Erick Beltrán
15 Aug - 26 Sep 2005
Erick Beltrán
Enciclopedia
Beltran’s work (Mexico City, 1974) is a constant research on the concept of edition, focusing on the mechanisms that define, value, order, classify, select, reproduce and distribute images in order to create political, economical and cultural discourses in contemporary society, and how the figure of edition defines our world and power relations among groups of people.
Immersed in a visual consumer society, Beltran offers us tools to reformulate in a critical manner how images acquire value and which are to be reproduced, what are the reasons why certain images are reproduced and not others, which are the techniques and means used to reinforce the content of an image; which are the different weights of images depending on their support, how it is that a visual collective vocabulary is formed and how distribution is part of the publishing and editing of printed material.
These questions are poured into the creation of systems and diagrams that intend to catalogue a determined universe, conscious of being a process and a line of production with organic evolution.
On this occasion, Beltran adapted the exhibition space in the gallery to make it his own, and generate the complete process of forming a small universe. Sharing the utopian spirit of the French encyclopaedists from the mid 18th Century -- whose purpose was to display the whole order and system of human knowledge -- Beltran has given himself to the task of compiling, reproducing and systemizing a collection of images, thus questioning the possible validity of “order” and “system” as such.
The different steps of formation of this visual encyclopaedia will be shown in the gallery’s exhibition room. The image compilation and its transfer to linoleum and metal to create mobile types; its selection, disposition and printing in a 1300 pound flat press, as well as experimentation with printing and book binding, are exhibited as processes that weigh in the agglutination of information that is presented as “truth”.
This globalising attempt to understand the world from a chaos of images – taken from magazines, advertisements, newspapers, internet, photo albums, catalogues and more – searches for validation in the intelligibility of these images as a subjective construction of narratives that attempt to be coherent for the spectator.
Enciclopedia
Beltran’s work (Mexico City, 1974) is a constant research on the concept of edition, focusing on the mechanisms that define, value, order, classify, select, reproduce and distribute images in order to create political, economical and cultural discourses in contemporary society, and how the figure of edition defines our world and power relations among groups of people.
Immersed in a visual consumer society, Beltran offers us tools to reformulate in a critical manner how images acquire value and which are to be reproduced, what are the reasons why certain images are reproduced and not others, which are the techniques and means used to reinforce the content of an image; which are the different weights of images depending on their support, how it is that a visual collective vocabulary is formed and how distribution is part of the publishing and editing of printed material.
These questions are poured into the creation of systems and diagrams that intend to catalogue a determined universe, conscious of being a process and a line of production with organic evolution.
On this occasion, Beltran adapted the exhibition space in the gallery to make it his own, and generate the complete process of forming a small universe. Sharing the utopian spirit of the French encyclopaedists from the mid 18th Century -- whose purpose was to display the whole order and system of human knowledge -- Beltran has given himself to the task of compiling, reproducing and systemizing a collection of images, thus questioning the possible validity of “order” and “system” as such.
The different steps of formation of this visual encyclopaedia will be shown in the gallery’s exhibition room. The image compilation and its transfer to linoleum and metal to create mobile types; its selection, disposition and printing in a 1300 pound flat press, as well as experimentation with printing and book binding, are exhibited as processes that weigh in the agglutination of information that is presented as “truth”.
This globalising attempt to understand the world from a chaos of images – taken from magazines, advertisements, newspapers, internet, photo albums, catalogues and more – searches for validation in the intelligibility of these images as a subjective construction of narratives that attempt to be coherent for the spectator.