Artistic creation walks with humanity to contribute to the shaping of its history. Therefore, it is legitimate to conceive it as a way of knowledge that allows the individual to move forward. The great poet José Ángel Valente defines poetry -and by extension, any act of artistic creation- not as communication, but as knowledge. He affirms that this is produced in the creative act itself. Such a conception of the poetic work may well be applied to artistic creation in any of its manifestations and formats. This means that the object of the work of art, unlike the theme -which may be intentional-, exceeds the artist's intention and is -as Valente would say- "apparitional" in nature. I sincerely believe that it is in the creative act itself when the artist accesses this knowledge, which invades the very form of artistic creation in which it is embodied to provide greater significance to all the senses of that work.
As art lovers, we discover in the work of art, emotions, sensations, concerns and a whole host of impressions that appeal to all of us.
Thus conceived, the true "love of art" is, in my opinion, the construction of a constellation of vital knowledge. In fact, it is the wake of a journey of known beginning but uncertain end, and one of the consequences of this epistemological conception of art is collecting. In my case, this responds to a stubborn need to apprehend the works that I feel and perceive that can be marking the course of my existential learning. I believe that the collector is born when, in addition to understanding art as a tool for individual learning, he or she decides to take a step forward to stop being just a spectator and assume a commitment that transcends the strictly personal and univocal relationship with art. In my case at least, each of the pieces with which I live speaks for itself and places me in an angle of what I aspire to stop being a monologue and turn it into a forum in which multiple voices find the space to dialogue. I select the pieces with which to trace the trail of a training carried out alone, but with the will that among them intersections of meaning are established that help to give meaning to the whole to build with them. For example, like tesserae, a mosaic from which questions continue to emanate with which to continue developing fruitful dialogues that may also contribute to illuminate, someday, perhaps, a path of collective knowledge, of shared knowledge.
The concept that serves as the unifying anchor of my journey through art is the relationship of the self with space, a self, however, that would not make sense without otherness, without the existence of the you, a self, in short, that shares the loneliness of living with the rest of humanity: with the one that precedes it, with the one with which it cohabits and with the one that will succeed it. A human being who, in the end, is me and, at the same time, we are all of us. In this incessant exercise of reflection and analysis that collecting is for me, I am trapped by works of art that not only question our present and our past, but also allow me to ask myself where we are heading and, on the other hand, alert me to the fallacious speeches, deceptions and traps that also populate our existence. Consequently, the decision to access a particular work comes from the personal conviction that its ultimate value lies in the fact that the scope of what it "says" extends far beyond the here and now of its gestation because its meaning is intrinsically timeless.
I look for works with which my gaze towards the past traces a spatio temporal line marked by history with the intention of identifying the fissures that allow me to illuminate the present through a beam -or, perhaps, a trickle- of light that can also be projected towards the future. This explains my interest in works whose final form - regardless of their format and the materials and supports that compose them - is often the result of an enormous documentary and archival work by the artist. In this sense, Alán Carrasco's work is very revealing, which with an almost imperceptible subtlety positions us before the deceptions that also surround us disguised as goodness. His beautiful and delicate piece I mostri launches an eloquent warning not to stop fighting against the ammonites of the future. Photographic triptych that perfectly exemplifies the artistic work that starts from the archival work with which the artist dives into recent history in order to establish seemingly random relationships between supposedly unconnected historical episodes. In this case the piece by A. Carrasco bears witness to the speech that Mussolini gave in Genoa before a rapturous crowd of black shirts in 1926, the same year in which the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, one of the founders of the communist party in Italy, was imprisoned for his ideas. Subtly printed on the glass of the three photos we can read Gramsci's famous quote: "Il vecchio mondo sta morendo - quello novo tarda a comparire - e in questo chiaroscuro nascono i mostri". The result of the connection established by Carrasco between both historical events is a small jewel in which the conjugation of image and language creates a powerful visual narrative that is nothing but a splendid metaphor for a reflection that is fully valid today.
Another lighthouse is found in the work of Núria Güell. In "Apátrida por voluntad propia," the artist once again immerses herself personally and to the ultimate consequences in her research project to highlight the paradoxes of a system that we always believe to be safe. N. Güell experiences the institutional limits that this system places on freedoms. Beyond mere questioning, she has the courage to present evidence that they exist, leaving the viewer to reflect on the necessity for them to frame our society.
For his part, Kendell Geers resorts for once to the canvas to launch a metaphor of his sharp and disturbing concertinas and alert us to the lies
that words harbor. The artist fires a terse but forceful statement, painted white on black, to the viewer, who receives a resounding proclamation in the form of a disturbing play on words: "Here lies Truth". From another angle, Mounir Fatmi also surprises us with his linguistic games that he turns into the foundations on which he builds creations of visual spaces. His Casse-tête pour musulman modéré, a hypnotic photographic composition, again in black and white, with which he carries out a subtle and ingenious deconstruction of religious dogma.
Meanwhile, Bouchra Khalili's work focuses on giving voice to the actors who play a role in the story that is, however, obstinately silenced. She builds stories that rest on magnetic films in which these migrants, voices finally rescued from oblivion, bear witness to their passage through history, the history of all. This explains her Constellations, beautiful silkscreen prints that show the drawing made by the participants in her Mapping Journey project. Challenging the concept of border, B. Khalili's constellations become points of reference in spaces where geographical markers do not exist and where sky and sea are blurred and borders disappear.
In this relationship between the individual and the space, the artist sometimes goes in search of a stolen future. Such is the case of the video "Glories of a forgotten future", in which the Cuban artist Adrian Melis offers a subtly subversive look to talk about the decrepitude in which the expectations of promises of change never fulfilled can lead to. "Glories of a forgotten future" can be interpreted as a requiem for the futures of young women who grew up in pre-revolutionary Cuba and ended up trapped by that dream. Sixty years later, the artist invites them to evoke those times among peeling walls and dusty furniture, and they sway their senile bodies to the sound of a rhythm that the revolution took away from them.
It is in this way, spinning around the spatial axis that moves this unstoppable carousel. I hope to continue discovering the universe of knowledge that art harbors.
