its design and each commanding the space as a force field in its own right.

To some extent, I imagine this reflects Juan Pablo’s own creative process — the way he moved his work forward by holding together an expansive freedom in ideas and visual imagination with a compelling composure and an intense focus on what was essential, whether in a single work or across a body of work. How do you see it?

ME

Yes, in the show we seek to bring together a range of works that could reflect the breadth of themes and mediums characteristic of Juan Pablo’s practice, drawing particular attention to Juan Pablo’s performative energy and his deep connection to music. For instance, Juan Pablo’s musical dimension as a guitarist will be celebrated on May 2 with the release of the single and video for Warm Star (2016), a track he created with Wolfgang Tillmans during their music sessions in Porto, Portugal, a decade ago.

Juan Pablo’s video practice began at the same time as he was producing his first photographic works — among them miss fotojapón and MUTILady — works that would go on to become iconic. These videos, made in 2002, 2003, and 2004, share one defining particularity: they were all filmed in his bedroom at our parents’ house. Long-haired, with dyed sideburns, he used his room as a stage, singing and dancing to his favorite songs by Queen, Lenny Kravitz, Depeche Mode, and above all Madonna, of whom he was a devoted fan. Juan Pablo himself gave these works their collective title: miss videos juveniles — videos from his youth.

Several elements make these videos both captivating and crucial to understanding him as a young artist. At the time, he was developing an alter ego he called MariconnA — whose logo and design were precisely those he later used for the T-shirt we remade in 2023 and 2025. In Inti Guerrero’s words, MariconnA was Juan Pablo “appropriating both Metallica and Madonna’s name through an amplified gay identity” — marica being a Spanish word for faggot. As MariconnA, he lip-synced to Madonna songs such as Your Honesty and So Stupid (both 2003), honing and perfecting his technique. More significantly, for other songs he rewrote the lyrics entirely in Spanish: Papi soy Gay, based on Papa Don’t Preach (1986), and Caigo Bajo, based on Deeper and Deeper (1992). For these, he recorded both voice and video from his room. In Papi soy Gay, he sings “Papi soy gay, y no sé qué hacer, voy a salir del closet” — “Daddy, I’m gay, I don’t know what to do, I’m coming out of the closet” — while physically performing the act of coming out of his own closet.

Remarkably, Juan Pablo wrote in the article cited above that these videos were never made for public view — much like the daily photographs of miss fotojapón which, initially, were not conceived as an artwork at all, yet eventually became the backbone of his practice. Together, they offer a glimpse into an early and formative time, when he was first developing his deep relationship with the camera and beginning to explore his own image through video and photography. I find a resonant parallel with the early self-portraits of Cameroonian artist Samuel Fosso (b. 1962). Like Juan Pablo, Fosso began photographing himself as a form of self-exploration, fascinated by watching himself grow and change through the lens — a shared journey using the camera as a mirror for self-discovery.

Another dimension that makes the videos so special is the glimpse they offer into Juan Pablo’s room. Many of the objects visible there — toys, posters, pieces of furniture — remain in the Mansión Echeverri to this day. The “mansion,” as he called his apartment in Bogotá, was itself an extension of his art: a “pop culture masterwork,” in the words of Michael Bullock, who visited it in 2024 and wrote about it for PIN-UP magazine. In the spirit of preserving it and making it accessible, we have created a website — mansionecheverri.com — where the mansion can be explored online in a full 3D tour.

SK

“Presence” — this too is a key word when speaking about Juan Pablo and his work. Over three years of engaging with his practice, I remember many wonderful conversations that brought me closer to his personality, his manner, his particular way of being there.

This balance between the persona — always present in his portraits as a fundamental component of the work — and the formal and conceptual precision that makes reflection on his ultimately universal themes of humanity all the more urgent and rewarding, is, I believe, another defining aspect of his oeuvre, perhaps the defining one. Juan Pablo’s works are alive, immediate, and utterly present, yet they never impose. There is no intrusion — only an invitation.

We are presenting, in a very special format he himself conceived early on, a sequence of images from what is perhaps his best-known work to date, one that spans his entire creative life: miss fotojapón. It asks something of you: you must approach it, look him in the eye — in the fullest sense of that phrase. A wonderfully apt echo of “the artist is present.” How did this work, now on display as one of the highlights of the exhibition, come about?

ME

We have chosen this iteration of miss fotojapón to illuminate how Juan Pablo’s approach to presenting the daily photographs — taken over more than 20 years — evolved and varied throughout his life.

I discovered the reel among the files on his computer and knew immediately that it was a treasure, though tracing its history has proven elusive. It was most likely made between 2003 and 2006. Shortly after graduating from art school, Juan Pablo held an exhibition at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO) in 2003 dedicated to miss fotojapón, in which the physical passport photos were displayed in a line along the wall, each one visible individually. Then, in 2006, he organized an intimate one-evening presentation in Bogotá for friends and guests, at which he screened the reel. For that projection, he constructed a viewing aperture in the form of a white pyramid mounted sideways on the wall, with an opening the size of a passport photo — inviting viewers to peer through it at the slide show, recreating the experience of glimpsing him through the window of the photo booth where the daily photographs were taken.

Because the miss videos juveniles and this miss fotojapón reel overlap in time, viewers will recognize him across both: the long hair he wore in Caigo Bajo and in the female character of Yo Soy Rial, the day he did MUTILady with body paint and a shaved head, and later with his hair and mustache dyed blonde as in Play the Gay. The reel itself offers another clue to its timeframe: it contains approximately 1,780 photographs, which corresponds to nearly five years of daily images — placing its endpoint around late 2004 or early 2005, given that he began taking daily photographs in July 2000. Roughly halfway through, he can be seen with a “1,000” crowning his head, marking the day he reached that milestone — one of many significant numbers he made a habit of visually acknowledging and celebrating, round figures and decades among them. For this particular photo, he had a hairdresser weave his hair — long at the time — around the numerals, so that the “1,000” appears to emerge organically from his head.

The reel reveals how early Juan Pablo began thinking about the many possibilities for displaying the photographs, and how actively he experimented with those options once he recognized that the growing body of daily images carried a powerful cumulative impact when seen together. Because this reel is organized chronologically, it offers a fundamentally different experience from the shuffled sequences that came later, in which any sense of timeline dissolves. Yet in both modes of presentation, something equally fascinating emerges: the simultaneity of constant change in appearance and an unwavering gaze — those green eyes, always sharply focused.

Ultimately, he was exploring how to translate the static, two-dimensional experience of viewing the photographs — whether individually or together on a page, wall or panel — into something more kinetic, with the images passing in sequence, like a flip-book. This impulse eventually led to the miss fotojapón flip-book (2021), which for him brought together the idea of the merch object with the visual experience he had always wanted people to have. Copies are available for purchase at the exhibition at Klemm’s.