CONSIGNA
Solo Exhibition
Galería Oliva Arauna, Madrid (Spain)
From 26/01/2001 to 28/02/2001
In the exhibition, which shows the latest work of Chema Alvargonzalez, a space is created in which the images are combined through reflections, transparencies and projected images. These elements are unified in space by a common sound element.
The pieces are a reference to our relation between the interior and the exterior, to the relation between our experience and the shadows created by memory. In Consignas, Alvargonzalez recreates the notion of waiting, creating a stage for it. It is in the left-luggage offices at the big stations and airports where objects lethargically await to start their journeys. Alvargonzalez uses these places of transit to reflect upon the ideas of travelling and waiting, as he converts the gallery into a left-luggage office where memories are stored.
A central structure in the entrance of the gallery contains two photographic images combined with a mirror that allows us to see through it.
At the back of the gallery, a projection is emitted from a suitcase like a metaphor of our own escape towards outer experience.
In the gallery’s office (the actual cloakroom of the gallery) one can contemplate the images that are contained in the suitcases displayed as light boxes, that reference the journeys, memories and souvenirs as part of the artistic experience. Alvargonzalez’s way of working, by collecting images over the daily course of life, means that the result we are left with is the voice of his memory.
The exhibition also presents two new large format photographs from the series Un sueño de ciudad, shown last December in Castellón, in which images of a metropolis are mixed with clouds as if in a dream. The architectural spaces that rest upon the clouds form a bridge between the physical and the unreal because they don’t just uniquely represent the real concurrence of forms but also, and above all, the forms of his memory. They are images that sum up the collective memory and reflect its way of living and all of its dreams. On this occasion it is the urban landscape of Madrid that is discovered immersed amongst the clouds.
Text by: Galería Oliva Arauna, 2001
