EXIT
Naturaleza muerta / Still-life Zachary Zavislak / Wolfgang Tillmans Manuel Vilariño / Joel-Peter Witkin Cindy Sherman / Jeff Wall / Olivier Richon Jörg Sasse / Gabriel Orozco / Sam Taylor-Wood McDermott & McGough / Saverio Lucariello Hong Lei / Douglas W. Mellor / Pere Formiguera Evelyn Hofer / Emmanuel Sougez / Flor Garduño Tony Catany / Hannah Collins / Daniel Blaufuks
Naturaleza muerta
Still-life
The Time of a Still-life Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego
Pascal was amazed by the fascination still-lifes provoked, while the contemplation of the real objects those still-lifes depicted did not seem to arouse any interest whatsoever. But the fact is that somehow the image contains both the object and its contemplative emotion. Such is what sustains the poetics of the stilllife, also called dead nature1. Since the objects of our passions cannot be retained, we must be contented with their image. “To perpetuate the emotion”, wrote Emmanuel Sougez, “that image must be precise and contain the causes of the attraction. The spirit cannot be contented with the “flou” of a memory, but wishes to find, at each recollection, all the details of its adventure. Only photography is capable of satisfying that desire.” We therefore have here the photographic image as a mathematical equation of the real, capable of trapping in the concrete a fixed, stable structure upon which the objects themselves and the emotions they provoke can be definitively organized: reposed, sustained. It cannot surprise us, then, that the first known daguerreotype was precisely a still-life: some plaster casts and other objects on a table Daguerre immortalized back in 1837. Throughout his lifelong career in photography, with authentic Jansenist rigor Sougez focused on the variations of these structures, these small architectures envisioned on a humble almost conventual table. After all, as Guy Davenport pointed out, “reiteration E X I T Nº 18-2005 42
is a privilege of still-life not shared by many other genres”.2 That repetition no doubt demonstrates a true love for objects, and at the same time an equivalent yearning for geometric and conceivably spiritual diaphaneity. Thus, in 1947, during a period of convalescence, Sougez photographed a simple door, a certainly ordinary door, at different times of the day and night. At the end of the series a nude woman appears in the doorway, as in a dream. It is as if we were before the apparition of Euridice, the final treasure of the postponed scopic investigation: possibly the ultimate reality, the tangible embodiment of beauty. Amid this Franciscan love for the most humble objects (household items, rags, food, fruit) the presence of an archetype is sought out, but in the manner of a presence that is clear, held fast, ordered: harmonized. The image therefore turns out to be a tiny part of the world skillfully, lovingly saved from entropy and oblivion: a quite unassuming autonomous organism endowed with a complete value of its own, a slight miniature cosmos paralleling nature itself. The still-life often becomes a sort of transmutation or inner vision where stillness and geometry are to abet the epiphanic show. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called this inward journey to discover the secret of the present ‘inscape’. This will for order and care, eminently solitary and sheltered from any affront from the outside -as likewise occurs,
Emmanuel Sougez. Les éperlans en caisse (Los eperlanos en caja), 1934 Bromuro de plata, 34 x 24 cm. Cortesía Marie-Loup Sougez, Madrid
Wolfgang Tillmans Water & Wine, 2001
Wolfgang Tillmans Milk & Gelatine, 2001
Joel-Peter Witkin Anna Akhmatova Paris, 1991 Gelatin silver print 34 x 43 cm All images courtesy Galerie Baudoin Lebon, Paris, and GalerĂa Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid
Joel-Peter Witkin
The ‘staging’ of the object Alberto Veca
Yesterday and today ‘Placing’ the objects on the supporting plane is, after all, a ‘self-display’. This is the abbreviated formula for saying that the still-life, whether produced in painting or photography, is a sort of cloaked self portrait because it is the eloquent image of how one judges the world, though it is restricted to the interior of a room, often the studio itself, and laden with traces of daily toils. The matter at hand is a collection of diverse contemporary photographic experiences drawn from a wide-ranging chronological array, yet for the most part focused on the present, and embracing the photographic genre, the still-life, which, as in the past in the world of painting, portended dabblers and specialists. One way of putting it is that photography is an instrument of variable dimensions; it can be miniaturized into a minimal format or acquire the dimensions of an outdoor advertising billboard: this change of scale of the finished product evidently depends on the nature of the matrix, the negative, which can be made positive through printing in several ways. This observation may be interesting if it is taken into account that the portrait of the inanimate object is always in need of an indicator determining its scale with respect to reality. Conventionally, the human figure possesses this quality: indeed, its dimension is a E X I T Nº 18-2005 120
