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1/10/2002

A circular sight

Gallery of the Spanish Institute, New York

Elastic, Group of Artistic Research, founded by Silvia Manteiga (Spain) and Alexandro Ladaga (Italy), has been present in major international exhibitions and video festivals throughout Europe. Invited by Julian Zugazagoitia to showcase their work at the Spanish Institute they will present for the first time in New York the video installations A Portrait of the Artist as States of Mind (2001) and Flow (2002).

Elastic’s video installation tend to redefine the space they occupy and question the viewers perspective and perception. Their videos are inhabited by a presence that either manifest itself clearly or becomes latent only by the tension the work generates. Through installations, performances and their signature use of infrared filming they attempt to reveal what the naked eye is supposed not to see and, at the same time, accentuates the artifice of the representation, its distance with any given reality. Video is not employed as a way of recording the world but rather as a poetic tool to experiment with the transfiguration of phenomenological experiences.

In selecting the two works for this occasion we are stressing the contrast between the tangible space of a bathroom in Flow and the inner space of emotions and feelings seized by A Portrait of the Artist as States of Mind; between a linear narrative and an abstract pulsation.

Flow, their most recent work, to be presented here for the first time, seizes the spectator as a voyeur. Relating to the art historical theme of the bather watched in her intimacy, we are discovered by the character (the Danish actress Eva Gerd Petersen) as we glance at her bathroom. Our intrusion in her privacy seems real and provokes both fright and surprise on her part; her inquisitive look opens a dialogue, an interaction that questions our place in the device: one wonders, as in Alice in Wonderland, in which side of the mirror are we, and what lies behind.

In a way A Portrait of the Artist as States of Mind (2001) takes us behind that mirror. A pulsating image, a constant flux of light and darkness, attempts to reveal what would be the most sought questions of western metaphysical aesthetics: the soul of the artist; the locus of creation, the heart of inspiration. The video as medium is therefore subverted and used for its poetical possibilities rather than for its representation attributes. Should we see in this work a portrait of the artists? To which extent can it also then be a portrait of the spectator? How does this seemingly abstract pulse reflect our own state of mind?

Juxtaposing these two installations one can address the question of sight and its relation to representation in a circular manner; from the consciousness of the presence and engaging in the act of seeing to the search of the inner sight. In a way their playful combination plunges the gaze of the viewer into the labyrinth of the soul only to exit through the bathroom door!

J. Zugazagoitia – Berlin, Sept 2002.

stampa

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