Hagas Lo Que Hagas, Toma Tiempo Hacer Nada by Alejandro Leonhardt

Hagas Lo Que Hagas, Toma Tiempo Hacer Nada (Whatever You Do It Takes Time to Do Nothing), is a monograph publication by the Chilean artist Alejandro Leonhardt, co-edited by him and Carolina Castro Jorquera. It takes us through an artistic and reflective journey where four fundamental concepts of Leonhardt’s practice—Taking, Time, Making, and Nothing—intertwine with an exploration of the everyday and the poetics of the useless. The book is co-published between Printer Fault Press (Spain) and Ediciones Universidad Finis Terrae (Chile).

Structured as a choral film, the book entrusts each of these concepts to curators, writers, and artists who, from their own perspectives, develop essays that dissect the essential actions and gestures within the author’s practice. Their texts dialogue with photographs of Leonhardt’s works, which present a chronological journey through sculptural interventions, assemblages, and creative processes.

Presented by: Àngels Miralda and Francesco Giaveri, curators

Alejandro Leonhardt, faithful to his critical gaze on waste and the value of the discarded, manages to reformulate found objects and endow them with new narratives. Whether guiding us through installations that reuse the debris of contemporary life or inviting us to rethink the gestures of the everyday, the work is not solely about re-signifying materials. Rather, it proposes an active reflection on human relationships with their environment and the possibilities of the unproductive as resistance to the utilitarian paradigm.

Among the notable texts, we find Francesco Giaveri’s exploration of the concept of taking, framing Leonhardt’s practice of collection as an almost archaeological and poetic method. Àngels Miralda, for her part, reminds us of the intrinsic connection between objects and time, linking material memory with planetary rhythms. Similarly, Ian Waelder describes, with insight and humor, Leonhardt’s act of making as a dance with the absurd, while Cristián Silva addresses nothing from its expressive and existential possibilities.

Taken as a whole, this book-object not only offers us an interdisciplinary analysis of Leonhardt’s artistic practice, but also celebrates the cracks and absences in objects and in contemporary life. Hagas Lo Que Hagas, Toma Tiempo Hacer Nada becomes a radical proposal for contemplation that is as reflective as it is aesthetic. A manual on the poetics of residue, time, and the limits of creation.

Alejandro Leonhardt (Puerto Varas, Chile, 1985) is a visual artist whose research explores the waste humans leave behind—material vestiges used to develop works that straddle the line between sculpture and installation. He studied Fine Arts at Universidad ARCIS (2009) and holds a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from the University of Chile (2015). His work has been exhibited in Chile and abroad at institutions and spaces such as the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Chile), Patricia Ready Gallery (Chile), Gato Gallery (Peru), FLORIT / FLORIT (Spain), Platform 6A (Belgium), SUBTE (Uruguay), and LAXART (United States).

Key accolades include the Visioni Future Award (SWAB Art Fair, Spain, 2014), the Ron Barceló Imperial / ARCO Madrid Award (with L21 Gallery, Spain, 2015), the National FONDART grant (Chile, 2021), and his selection as a finalist for the Ciutat de Palma Antoni Gelabert Visual Arts Award (Spain, 2026).