| A aquesta banda del mirall (On This Side of the Mirror)
It is universally accepted that art treats human beings as physical objects within its works. Painters paint portraits; sculptors carve busts. This practice was only broken with the advent of conceptual art, which sought to portray people through their absence – where seeing the person was no longer necessary to depict them. Perhaps it was even more expressive to perceive ourselves without an image.
Jesús Galdón plays with both these possibilities but introduces a new idea: he does not wish to portray anyone. His work recalls those now almost vanished fairground booths where one would poke their head through a cut-out to be photographed in an exotic setting, whether the Wild West or China. But the opportunity presented in A aquesta banda del mirall is even more intriguing. The artist invites us to discover who we are, to seek out our own unique and personal geography.
Because we all have our own cartography. Each of us is an island, a continent adrift in the vast ocean of the world. Amidst this vastness, we may be part of an archipelago or find ourselves far from any other island. The piece of dry land that defines us has its own mountains, rivers and regions.
It is often said that artists create their own worlds. In Galdón’s case, this holds true. His work constructs a universe, a planet, perhaps, parallel to the one we call Earth, where each continent has only one inhabitant: the person reflected in the mirror. Or perhaps, as in a Borges tale, the world Galdón has created in Espai 13 is nothing more than another reflection, the mirror image of what lies at the top of the staircase. But unlike a dreamy Alice, he does not want us to step through the looking glass into another world. There is no need – we are already our own cosmos. A aquesta banda del mirall is, therefore, an unfinished work: we must pause before the mirror and gaze intently at ourselves.
Now, at last, the piece is complete.
Ferran Barenblit
October 1996 |
