FUNDACIÓN SANTANDER 2016 PROJECTS

Curator: ÓSCAR ALONSO MOLINA

PARTICIPANT ARTISTS:

• Santiago Alcocer (Madrid, 1983)
  Galería Espacio Mínimo, Madrid.
• Kristoffer Ardeña (Dumaguete, Philippines, 1976)
  Galería Oliva Arauna, Madrid.
  
• Juan Carlos Bracho (La Línea de la Concepción, Cádiz, 1970)
  Galería Carles Taché, Barcelona.
• Philipp Fröhlich (Schweinfurt, Germany, 1975)
  Galería Soledad Lorenzo, Madrid.
  
• Anne-Line Coste (Marsella, France, 1973)
  Galería Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona.
• Regina de Miguel (Málaga, 1977)
  Galería Maisterravalbuena, Madrid.
  
• Natividad Bermejo (Logroño, 1961)
  Galería Estrany de la Mota, Barcelona.
  
• Jesús Zurita (Ceuta, 1974)
  Galería Sandunga, Granada.

"STORYTELLING". EIGHT ORGANISATION MODELS FOR CONTEMPORARY VISUAL NARRATIVE FORMATS.

The emergence of photography and of images in movement (film, video or animation, among others), with the special relationships they have with space and time, imposed on the development of modernity an urgent need to reconsider the powers of visual art to express people, items and the endless interwoven stories that exist between them.
The order of the traditional narrative, beyond classical dramatic structures, has its roots in the oral transmission of knowledge and of views on the cosmos as a mythical saga, fable or story and ceased to be, in that historical period, the reference required to tell the story of the world; to express things about the world. Thus, contemporary aesthetics has witnessed, since the late sixties, a formidable constellation of artistic proposals that work with static images, experiencing all sorts of ways to reintroduce the prologue, the plot and the outcome - all inevitably provisional - concerning reality and its significance for the viewer.
However, having overcome the late-modern paradigm in those years, when the paroxysm of formalist self-absorption appeared, art regained its former confidence in organising a certain stability around a describable and relatable event, occurrence, case. If during the intense post-modern revival period, this led to the recovery of traditional models that had been neglected, despised by radical modern art (such as the recovery of figures, one-way narration or dramatized staging), in subsequent art, and even today, the options have not only waived such Manichaeism as a reaction to the said position, but have diversified into innumerable strategies, mainly thanks to the constant hybridization with other languages, procedures, techniques and disciplines.
With a difference of twenty years between the age of the youngest artist selected here and the eldest, Storytelling addresses some of the most stimulating proposals among those that contemporary art has adopted over the past two decades in its willingness to organise unconventional narrative formats, without relinquishing a certain reflection of the events and of the plot in the form of a description.
In order to account for this vast and complex panorama, I have finally selected a group of eight artists whose work can be followed regularly thanks to their presence in galleries throughout the country. Taken together, they all exemplify very personal options on how to build different types of narrative or pseudo-narrative structures, but where no one uses the classical visual narratives lay-out (with emphasis on the significant moment, subordination to text or scripturalism, the sequential order..) or the canonical models of traditional visual art.
Opposite this, where literary dependence and exploration - or agonistics - between spatial art and temporal art was so usual, which had already reached full conceptual development with Lessing, the question today is how art still expresses what it wants to express in such a way that we can all share it somehow, but not necessarily having to reach the same conclusion or the same perspective of the events described, presented or represented. A devilish, fundamental question is answered by these eight artists, half way between the reflection of the event and its presentation as a renunciation of the event. Each one of them, in their own way; but in the end there will be as many stories as viewers stand before a work of art. So be it.

Ó.A.M.

Acknowledgements:
Galería Espacio Mínimo, Madrid · Galería Oliva Arauna, Madrid · Galería Carles Taché, Barcelona · Galería Soledad Lorenzo, Madrid · Galería Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona · Galería Maisterravalbuena, Madrid · Galería Estrany de la Mota, Barcelona · Galería Sandunda, Granada