This exhibition shows four sets of pieces from different series that are largely unseen in Spain: Collages idéologiques [Ideological Collages], Mono-Tones, Lapsus and Coopérations [Cooperations]. Made around the same time, these open series explore different formal and conceptual ideas that underpin my work.
There will also be two actions, two additional pieces without any accompanying documentation or enduring material format: the talk-performance Trazas distanciadas [Remote Strokes] and Biografía disociada [Disassociated Biography]. Both actions aim to broaden the references and content of this work as a field of research and an experience of physical presence by exploring the ephemeral nature of words and movements, in contrast to the objects and images in the exhibition.
Nunca es suficiente [It’s Never Enough] forms part of the small number of Collages ideológicos that don’t make use of photography or images, although they hint at their absence. Here, painting is reduced to a direct gesture, a plane of monochrome colour, a sprayed line that still evokes its immediate application. To a certain extent, drawing also involves scratching, writing, rubbing, sticking, superposing… Drawing is usually said to be transparent and painting, opaque. Painting might be opaque to enough, but in that case drawing is transparent to never. Moreover, this never also points to all the possible results of the action of drawing, infinite in number and which we can never make coexist. There are also echoes of the other collages present, shifting the scope of the gesture and action from the stroke, the trace, to our deepest yearning for images and objects, as in Demasiado jamás es bastante … [Too Much is Never Enough]. And also shifting the passion bound by the public, collective and social desire to consume, which leads to repetition and frustration. Or probing this drive for desire in its complex personal dimension, as in Al deseo no le falta nada… [Desire Isn’t Lacking Anything…] and Es más bien el sujeto al que… [It’s More Like the Subject That’s Missing…].
Four years ago, in response to the widespread crisis that was taking over the whole of Europe, I put on the exhibition No puedes perder lo que nunca has tenido [You Can’t Lose What You Never Had] to present the collages for the first time in Spain. What had been lost then was hope, the possibility of changing paradigms, an unattainable economic status, and, in a more abstract fashion, the loss of the chance of social and individual representation in the context that engulfs us, where image is capital. Today, the title It’s Never Enough refers to the incessant, self-destructive drive of capital in the neoliberal system that governs all areas of our existence—both the financial sector and our own personal lives, with their own economics of desire. Hopefully, by raising awareness we can open up a space for representation and exchange, where—unlike many other fields of the culture of entertainment where artistic activity is found today—desire isn’t merely a copy of someone else’s desire.
2014