Adrià Julià
18 Oct - 17 Nov 2007
ADRIÀ JULIÀ
"Truc Trang Walls / Formas De Matar El Tiempo"
Voices, at times familiar, at times strange; clear and direct statements, followed by indecipherable interchanges; repetitive noises and complete absence of sound; boisterous silences and mechanical melodies; laughter, shouting, explanations, mumblings...; these audio fragments structure Adrià Julià’s pieces. Installations, videos, photographs and text, pierced by the sound−and absence thereof−they investigate, and revise, notions such as cultural identity and its translation into disparate contexts and tenses−often confronted.
Projects initiated with the study−and recognition−of values, beliefs and customs belonging to an inherited tradition, to all of them, through rereading their singular forms and strongly signified elements. A revision initiated with the prolonged “interruption” of customary protocols in the transmission of information and, particularly, of those regulated by pacts and agreements established around strategies of mutual recognition. A way of proceeding− reserved−limited to observing, registering, re-framing and once again presenting to the viewer the elements and dynamics peculiar to distinct and accepted behavioral models. A way to operate−also silent−that will substantiate the fragility of many normalized reading procedures.
Since the main characters are near qualifi ed enragés, these stories, from their conception, are based on following and discreetly presenting “found” situations, where previously carefully catalogued information is−at once−revealed and obscured. An emigrant who, after 30 years of exile in the United States, returns triumphant to his place of origin, a little village in North Vietnam where he contrives and constructs a California-style home, a process in which both family members and neighbors participate. Interpreters rehearsing before the camera distinct scenes reminiscent of the Anglo-Saxon tradition of mumming, entailing small theatrical plays that take place in public spaces or that are set to unfold from home to home, where the central action is no less than the murder and further resurrection of the main character by way of a secret potion in a certain doctor’s possession. One of them, Mark, in addition to being an actor, researches this tradition, having had ample experience performing in the “murder mystery” series, a show exported to American military bases overseas−part of the strategic “moral support” to the troops−and underscoring values such as good and evil, punishment and guilt, the hero and the criminal. Representations that nevertheless, because of the show’s broken structure in and of itself, are likewise ruptures from customary military command, from their functionally strict logic. Fantasies surrounding the “home,” replicas of an ideal society, exported and adapted according to stereotypes, to be interpreted within an “inappropriate” context.
All of the characters in the works of Adrià Julià seem engrossed in their own secluded world, wherefrom they carry out precise choreographies before anomalous witnesses, unknown. Testimonies that will be necessarily adapted through every information transmission between those implied; each individual mise en scène, its register and posterior−secluded anew−presentation within the exhibition space. A “fragmented” documentation, of image and sound, resulting in a non-narrative structure, where landscapes, portraits and gestures befall. A material that, far from being understood as a trustworthy document−and in spite of the veracity of its contents−always manifests itself as an “approximate recreation” of the facts, of what happened, of an acted-out reality. Images where the familiar becomes strange−uncanny; but where, at the same time, a space of resistance and anxiety is generated. A mysterious situation, short of enigmatic really, product of a specific way of tying heterogeneous elements, opposed; something already not so “familiar” and taken for granted as is the encounter between a sewing machine and an umbrella, but that which comes given in the disposition of a window showcasing idolized objects, souvenirs and trophies; from a bronze bust of Lenin placed next to a reproduction of the Statue of Liberty and a carved out chess set; to an image of Vladimir Putin sharing vitrine with a matador; passing over a portrait of Bill Clinton, seashells, or delicate multi-colored figures made out of glass and porcelain. Unexpected encounters between that which we already knew−and because of which we can perceive−however provoking an extreme tension, product of the regrouping−and reactivation−of “vulgar” elements and situations. An accumulation and overlapping of shapes, bereft of their original sense, in their new disposition becoming of difficult translation for anyone lacking the
“sentimental” information necessary to be understood. As a product of these− fortunate−appropriations of a revised tradition, Adrià Julià’s images could be described as landscapes,−mechanically− inhabited by individuals, grimaces and noises; like that−almost sculptural−game, with dead things. A precise archeological reconstruction of silences, of suspended instants whereto adapt fragments of memory and recollections, that arise from desire, intention and project, to construct a past wherefrom to affront the present. A past all too often edified over those “familiar” elements that are nonetheless fi nally strange.
Through a passionless revision of these characters’ staged tales−already deprived of any meaning after a series of “translations” used in the transmission of the original information−Adrià Julià’s images enable new zones of confl ict; spaces as ecosystems, atypically disorderly, overacted. And it will be precisely in those non-habitual places, constructed after a succession of “displacements of the relations between the significant, imaginative and narrative functions that conform a reality,” wherefrom it just may be possible to produce new symbolic configurations of common territory, unexpected exchanges, and incidental encounters−constants.
