Lluís Hortalá
07 Nov - 31 Dec 2006
LLUÍS HORTALÁ
"The hidden moon"
A mould of the moon, like an open watermelon, wherein its particular orography of dry seas and desert mounts is reflected. A mould impregnated with a platonic image, much like the moon we have seen in our fondest dreams. However, it is a negative of a glowing brilliance that can only confirm the absence of the real thing. Before this work of uncommon power and formal precision, one of the most recent by Lluís Hortalà, we approach the impossibility of retaining beauty, of capturing it, rather than through a supposed copy or mould where the evident artificiality of his proposal is not hidden from us. A conceptual game also extending to the eternal ambiguity posed by his quasi-photographic reproductions of mountains (painstaking in fact, and scribe drawings), or a possible material recreation of the surface of a planet.
This attempt at appropriation arrives at the domestic sphere in two singular pieces. We see on the one hand, a pair of liquor glasses with the serigraphy of the map of the world, and on the other, certificates of purchase (real ones, although hardly legal) of plots on the moon and nearby planets. This shift towards humour allows for a break – and an ironic counterpoint – from the romantic intensity and the metaphoric possibilities offered by the rest of the pieces, without abandoning that very discourse.
If only for just a moment, the artist wishes to take possession of the moon, redraws the Everest with fidelity using pencil and charcoal, or recreates the skin and morphology of a star... It may be this impossibility that the artist is warning us of, but it is also true that the leitmotiv is still a “permanent concern for the problems of vision”, as the critic Teresa Blanch has rightly pointed out referring to Lluís Hortalà’s entire career.
It is not trivial to affirm that we stand before one of his most complete and complex displays. From the formal research on perception, to the humour inserts tinged with a certain sad irony, to the beautiful poetic metaphors, we can gather a sense of concerns that the artist pulls out of the back of his mind. In keeping with his latest exhibitions, formal and conceptual progresses come along with a revisiting of past aspects that, far from implying an exercise in nostalgia, are turned into a series of motifs or tropes retaking new channels of meaning. In this sense, the audiovisual piece created from an extensive photographic feature in the assault to a mythical peak (a feature that is two decades old), refers us to his beloved high-mountain experiences, and to the intense vital and sensorial experience translated through him into many pieces. Moreover, the patient photographic cartography of this journey deliberately reveals his thoroughness in tackling his artistic work. A new piece made from old material, providing extra emotivity and maturity to a career more and more substantial and solid.
David Santaeulària.
© Lluís Hortalá
"AUNQUE SEA UN INSTANTE II", 2006.
Carbón sobre papel. Díptico: 2 x (100 x 100 cms).
"The hidden moon"
A mould of the moon, like an open watermelon, wherein its particular orography of dry seas and desert mounts is reflected. A mould impregnated with a platonic image, much like the moon we have seen in our fondest dreams. However, it is a negative of a glowing brilliance that can only confirm the absence of the real thing. Before this work of uncommon power and formal precision, one of the most recent by Lluís Hortalà, we approach the impossibility of retaining beauty, of capturing it, rather than through a supposed copy or mould where the evident artificiality of his proposal is not hidden from us. A conceptual game also extending to the eternal ambiguity posed by his quasi-photographic reproductions of mountains (painstaking in fact, and scribe drawings), or a possible material recreation of the surface of a planet.
This attempt at appropriation arrives at the domestic sphere in two singular pieces. We see on the one hand, a pair of liquor glasses with the serigraphy of the map of the world, and on the other, certificates of purchase (real ones, although hardly legal) of plots on the moon and nearby planets. This shift towards humour allows for a break – and an ironic counterpoint – from the romantic intensity and the metaphoric possibilities offered by the rest of the pieces, without abandoning that very discourse.
If only for just a moment, the artist wishes to take possession of the moon, redraws the Everest with fidelity using pencil and charcoal, or recreates the skin and morphology of a star... It may be this impossibility that the artist is warning us of, but it is also true that the leitmotiv is still a “permanent concern for the problems of vision”, as the critic Teresa Blanch has rightly pointed out referring to Lluís Hortalà’s entire career.
It is not trivial to affirm that we stand before one of his most complete and complex displays. From the formal research on perception, to the humour inserts tinged with a certain sad irony, to the beautiful poetic metaphors, we can gather a sense of concerns that the artist pulls out of the back of his mind. In keeping with his latest exhibitions, formal and conceptual progresses come along with a revisiting of past aspects that, far from implying an exercise in nostalgia, are turned into a series of motifs or tropes retaking new channels of meaning. In this sense, the audiovisual piece created from an extensive photographic feature in the assault to a mythical peak (a feature that is two decades old), refers us to his beloved high-mountain experiences, and to the intense vital and sensorial experience translated through him into many pieces. Moreover, the patient photographic cartography of this journey deliberately reveals his thoroughness in tackling his artistic work. A new piece made from old material, providing extra emotivity and maturity to a career more and more substantial and solid.
David Santaeulària.
© Lluís Hortalá
"AUNQUE SEA UN INSTANTE II", 2006.
Carbón sobre papel. Díptico: 2 x (100 x 100 cms).