Creating knowledge, a different kind of knowledge, making us see things in a different way and opening us up to new perspectives are some of the functions of art. Art can have a transformative role, it can change our perceptual experience, the way we see spaces we know or make us rediscover them. Intervening in a place is transforming it and also transforming our view, our way of thinking. It is possible to modify reality through gestures as small as they are precise.
Minimal gestures with maximum impact aims to discover/rediscover some spaces in the city of Vic and, through art, show them in a different way, based on gestures, everyday elements, poetic references and also the evidence of mechanisms. The four works presented on this occasion use projection, an immaterial medium, the visibility of which is directly proportional to the distance. At the same time, it is when the projections meet a real element, a space that is not flat but three-dimensional, that they reveal their transformative potential. The four proposals work in the field of fragility, ambiguity and complexity (of perception, intention, objects, media and the individual in relation to the public sphere).
In this sense, Wilfredo Prieto’s projection, made using a laser, recreates a phenomenon related to nature and the landscape, the vision of the horizon line, in the courtyard of the Hospital de la Santa Creu; The hand that opens and becomes a fist again, by Andreas M. Kaufmann, projected on the apse of a church, speaks of both power and the human condition. The power of decision appears again in the hands projected by Antoni Muntadas in the auditorium of a communications company. And, finally, the feat of walking on a tightrope, projected in the film that we do not see by Ignasi Aballí, shows the mechanisms of projection, of thought and, finally, of our relationship with spaces and with society.
Through minimal gestures and the use of everyday materials, Wilfredo Prieto sharply and poetically focuses on complex aspects of everyday reality. With A Second of Horizon the artist investigates the landscape genre from his own perspective. A 360º laser line (of the kind used in the construction sector) draws a line of light on the walls of the space, evoking an evening landscape. When the spectator moves in the space where the piece is installed, there is always a second in which the ray of light blinds him, evoking the second in which the sun rises or sets. It is, therefore, a symbolic landscape, a poetic game that arises from the juxtaposition of different realities: the austere nature of the construction element, the changing situation of the spectator, the physical and symbolic nature of the space in which it is installed and, finally, the poetic potential given by a minimal gesture and an austere material. In short, minimal gestures of maximum impact that open new perspectives, modify the meaning of the most everyday reality and allow us to imagine new possible scenarios.
The idea of the Videopaintings is computer-generated images that show images that are examples of human behavior. The starting point of the Videopaintings are images that record everyday events or isolated gestures that are shown in continuous movement. The images chosen – such as the hand that opens and closes until it becomes a fist – raise the question of whether they are still or moving images and function in such a way that the brain is unable to capture the progression of the movement, but can only perceive the change that confirms the action that has taken place. In the case of Videopainting # 3,
the closed fist, which is shown with a certain forcefulness – power? threat? rebellion? – is gradually transformed, imperceptibly, into an open hand that denotes openness and generosity, but can also show demand. At the same time, the very morphology of the hand, which is architectural in the sense that it shows an inside and an outside, the play of concave and convex shapes establishes formal relationships with the architecture in which it is installed.
Ignasi Aballí’s work explores themes such as the conventions of art, the role of the artist and the relationship between cultural and economic value. Film Projection brings us closer to the mechanisms of projection. The artist films the light coming out of a film projector while it is projecting a film. The duration is the same as the film, that is, 90 minutes. The recording was made in 16 mm to return to celluloid. The film projected was Man on Wire (2008), a documentary about Philippe Petit, a tightrope walker who in 1974 walked between the Twin Towers in New York. Like Petit, the camera with which Aballí filmed the projection was also suspended between the projector and the screen.
In this way, Aballí establishes parallels between the tightrope walk of the tightrope walker, the role of the artist, the fact of focusing attention on that which is neither obvious nor conventional – not what is projected, but the projector – and carrying out a practically impossible activity – crossing the twin towers or filming that which is intangible, such as light in this case.
In his work, Antoni Muntadas has been exploring social, political and communication issues for many years, as well as the relationship between public and private space within the social framework. In Portrait, Muntadas analyses the gesture as a symbol of power. The video captures the hand gestures of a character whose identity is voluntarily hidden except for the features of his clothing that allow him to be placed in a certain status. The hand gestures, which are presented with a certain slowness, show a forcefulness and also a certain strangeness, the appearance of unexpected nuances, which allow us to investigate the value and purpose of gestural stereotypes.
