Project Rooms

Lights, Camera, Action!

[Where the Story Takes Us]

Óscar Alonso Molina

“Are you a narrator”, a friend once asked me.  How is it possible, when the word and image intervene in order to be heard in their halo, when the story is built with fragments of counter-stories and silence stalks the world?
-Edmond Jabès: The Book of Questions-

From the break of the late modern esthetic paradigm, back in the seventies, the revival of the narrative space (or to say it more precisely for what it is going to be used here:  the more or less conscious interjection of the story by way of image), was converted into one of the brightest spotlights of permanency, experimentation and demand on behalf of a series of new artists.  Together they considered that the rigid approach of formalism was exhausted, omnipresent yet then, determined to maintain the conditions of existence specific to each one of the artists at a distance and neatly differentiated.  Anything theatrical or literary could be presented once again to the disciplines, for example, to painting.  Consequently, the biography, fable, story, for example, would all be capable to once again form part of the semantic fabric of art.

In perspective it seems that this is one of the brightest points, in as much as its novelty value and challenge with the inherited inertia, from that crucial complicating moment, however surprising.  It was quickly assumed, by the means as a whole, to the point that nowadays when the presence of photography, video and animation dominate without precedent, highlighting the determinant of its development, so little time has actually been spent on concrete studies outside of the audiovisual mode, where incidentally, so many have profited.

Because of its nature, the time-image, and also to a good extent the photograph, thanks to its initial radical nature, are connected with the order of the story in a very different way than that which happens in other plastic arts, such as drawing, painting, sculpture or collage.  What I aim to show by means of my commission of the Project Rooms program for the International Fair of Lisbon ’09, is nothing but a small tour, almost a sample showing, inevitably selective, with which to outline all those aspects with regard to the development of Spanish art over the last decades.

Undoubtedly, the mandatory point of departure for an itinerary of this type must be Guillermo Pérez Villalta (Tarifa, Cádiz, 1948).  From the beginning of the seventies, it was he who suggested (ahead of his time by almost a decade to what would be with time theoretical points determinant in the poetics of the Trans avant-garde movement and the Italian anachronistic, and in general from the most enthusiastic post-modern period) a clear point of inflection in relation to the consumption and the aphasia typical of the neo avant-garde movement with regard to the story.  In addition, for him the revival of each specific narration takes place from a parallel rehabilitation of shapes (in its double meaning as main characters of the scene, but also insofar as rhetorical strategies) which imply the presence of an enunciator, “the narrator”.  Where appropriate then, narrator and author are absolutely inseparable, giving his work an autobiographical free-from-inhibitions nature which characterizes it.

When presenting such a contrasting and consolidated trajectory as his, which in some way heads here a luck of private option followed in a very distinct way by successive generations, I have chosen to select a group of drawings (unpublished to date and frankly amusing) which, like literary illustrations or primitive comic strips, explain their own meaning by means of captions at the foot of each image.  The critic eye of this prestigious artist is summarized with great irony and a pinch of torture with regard to clichés, ticks, nonsense, tolerated by everyone around them every day in the contemporary art circle.  Refreshing, and once more brave, it will surely surprise more than one of the many who follow his work closely and it especially will not leave the youngest indifferent, often generally close to their own poetics rather than with colleagues closer in age.

In a second generational plane I have relied on the work of three very different artists.  First, Curro González (Seville, 1960), symbolically represents here the clarity and intelligence with which he was received on behalf of the promotion following the conquests centered around the liberation of the narrative space from that first post avant-garde wave.  The artist from Seville has prepared a specific piece for this occasion bringing back certain interests of his own already used in the eighties.  The lineal development of such a story fragments into individual scenes which do not lead to sequences.  On the other hand, these same “stills” or “vignettes” evade with all conscience the choice of the mythical pregnant moment, organizing the order of the story as a group of blinks, a stuttering expression, a shaky journey, but directed toward a predetermined conclusion.  To the point of excess (its own production causes us to reflect on the overflow of that seen), the artist once again demands a will that art should communicate something which goes beyond its own specific nature as language.

