Home > Proyectos > LUIS BISBE. Pin-pan-pum (ENG)
LUIS BISBE. Pin-pan-pum (ENG)
Espai 13, Fundación Joan Miró, Barcelona, 2003
Saturday 31 January 2009, by
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The projects conceived by Luis Bisbe (Malaga, 1965) are very often based on an out-of-the-ordinary perception of space. At times he achieves this by making spatial drawings, produced with elastic bands and steel cables that criss-cross the room from wall to wall. These drawings create columns and doorways (Pilot apartment, Galería Salvador Díaz, Madrid, 2001, and Artforum Berlin, 1999), tables, staircases and scaffolding (Advanced pretechnology, CAC Malaga, 2003) and even trampolines (Tararí, La Capella, Barcelona, 1999). This gives rise to a dislocated architecture - or rather, two architectures, one of which is displaced. At other times his work with the illusions of perception is materialised in drawings on the wall of the exhibition space - for example, duplicating an electric plug and giving it an animated expressiveness - or by projecting a specific object on to the object itself. In Ping-pong (1999) he projected the image of a plug that fitted perfectly on the surface on which it was projected: the plug supplying electricity to the projector. In Drink me (2003), two projections superimposed the images and the shadows (with small alterations such as changes of scale and/or angle of filming) of a number of lamps on to the same objects. In this way Bisbe creates an ambivalence between the object and its image, thus demonstrating the impossibility of representation.
In Pin-pan-pum, designed specifically for the Espai 13, the artist opts for a duplication of reality in order to question our perception and our memory of the place. Pin-pan-pum replicates two portions of the architecture of the Espai 13, in which the columns, windows, stairs and other elements can be recognised, and projects them onto the original spaces. The two projections of these reconstructed items onto the original architectural elements creates an ambivalence between the object and its image. The replication at a scale of 1:1, a scale that contradicts the notion of representation and reinforces the idea of a duplicated architecture, recomposes the image of reality, accentuating the equivocal nature of the boundaries and consequently the ambiguous relationship between art and reality.
As Luis Francisco Pérez has so rightly said, Luis Bisbe deals with "the dilemma of the visible". This tension is made even more evident when the constructions of the space are subjected to a violent process of destruction. Construction and destruction thus become allusions to life itself. Construct/destroy, conceal/reveal appear here as metaphors of life.
However, having reached this point, the artist quashes any attempt at excessive transcendence, with titles that bring us back to the immediate reality, devoid of ponderous significance: Tararí, Ping-pong and now Pin-pan-pum have an immediacy and a freshness that in fact belie the artist’s method of work, in which everything is meticulously thought out and put together in the most minute detail.
Pin-pan-pum forces the viewer to approach the projections from different positions. When we come down the stairs of the Espai 13 we find ourselves entering a "porous space", as Bisbe likes to call it, which surrounds us and envelopes us in one of the projections. The artist invites us to wander through this space, to experience perception from different angles and distances. In this apparently simple way of duplicating reality and at the same time questioning the duplication by destroying the artifice and directly involving the viewer in the process, he compels us to question our perception and memory of the place and makes us aware of the fragile nature of certainty.
Montse Badia