
I could say that my work is part of the search, the exploration. Of styles, forms and meanings. It is a constant internal and external excavation, aesthetically and conceptually. Although I have mainly been working with painting and drawing, recently and given the circumstances, I have begun to investigate with other media such as computer generated images or conversation as an element and artistic process. It has been through conversation and work in common where I have found a work background rich in possibilities.
In this series based on memory I have searched my own memories, as well as the collective memory related to atrocious events in the past. These events are linked to me in different ways, but it is through the place, the site, that their memory is most present, strongest. Specifically with a series of concentration camps located in the south of Spain that seem not to have existed, creating a silence that, I personally think, has contributed to the resurgence of the extreme right.
While that was the initial step, different concepts of memory have captured my attention and shaped this work. From visual memory today, the overload of visual information through social media and other platforms, and how these can help to deform the very concept of reality (in a sense close to Baudrillard's Hyperreality), to the different processes of erasure, from retroactive interference, to heuristics of availability. Concepts I am working with at the moment.
One of the main sources for this work has been my own memories. Memories of the hidden tragedy, in this case the memory of the prisoners' canal. The Canal was built by prisoners of Franco's regime between 1940-1962, during which time 6 concentration camps were adapted in the surroundings of Seville, which are in a total state of abandonment, have disappeared completely, or have been transformed into celebration halls. During my research on those events, I have resorted to different sources, both official and personal. I am interested in knowing what the state of collective memory is, how much the memory of the people around me has been erased. To this end, I began a series of conversations with friends about the place and the memories it might bring back. Through these conversations I was able to get an idea of the different ways of perceiving from memory. Although there were not only conversations, but some of them were also able to send me graphic documents of the place, so, in the end, I ended up becoming a pair of hands for their eyes.
The isolation of information helps to decontextualize it, the selection of a part does not help, as far as the image is concerned, to create an image of the whole, an idea or definition of completeness. In this case, isolating some elements of the ruins of the concentration camps, constructs an allegory of how the current lack of memory has helped the resurgence of some extreme movements. These four elements are accompanied by two images that appear to be complete, but do not reflect the reality of what they are. Only a small text gives a more complete picture. Together and in the order exhibited, they try to form a visual phrase, which intends to remain in the consciousness of the spectator, in the same way that our brain uses the heuristic of availability, that which our brain decides, because of its simplicity and ease of access, as that which deserves to be remembered.
Starting from the same concept of memory erasure, work with the erasure of the image from different approaches. This series, simple both visually and in execution, may be the one that conceptually best represents my idea of how part of the oblivion is produced by the addition of material. In our times, probably by the constant addition of information.
Some of the first approaches to tragedy, through the grotesque, through the organic. The memory that tries to make itself present by means of a kind of materialisation. The need to tell through the visual, seeking to provoke a certain uneasiness.
Digital Collage has not only served me in some cases as a medium to prepare first sketches for some paintings, but it has also served me as a medium to express my ideas. Some of the concepts that I have explored through this medium have been the substitution of information and the decontextualisation of the image. By taking the object out of context it is possible to create quite powerful allegories that help one to question oneself as and what one knows. Not only what is real and what is not, the question that arises is whether what we remember or think we know is manipulated or not. The last thing we know is what we take for granted, it is our way of summarising and synthesising in order to save, although sometimes this saving can lead to forgetfulness.
The idea of superimposing information became more present in a video montage in which I used a painting made on paper based on the geometry of the prisoners' canal. With an approach closer to geometric abstraction, I focused on the process of making the painting as a concept in itself, the paint serving as a filter to hide the information.
The layers of paint were superimposed, starting with a first layer consisting of a collage made with documents from the concentration camps themselves, with the names of the prisoners in them. On top of this layer, successive layers of paint have been hiding this list of names, creating a kind of analogy of what happens in part with the history of the victims.