The frequency of vivid and proliferate imaginary images, sometimes inscrutably folded, is the point of contact of this artist with his generational colleague, Pablo Milicua (Bilbao, 1960), whose excessively meticulous collages are on the lines of Paul Citroen’s in the decade of the twenties, Pere Català Pic in the thirties, and the most recent ones of Jess or Petrantoni.  In these pieces, the referential point of origin breaks up, becoming unrecognizable, but not because of that, it can get carried away, as was predicted by the entropy.  The world in his hands is reorganized in a fantastic way and, by means of tiny facets, but yet feasible, plausible, it seems again habitable.  The pieces of the original story, multiplied to infinity, drag its fragment character before detail (everything is said in absentia), and the result has something exceptionally fertile, of generous abundance of saying, seeing, doing which, as is customary in the creations of the underground, it embraces the whole plane of representation in a complete horror vacui, in the triumph of the grotesque and ornate baroque.

Curro Ulzurrum (Madrid, 1959), is only a little younger than the disappeared Juan Muñoz (born in 1953), the great promoter of narrative sculpture around since the mid eighties.  The work of the artist here, on his behalf, assumes by means of the fragility of his own stage work how precarious enunciated speech is.  Elaborated with poor materials and completely unknown to the great academic tradition of the discipline (such as small branches and twigs, down feathers, twine string, pieces of wood, wasps’ nests, all types of broken things, etc.), it seems, in effect, that an ethic symmetry exists between the humbleness of that corpus raised by the most modest means, and the “noble simplicity and serene greatness” of what is communicated in an abstract form; as for example that “lies are built”.  Here, the chosen figure for that is the discrete metaphor of some forms built by man:  a bridge, as it happens; even though a watch tower would work; the outline of a factory, a chair or a swing…

Continuing, we find ourselves with another generational period headed by Simon Zabell (Granada, 1970), who has deliberately carried out a series of paintings whose articulation corresponds to the classic tripartite division: presentation, knot and denouement.  The silence before and the silence after evolve from a wonderful central theme, one of the most elaborated works carried out by the author so far and which he himself defines as “inverse sonorous landscape”.  It is based on the musical piece of Stockhausen, Kavierkonzert IX, what gives internal sense to its repetitions and shapely elements, as well as to the structure of triptych.  Once again, the artist pulls from an intellectualized position greatly considering the meta-linguistic aspects themselves of the representation (here, the relationship between music and picture, the search of their respective notational systems), having the narrative sense in regard to the showiness as the main character.

As an alternative to this sharp way of dividing the story and its visible pre-eminence, without a doubt of conventional tradition, the group made up of Paco Mesa (Granada, 1969) and Lola Marazuela (Segovia, 1970), propose almost a life-story (road movie on the one hand, adventure novel on the other) which implies erasing the edges of the plane of classic representation definitively and extending it toward the limits of particular existence, where the experience of the landscape becomes decisive, in its widest sense.  A taste of that ambitious project will be brought to Lisbon on which they have already been working for years and will predictably still take them a lot more time.  It means traveling around the world following a drawing, an imaginary line, an ideal:  the earth’s parallel 45º25’N.  Meanwhile, a trace of metallic plates are left behind them which mark out their long journey approximately every 100 kilometers, accompanied in the exhibiting spaces where they present by the testifying proof (like fuit hic often seen in Flemish paintings) providing photography around the chosen enclave and the directions of a GPS.

Along with this pair, Juan Carlos Bracho (La Línea de la Concepción, Cádiz, 1975) represents here the enormous distancing from the point of initial question that we have mentioned in the beginning, they have found the post-conceptual practices among their generation.  If the ideal avant-garde equation “art = life” is still maintained as poetic work in progress in the previous case, here we can only talk about a conscious and ironic drill by which the process, the guidelines of its development, the norms or the analytical rigor (so characteristic of this type of art of the seventies), turn into odd habit or whims.  Without a clear history, story or moral, the systematic behavior of this artist is the antechamber to a world of not repressed evocations which push the spectator toward the boundaries of a fusion with the sublime of a neo-romantic kind and with the ornament, insofar as exaggerated expansion of what at first is secondary.  The screen or sequential articulation of the whole process turns into, in effect, waste which does not necessarily aim to have center or perimeter, beginning or end, presentation or outcome.

