The News of the Day
Past
“…from the news again�
Bob Dylan
My most recent exhibition in Mexico City, entitled “The Games of the Prince�, was a turning point in terms of the methodology that I had been using of late to present a body of work. While still putting an emphasis in each piece being a self sufficient work, able to convey its meaning by it-self regardless of the other works in the exhibition, I went back to a strategy that I used at the beginning of my career; an exhibition would evolve around a specific subject, most often the recent history of my country of origin. Through a critical reading I intended to make the viewer think about all the new meanings created by juxtaposing this subject to similar historical processes in different circumstances, different cultures and different nations.
In my current work I am still approaching a specific subject while using the environment as the main reference and the main character, but I am also using external references that change by the day, thus having a gradual impact in my work. Since I am somewhat resistant to change, I use the term gradual intentionally. Some of my previous preoccupations still persist in my work but the news of the day make me gravitate towards a flood of information and its sources, in which all of us, at least emotionally, become involved much like with an endless soap opera. It cannot be otherwise in this media frenzied world which day by day shows us its differences and complexities while it retraces its boundaries, questions its credos, rejects whatever is foreign to him, or simply persists in a path of self-destruction.
The images, titles and themes of this exhibition come from the mass media: newspapers and magazines, television, internet and radio. They are also a reflection of the neurosis, the apocalyptic vision of the movies and of some contemporary literature; versions of reality that are as imposing as they are ephemeral and frivolous. Our traumas last as long as our interest in the current piece of news, or for as long as this one is not yet replaced by the upcoming news. Meanwhile, reality seems to humble us, to show us how small and vulnerable we are. Yet, we don’t have time to pay attention.
I must add that my work does not intend to “contest� this status quo. It is simply an observation by another accomplice who gets frightened by this game and yet cannot but participate in it; and who sees in this duality a new way of understanding life. This state of affairs is what I want to translate into images and into painting. I want to give it the relevance that has always been accorded to the big themes that fascinate mankind: the origins of things, sins, apocalypses; all seen through the lens of our indolence, our passions, our ambitions, our superficiality and our fears. At the same time I try to subvert the usual relation between the spectator and the work. Before, the spectator or the alleged main character (to me, both have always been the same) was placed within the “logical� visual perspective; I now use aerial and satellite views, as a way of taking a distance from the human standpoint and as an attempt to give some mystical character to the technologies that make my intentions possible. Like a voyeuristic Big Brother, and using his same tools, I propose to look at the world through a different perspective. The result is closer to a still life that it is to a landscape; from above the world is a maquette, a game board, and we can pretend that we can do with it as we wish; we can pretend that we are God for a little while. In a pragmatic and cynical way we accommodate History, the present and the future, and we let ourselves be blinded by tragedies, current and to come, staged as spectacles, without being really affected by them. Thus, since we do not learn much anyway, in order not to blush we stop looking back.
GA. Miami 2006.