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IN COLOUR AND BLACK AND WHITE. AMONG UTOPIAS AND REALITIES

05.02.2016 – 30.03.2016
Projects by JORDI COLOMER and TERESA MULET
Opening, Friday 5th February at 7 pm

Subsidized by Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte

This exhibition offers a dialogue between two projects, X-Ville by Jordi Colomer, and Cada-ver-es. Cada-vez-más by Teresa Mulet, two different narratives which share certain unifying nexuses.

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One nexus is the manner of speaking from the standpoint of contemporary reality towards the option of necessary transformation. That is, the commitment to change the conditions of the present moment, one through utopia, the other based upon evidence that our present common reality is not the most desirable. Another nexus is that both narratives emphasise the way in which the collective construction of urban space generates options for living and for living together, one of them suggesting a future, the other considering in terms of adversity towards the present or the immediate future. That is why both installations propose two stories which, apart from sharing certain discursive elements, point towards conflicting options. One is in colour, the other is in black and white.

Jordi Colomer makes obvious a clear interest in creating a new world, "without utopia it is impossible to imagine the future." He constructs images based upon the idea of the micro-community which self-organises in order to create bigger structures, which could become alternatives to the way contemporary cities are shaped and articulated. The project takes texts and drawings by Yona Friedman in the 70s as a reference, and brings up-to-date the necessity of generating utopias above urban construction. Colomer recognises Friedman proposal to transform existing cities without the need to create new ones, only by changing how they function, as a collective response to dissatisfaction. A Utopia which will become reality only if there is collective agreement.

The installation consists of a space in which a rising grandstand helps to reinforce the idea of the spectator; the spectator of a video fiction as a metaphor of a functioning possible city, articulated collectively, improvised, based upon mutual respect, imaginative, ludic, cooperative. X-Ville embodies and makes real the necessity of constructing utopias.

Teresa Mulet reveals another hard reality played out in many cities around the world, about those people who die violently, murdered, executed, exterminated, those people who often end up anonymous, accounted for numerically as part of pure statistics. It is a project which has its origin in the context of Venezuela, where she once lived, but which has now taken on a radically different significance in the Mediterranean context, where she now lives, making reference to the different forms of social violence which end up expanding and creating a generalised fear and horror of living in a particular place.

The installation consists of a space occupied by a sequence of plastic poster-sized cards hanging from the ceiling, placed one after another to occupy the entire space. The last of the plastic cards contains numerous overlapping impressions of the same image, coinciding with the number of plastic cards arranged vertically. Each plastic poster has one picture less, counting down until the first card, which contains one. The first image is the white silhouette of a human body stamped on a black background, the last of the images is a shapeless white stain.

Utopia and dystopia, courage and fear of living, imagining a possible future and highlighting a present reality, micro-context and global space ... antagonistic elements which come together in a reflection on how to live in one place, and which, to be reactivated or redirected, must be renegotiated on a collective basis.

X-VILLE
Jordi Colomer, 2015
Video, 28′, colour, sound
Master 4K 16:9

X-Ville was produced by: Xarxa de Centres d’Arts Visuals de Catalunya*, LOOP Barcelona, Arts Santa Mònica [Barcelona], Jardins-Fabriques [Annecy], Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo [Torí] and CO producciones [Barcelona-Paris] and Generalitat de Catalunya.

With the collaboration of: ESAAA [Annecy], Fondation Salomon pour l’Art Contemporain [Annecy], Col.lecció Banc Sabadell, Frac Languedoc-Roussillon and Villeneuve la série [Grenoble].

(*) La Xarxa de Centres d’Arts Visuals de Catalunya comprises: ACVIC. Centre d’Arts Contemporànies; Bòlit, Centre d’Art Contemporani. Girona; Centre d’Art Tecla Sala de l’Hospitalet de Llobregat; Centre d’Art La Panera, Lleida; M|A|C Mataró Art Contemporani; Lo Pati Centre d’Art Terres de l’Ebre; Fabra i Coats-Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; and El Teler de Llum Centre d’Art, Tarragona.

Cada-ver-es. Cada-vez-más
Teresa Mulet, 2011
Installation

With the collaboration of the graphics production department at ACVic: Antonio Briceño, Escola d'Art i Superior de Disseny de Vic, Centre Ocupacional Sant Tomàs, Xènia Ferran, Anna Freixas, Toni Garcia, Sergi Ibáñez, Anna Leus, Cristina Martínez, Joana Martos, Francesc Nadales, Roxanne Robinson, Lorena Velázquez and Albert Vilardell.