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16/1/2009

Jacobo Castellano

Galeria Fucares, Madrid

Fúcares Gallery is pleased to introduce the second solo exhibition by the artist Jacobo Castellano (Jaén, 1976) at its space in Madrid.
J. C.’s exhibition, “Without an Audience”, contains two installations, a series of small- and medium-format drawings and photographs, and three recent sculptures. Again as in the past, J. C.’s works evoke actions, restrained movements that conjure violent landscapes, and tragic situations from a singular poetic vision.

The encounter with a tight cable crossing a space implies a risky, uncertain action. It channels us to those brave funambulists who with great bravery walked on a cable installed in a public space or in a circus stage several metres high. Under that cable, a crowd would attentively watch the heroic act, waiting anxiously for the funambulist to finish his stunt so that their tension found relief and they could applaud endlessly.

Jacobo Castellano uses those experiences to install the paraphernalia of a funambulist in a space that he knows well, a place already inhabited by him: his home. A rope crosses the different rooms while getting round obstacles placed by the architecture itself. There are also safety nets offering us the minimum to be desired: some security. Walking on that cable means rediscovering a space already travelled by the artist from a different point of view, trying not to lose his balance. All along the run we find a sort of chairs arranged in tiers, whose fragility makes it not likely that the weight of a child could rest on them. There’s nothing to worry about, since we are not waiting for anyone: no audience will possibly come, for a heroic act is that for which no applause whatsoever is expected.

The whole of this assemblage has been documented to compose, always in a small format, short narratives made up of photographs and drawings. Shown in these images are both the empty tiers mentioned before and a multitude of nets waiting for someone to fall.
One of the installations to which the exhibition owes its title presents a net supported on four iron bars and entirely crossed by a rope on which that brave guy will walk. As the rope is greased with tar, the dust kicked up by the spectators before the show sticks to it. This will be the only evidence that someone was ever there. Nobody will cross it — it was already crossed, or will be, once nobody is left, because, as we already said above, this funambulist does not expect any applause.

Finally, we have to mention a sculpture whose title “Stretcher” surely heralds a tragic end. It is a thermal blanket on some irons which serve as a protective net — a double usage, net and stretcher, apt to be interpreted as a last resort, or as the uncertain end of an act.

Opening Saturday January 17th

Fucares Gallery
Conde de Xiquena, 12 Madrid

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