Beatriz Herráez
"Truc Trang Walls / Formas De Matar El Tiempo"
Voices, at times familiar, at times strange; clear and direct statements, followed by indecipherable interchanges; repetitive noises and complete absence of sound; boisterous silences and mechanical melodies; laughter, shouting, explanations, mumblings...; these audio fragments structure Adrià Julià’s pieces. Installations, videos, photographs and text, pierced by the sound−and absence thereof−they investigate, and revise, notions such as cultural identity and its translation into disparate contexts and tenses−often confronted.
Projects initiated with the study−and recognition−of values, beliefs and customs belonging to an inherited tradition, to all of them, through rereading their singular forms and strongly signified elements. A revision initiated with the prolonged “interruption” of customary protocols in the transmission of information and, particularly, of those regulated by pacts and agreements established around strategies of mutual recognition. A way of proceeding− reserved−limited to observing, registering, re-framing and once again presenting to the viewer the elements and dynamics peculiar to distinct and accepted behavioral models. A way to operate−also silent−that will substantiate the fragility of many normalized reading procedures.
Since the main characters are near qualifi ed enragés, these stories, from their conception, are based on following and discreetly presenting “found” situations, where previously carefully catalogued information is−at once−revealed and obscured. An emigrant who, after 30 years of exile in the United States, returns triumphant to his place of origin, a little village in North Vietnam where he contrives and constructs a California-style home, a process in which both family members and neighbors participate. Interpreters rehearsing before the camera distinct scenes reminiscent of the Anglo-Saxon tradition of mumming, entailing small theatrical plays that take place in public spaces or that are set to unfold from home to home, where the central action is no less than the murder and further resurrection of the main character by way of a secret potion in a certain doctor’s possession. One of them, Mark, in addition to being an actor, researches this tradition, having had ample experience performing in the “murder mystery” series, a show exported to American military bases overseas−part of the strategic “moral support” to the troops−and underscoring values such as good and evil, punishment and guilt, the hero and the criminal. Representations that nevertheless, because of the show’s broken structure in and of itself, are likewise ruptures from customary military command, from their functionally strict logic. Fantasies surrounding the “home,” replicas of an ideal society, exported and adapted according to stereotypes, to be interpreted within an “inappropriate” context.
All of the characters in the works of Adrià Julià seem engrossed in their own secluded world, wherefrom they carry out precise choreographies before anomalous witnesses, unknown. Testimonies that will be necessarily adapted through every information transmission between those implied; each individual mise en scène, its register and posterior−secluded anew−presentation within the exhibition space. A “fragmented” documentation, of image and sound, resulting in a non-narrative structure, where landscapes, portraits and gestures befall. A material that, far from being understood as a trustworthy document−and in spite of the veracity of its contents−always manifests itself as an “approximate recreation” of the facts, of what happened, of an acted-out reality. Images where the familiar becomes strange−uncanny; but where, at the same time, a space of resistance and anxiety is generated. A mysterious situation, short of enigmatic really, product of a specific way of tying heterogeneous elements, opposed; something already not so “familiar” and taken for granted as is the encounter between a sewing machine and an umbrella, but that which comes given in the disposition of a window showcasing idolized objects, souvenirs and trophies; from a bronze bust of Lenin placed next to a reproduction of the Statue of Liberty and a carved out chess set; to an image of Vladimir Putin sharing vitrine with a matador; passing over a portrait of Bill Clinton, seashells, or delicate multi-colored figures made out of glass and porcelain. Unexpected encounters between that which we already knew−and because of which we can perceive−however provoking an extreme tension, product of the regrouping−and reactivation−of “vulgar” elements and situations. An accumulation and overlapping of shapes, bereft of their original sense, in their new disposition becoming of difficult translation for anyone lacking the
“sentimental” information necessary to be understood. As a product of these− fortunate−appropriations of a revised tradition, Adrià Julià’s images could be described as landscapes,−mechanically− inhabited by individuals, grimaces and noises; like that−almost sculptural−game, with dead things. A precise archeological reconstruction of silences, of suspended instants whereto adapt fragments of memory and recollections, that arise from desire, intention and project, to construct a past wherefrom to affront the present. A past all too often edified over those “familiar” elements that are nonetheless fi nally strange.
Through a passionless revision of these characters’ staged tales−already deprived of any meaning after a series of “translations” used in the transmission of the original information−Adrià Julià’s images enable new zones of confl ict; spaces as ecosystems, atypically disorderly, overacted. And it will be precisely in those non-habitual places, constructed after a succession of “displacements of the relations between the significant, imaginative and narrative functions that conform a reality,” wherefrom it just may be possible to produce new symbolic configurations of common territory, unexpected exchanges, and incidental encounters−constants.
Beatriz Herráez