EXIT
Abstracción / Abstraction Wolfgang Tillmans - Jason Salavon - Adam Fuss - Jörg Sasse - Darío Urzay João João Paulo Paulo Feliciano Feliciano -- Richard Richard Misrach Misrach -- Concha Concha Prada Prada -- Alex Alex Haas Haas -- Juan Juan Uslé Uslé Gottfried Jäger - Rafael Navarro - James Welling - Rufo Criado - Roland Fischer
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EXIT
EXIT -Imagen y Cultura- es una publicación trimestral de Olivares y Asociados, S. L. EXIT -Image & Culture- is published quarterly by Olivares & Associated, S. L.
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Adam Fuss
Sumario / Contents
16
Editorial. El enigma de la abstracción. The enigma of abstraction. Rosa Olivares
24 38
Adam Fuss “¿Qué es abstracto?” “What is abstract?” Mercedes Vicente
74 82 90 98
Wolfgang Tillmans
Abstrayendo pensamientos de la abstracción. Abstracting Thoughts from Abstraction. Dore Ashton
106
Fotografía abstracta. Abstract Photography. Gottfried Jäger
130
Indice de artistas Index of Artists
Jason Salavon Jörg Sasse Darío Urzay
Darío Urzay
James Welling. I, 2000. Chromogenic print, 91.4 x 78.7 cm. Courtesy Donald Young Gallery, Chicago
James Welling. II, 2000. Chromogenic print, 91.4 x 78.7 cm. Courtesy Donald Young Gallery, Chicago
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N T E R V I E W
“What is abstract?” Mercedes Vicente
In the work of Adam Fuss (London, 1961) the scientific and metaphysical meet. Fuss’ alchemist spirit has led the evolution of his work through a journey that has progressively brought him towards the dark space of photography. Along the way, Fuss abandoned the 35mm camera first and later the pinhole camera, to adopt and experiment with the early techniques of 19th century photography such as the daguerreotype and the photogram, replacing the camera with the language of shadows. Whether figurative or abstract, Fuss’ vocabulary has been circumscribed to nature. The strong poetic and symbolic sense with which he grants such elements as water, a snake, a baby or the human figure, suggests a metaphysical discourse regarding the mysteries of life and death, of light and darkness. In 1988, Fuss started using the photogram in abstract studies of light and color, using light metaphorically. Large in scale without being monumental, these images are radically different from the intimate size of the preceding works made with the pinhole camera. During the nineties, Fuss turned to figuration with his biological studies, in which he exposed plants and flowers on lightsensitive paper -reminiscent of William Henry Fox Talbot’s botanical studies. Also from this period is the series Invocation, in which he captured the silhouettes of babies floating in water, and the Love series, his attempt to bring together figuration and abstraction. Yet, unlike Talbot, Fuss’ imagery is less concerned with documenting the appearances of things as it is with the possible meanings behind them, thus conferring his works a sense of spirituality. The simplification achieved by the photogram challenges the deluge of images prevailing in our current technological society. For Fuss, an heir of English Romanticism, the significance of his imagery lies in the magic of the invisible embedded in the tangible world, in that which we might be able to see, yet are unable to grasp. You once declared, “We’re so conditioned to the syntax of the camera that we don’t realize that we are running on only half the visual alphabet.... It’s what we see every day in the magazines, on billboards and even on television. All those images are being produced basically the same way, through a lens and a camera. I’m saying there are many, many other ways to produce photographic imagery, and I would imagine that a lot of them have yet to be explored.” Would you like to comment on this statement?
That quote was a reference to images produced without the camera, which incidentally are not abstract or figurative. There is a lot of confusion around that, people immediately assume that a picture without a camera is abstract, and it is not. It could be extremely figurative. But within that E X I T Nº 14-2004 56
Adam Fuss. Untitled, 1999. Spores on paper, 76.2 x 54.6 cm
Darío Urzay
Ian Wallace. England, 1943. He has lived in Canada since 1944, and currently lives and works in both Paris and Vancouver. He has been a writer, a teacher and an artist since 1965. He earned a Masters degree in Art History from the British Columbia University with a thesis on Mondrian, in 1968 and from 1972 to 1998 he was a teacher of Art History at Emily Carr College of Art and Design. His work is characterized by the use of photography, where he combines white spaces, some pictorial or graphic elements, and fragments of images arranged into clean and elegant collages, which are in keeping with the ambience of the spaces chosen for the photos, spaces that are at times anonymous and other times significant, but always imbued with memory and meaning for the artist. Among his one-man shows, we can highlight Ian Wallace: Selected Works 19701987, Vancouver Art Gallery, 1988; Hommage a Mondrian, De Vleeshal, Middleburg, 1990; (new works) Ian Wallace: Genesta, London, 1997; Clayquot Protest (August 9, 1993), Sprengel Museum, Hanover and Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, 1998; My Heroes in the Street, Catriona Jeffries Gal., Vancouver, 2001; Intersections, Gal. Tomás March, Valencia, 2002, the gallery currently representing him.
E X I T Nº 14-2004 164
James Welling. Hartford, Connecticut (The United States), 1951. He lives and works in both New York and Los Angeles. He studied drawing at the Carnegie-Mellon University of Pittsburgh (1969-1971) and video at the California Institute of the Arts (1971-1974) in Valencia, where he collaborated with John Baldessari as his assistant, producing his first video projects. During the mid-seventies and early eighties, Welling became interested in the meaning and nature of photography as a means of exploring diverse aspects and subjects that have amplified the technical and conceptual limits of the medium. Some of his series, such as Mistery Photographs, Degradé Photographs and Tricolor Photographs, have employed abstraction as an autonomous means for the investigation of the formal qualities of photography, using varying techniques, from more traditional ones to digital imaging. His work has been shown in institutions worldwide, particularly noteworthy among his solo shows are those held at the Künsternes Hus, Oslo, 1992; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 1995; Kunstmuseum Luzerne, 1998; Sprengel Museum, Hanover, 1999; Palais del Beaux Arts, Brussels, 2002; and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago, 2003. He is represented by the Donald Young Gallery in Chicago.
Rufo Criado Caja de luz 05 04 03, 2003 Duratrans, 125 x 125 cm CortesĂa del artista y GalerĂa AELE-Evelyn Botella, Madrid
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E X I T Imagen y Cultura / Image & Culture Revista trimestral / Quarterly Magazine. Año 4 - Número 14 Mayo / Junio / Julio / 2004 • PVP España: 20 Euros