measure, with the exception of a surrealist lesson, of the reality around it, whereas the object may undergo unknown distortions ranging from miniaturization to hypertrophic enlargement. My commentary on the representation of the inanimate object consists of a look back to the baroque era between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whence the autonomous still-life genre is rooted, and a subsequent reconsideration of current photographic exploration. The diverse compositional solutions, as well as those of the decorative arrangements succeeding each other throughout the course of history, an overview of which is herein intended, become contemporary choices in the eye of the present-day photographer, and consequently can no longer be postulated as merely possible solutions. The juxtaposition of yesterday and today is not only possible, it is smooth sailing, for implicit in many of the pictures gathered for the occasion, the citing of objects, scenes and compositions from the past is too evident to be coincidental. The first part of this recognition therefore focuses precisely on the cases comprising explicit reference to history: without going into too much detail, the works of Pere Formiguera, who selects an imaginary time period between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as those of Zachary Zavislak, related to the meals from the early seventeenth century, and those by Teresa Cavalheiro, who focuses on the
Evelyn Hofer. Bottle and Grapes (Still life No 1), 1996. Dye Transfer, 60 x 50 cm. Courtesy Galerie m-Bochum, and Steidl Publishers, Gรถttingen, Germany
Índice de artistas
Daniel Blaufuks. Lisboa (Portugal), 1963. Vive y trabaja entre Lisboa y Nueva York. Formado en AR.CO, Lisboa, Royal College of Art, Londres y Watermill Center, Nueva York, ha desempeñado la docencia en diversas instituciones portuguesas y brasileñas. Las fotografías de Blaufuks surgen de la voluntad de describir y exteriorizar la identidad personal del artista (recuerdos, personas, objetos, lugares, sensaciones) al público que le rodea. Sus imágenes, resultado de sus numerosos viajes por el mundo, no se conforman con presentarse como documentos testimoniales de sus desplazamientos, sino que se engloban en un todo complejo que suele incluir diversos géneros y categorías fotográficas, y que en la mayoría de los casos está destinado a construir un relato en torno a la intimidad del autor. Entre sus últimas exposiciones individuales se cuentan Fotografias recentes, Gal. María Martín, Madrid, 2000; Lisboa, Pessoa, Exilio, Saramago, Gal. Luís Serpa, Lisboa, y Exile, Image Gallery, Aarhus, ambas en 2002; Collected Short Stories, Fund. Gulbenkian, Lisboa, 2003; Tomorrow is a Long Place and a Perfect Day, Elga Wimmer PCC, Nueva York, y Lurixs Arte Contemporânea, Río de Janeiro; Combo, Centro Cultural, Lagos, las tres en 2004. Website: www.danielblaufuks.com. Toni Catany. Llucmajor, Mallorca (España), 1942. Vive y trabaja en Barcelona. Fotógrafo autodidacta, en 1968 comienza a trabajar como fotoperiodista para La Vanguardia o Destino, pero será con una muestra en la Sala Aixelà, Barcelona, 19972, cuando su obra llame la atención de los especialistas. Su fotografía refleja un interés por la civilización mediterránea, y una pasión por la expresión plástica y visual, así como por los recursos técnicos a través de sus calotipos iniciales o de las más recientes polaroid transportadas. Entre sus temas recurrentes destacan bodegones, desnudos, retratos y paisajes, con resultados que parecen suspendidos en un tiempo irreal, entre pasado y presente, con imágenes llenas de una melancolía reforzada por un excepcional dominio de luces y sombras. Con el libro Natures Mortes (Ed. Lunwerg, 1987), recoge algunas de sus series dedicadas al tema y recibe numerosos premios. En 1991 recibe el título de Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres en Francia. Ese mismo año recibe el premio al mejor libro en Les Rencontrés D’Arles con La meva mediterránea. Otros libros suyos son: Flowers of Live (Treville, 1990), Soñar en Dioses (Lunwerg, 1993), Obscura Memoria (Lunwerg, 1994). En 2001, recibe el Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas (Generalitat de Catalunya) y el Premio Nacional de Fotografía (Ministerio de Cultura).