Surely more representative of the fascination endured by his generation in relation to the audiovisual means and in general with the media, it is the work of Rodrigo Martín Freire (Seville, 1975), who will raise a tower-altar of Babel above the tops of the highest stands of our Project Rooms.  Chaotic, labyrinthine, large and rambling, insecure construction of a pop feeling which from its height gives off yet a hypnotic message but  when all is said and done indecipherable (or better said: untranslatable), as an accurate metaphor of the latent plane, although permanently connected to publicity, signs and merchandising of our post-capitalist societies.  Reinforced image, from an empty plane in the last instance; pure channel (open) which is not crossed but rather a game of signals without guessing correctly; or what is the same: a brilliant way of telling (make evident, on stage) that which is gloomy and is told to us without pause and we cannot respond without looking with the peripheral glance.

José Luis Serzo (Albacete, 1977) is found here as a direct counterpoint to this type of strategy ambiguously critical with the present.  Among the artists of his age, he is surely an exceptional case, and because of this especially interesting.  Without any bias, and gifted with a notable virtuosity, his work opens with all types of techniques and disciplines:  from painting to video, installation to drawing, continuing with photography, digital animations, sculpture, literature, etc.  Owner of an imaginary world of enormous power and wealth, this creator articulates series which are continued some to others in vast thematic cycles, aiming to provide the world (yes, I said to the world) with referring positives serving as points of support for a future re-launching of humanity.  As a fundamental tool of this boundless ambition, megalomaniac, the artist essentially tells stories: magical, marvelous, fascinating, but understandable for all, even though they avoid being read in a one-way manner.

Lastly we come to the youngest two selected.  Juan Zamora (Madrid, 1982) builds micro-stories starting from small drawings on paper or digital screens, where we see half-human half-animal beings appear, of astonishing existence, infinitely repeating the smallest and most absurd gestures which never come to organize themselves neither in symbol or in story.  There is not a scene itself in this flat world and reduced to its minimum expression.  In effect, submitted to inconceivable transformation, its insignificant characters, looking so grotesque and tender at the same time, ridiculous and yet so fragile, do not articulate their story further than the first gesture, from the first facial expression.  And however, only announced, this opens in hypothesis for all of us thanks to the domino effect of the individual image and of the installation starting from multiple works of differing nature.

It is a completely different textual strategy to that of the young artist Alejandra Freyman (Xalapa, Mexico, 1983), in spite of the closeness that her respective ways of drawing show, based on fragility and seclusion, detail and fineness.  However, in Lisbon I present her under her other defining facet, that of painter, having prepared for this occasion a group of specific paintings, where one realizes her particular way of telling stories of elevated emotional tension and dramatic complication only from mere evanescent references.  In effect, in her case there is a constant theme around the narrative ellipsis which consists in carrying toward the limit of the representation frame, and often further on, the determining elements for her stories, coming from the intense world of her own private dreams.  Between appearance and disappearance she presents her story for us, perhaps because it was conceived between unconsciousness and wakefulness.

I will leave you here then, with these eleven models of organization of stories that art is still capable of telling us.  They are eleven plastic proposals of very mixed styles, as you have been able to confirm.  I think they represent some of the most exemplary formulas used by Spanish artists from the seventies until today.  I hope that this very selection and combination on my part in the Project Rooms of the International Fair of Lisbon, this autumn of 2009, is but one more kind of story; a brief story but intense taking us where it was not predicted, a little further from the “silence which stalks the world”.  That I hope.

Ó.A.M. [Palermo-Madrid, November 2009]

THE END