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13/9/2005

Jordi Colomer

Juana de Aizpuru Gallery, Madrid

Arabian Stars y Otras Estrellas

Alter his last exhibition in Madrid in 2000 and his monographic exhibition at Patio Herreriano Museum (Valladolid) as well as at the IAC Villeurbanne (Lyon), Jordi Colomer shows at this exhibition his recent works: the photographic series “Arabian Starts” (2005), the installation PROTOTIPOS (2) (2005), the video “Un crimen” (2004) and the photographs “Anarchitekton Osaka” (2004) and “Madrid M-30” (2005).

Behind the apparent diversity of means, all the works develop a will of “contaminating the street with fiction” with elements voluntarily poor. The scene of all of them is the city in which anonymous characters act by carrying several elements on the borders placed between the object, the sculpture or the scenography element. The object statute is questioned by contrasting it with a reality that acts as a framework: models or architectural plans that imitate existing buildings, or three dimension words that reconstruct the story of a crime or even posters with famous names that play down its icon value in a distant context. In “Prototipos” the change of scale of cars full of connotations turns our perception of the street, touched by toys that don’t hide its potential as fictions generators.

Colomer explores the ideas of representation and scale, performance and document, as he made in his latest series “Anarchitekton” (Barcelona, Bucarest, Brasilia, Osaka) (2002-2004), from which an unedited photograph is shown (Anarchitekton Osaka 2004, 120 x 160 cm) that closes this project. The photograph Madrid M-30, inheritor of the Anarchitekton spirit, recreates the imposing building ordinarily known as “the prison”, “the ring” or “Alcatraz” built by the architect Saenz de Oiza. A heterogeneous group of 13 young people from Madrid hardly carries a bi-dimensional representation of this building, by activating and transforming the original image that originated the project.

Colomer inquires into the concepts of celebrity, popularity and fame, and the complexity for turning them into images (Arabian Stars, Prototipos). He works with elements that belong to a popular and media culture by questioning its value at the same time.

The project “Arabian Stars” was made during a stay of one month in Yemen, in which Colomer made a series of improvised performances with anonymous actors from this faraway Arabian republic at the end of 2004. Colomer made a list of 40 -real or fiction-characters, including the most popular from the latest decade: Michael Jackson, Lara Croft, Zinadine Zidane, James Bond, Homer Simpson… In the photographs lonely characters, pairs or groups walk round the streets of cities as Sanaa or Shibam, the Aden harbour or the Arabian Desert by carrying coloured banner in which the names of these popular stars that settle the occidental media universe are written in Arabian language. To this list were added the Yemen equivalents: Abo Bakr Saalem, Albaradoni or As Susua tell us as much about our knowledge of that culture as about the non-existent echo with which the occidental popular imaginary is received there. As Eduardo Mendoza says in the text included in the publication of “Arabian Stars”*: “it isn’t easy imagine what some of these characters means in Yemen: we will never know which scenography holds Sherlock Holmes in a Bedouin fantasy”

The video “Un crimen” was made in the French city of Cherburgo. A group composed by 12 anonymous people carries the cardboard letters that will construct the story of a crime happened in that city 100 years ago and which was published at “le Petit Journal”, an accident and crimes report newspaper from that epoch. The characters walk round the scenes where the crime could be committed as a Brecht chorus, by moving forward them at the same time that history.

The Installation “Prototipos” (2) is composed by 5 large car models which act as characters and show other side of the occidental popular imaginary: the sinister Batmovil, the reverenced Papamovil, the small socialist car Trabant, the Volkswagen van that gave wheels to the hippy movement or the majestic Lincoln continental in which JFK was murdered. All of them are shown as neutral white prototypes in which is possible to inscribe new stories, relations in a different scale.

NOTES:
*”Arabian Stars”: Photographs made by Jordi Colomer in collaboration with Sergi Olivares, English-Spanish edition. Texts by William Jeffett and Eduardo Mendoza. Coproduction: Salvador Dali Museum St. Petesburg, Florida (USA), MNCARS, Madrid. Graphics: Mucho.

“Arabian Stars” installation will be shown at the same time at Espacio 1, MNCARS from Sept. 13 to Oct. 16). Including the screening of the video (38 min. video high definition 2005) and the 37 original banners that was used for the project.

Thanks to: Sergi Olivares (photographer), Alexandra Filiatreau (production), Barry Paulson (models construction).

Jordi Colomer. Barcelona 1962. Lives and works in Barcelona and Paris.
More information:
http://www.jordicolomer.com
http://www.anarchitekton.com

Galeria Juana de Aizpuru
Calle Barquillo, 44, Piso Uno - Madrid

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