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Enrico Cattaneo. Milán (Italia), 1933. Vive y trabaja en Milán. Vinculado en sus orígenes a los estudios científicos, en 1955 comienza a dedicarse a la fotografía amateur. En estos años, muestra sus preferencias hacia los reportajes fotográficos y las investigaciones de carácter social. Profesional desde 1965, su fotografía se dedica mayormente a la reproducción de obras de arte, habiendo trabajado con multitud de pintores, escultores y arquitectos. Su obra más creativa y personal parte de la realidad cotidiana y los objetos, transformándolos en actores protagonistas de una narración que enmascara y parodia las certezas de la realidad finita. Entre sus exposiciones individuales destacan las celebradas en el Palazzo dei Priori, Volterra, 1973; Palazzo dei Diamante, Ferrara, 1983; Museo Casablanca, Malo, 1992; Centro Culturale Bertold Brecht, Milán, 1994 y 2003; Gal. Scoglio di Cuarto, Milán, 2002; Palazzo Comunale, Seriate, 2003; y Mindshare, Milán, 2004, entre otras. Teresa Cavalheiro. Lisboa (Portugal), 1973. Vive y trabaja en Lisboa, donde desarrolla proyectos de fotografía, vídeo, dibujo y diseño de páginas web. Formada en pintura en la Faculdade de Belas Artes de la Universidade de Lisboa, en 1998 comienza a exponer su trabajo de forma colectiva. En 2003 realiza su primera exposición individual (Casa d’Os Dias da Água, Lisboa) con su serie de fotografías Comer com os Olhos, nacidas como producto de una investigación teórica titulada Comer con os Olhos. Um estudo sobre a representação de alimentos na Natura Morta. En ellas, la artista reinterpreta y actualiza en clave irónica el género del bodegón, mediante composiciones caseras que integran alimentos y objetos de consumo de la sociedad contemporánea. Ha participado en diversas colectivas como Sister Spaces y NonStopOpeningLisboa, ambas vinculadas a las actividades y al espacio Zé dos Bois, Lisboa, 2000; y en 2004, su trabajo fue incluido en Metamorfoses do Real, en la edición Encontros da imagem 2004, Mosteiro de Tibães, Braga. Hannah Collins. Londres (Inglaterra), 1956. Vive y trabaja entre Barcelona y Londres. Entre 1974 y 1978 Collins estudia en la Slade School of Fine Arts de Londres. Se inicia en la fotografía con bodegones, interiores, figuras y paisajes en grandes formatos, muy matizadas en blanco y negro, que manifiestan cierta inquietud espiritual y un anhelo de experiencia física por parte del espectador. Su obra plantea una suerte de reflexión sobre el paso del tiempo y las huellas depositadas por la
Jörg Sasse. W-90-02-02 Giessen, 1990 38 x 26 cm. Courtesy Wilma Tolksdorf Galerie, Frankfurt
Daniel Blaufuks S/T (Milho) New York, 2001 CortesĂa del artista
E X I T Imagen y Cultura / Image & Culture Revista trimestral / Quarterly Magazine. Año 4 - #18 Mayo / Junio / Julio 2005 • PVP España: 20 Euros
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