In this installation, Jorge de la Garza concentrates several of the interests that have defined his body of work: the compilation and use of images from different sources, and the exploration of the theoretical postulates of Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas specified in his exhibition methodology through open s in order to read the images that have been created over time.
Unlike his other projects, which are based on images from second-hand books, in this piece all the visual elements are files of digital origin. Starting from the book 'Stories of Evil' (1995) by Bernard Sichere, De la Garza reviewed various definitions of evil from ancient Greece and the Renaissance, among other historical periods, and began to search for paintings or engravings of various styles that address the subject in order to create a visual panorama that would show the impossibility of representing evil, horror, and violence.
In the search, mythological characters emerged, such as Prometheus, Adam and Eve, among others, which were later erased along with some scenes to delve into the problems of representation. That is, by means of Photoshop, as stated in the title of the piece, the artist disappeared, fragmented and obscured certain elements of the original images to emphasize his doubts about the representation of evil. Although its theme may correspond to a specific event of Western culture, its forms of appearance can cast doubt on what memory recalls of history or its events.
In this way, De la Garza takes up the idea of Aby Warburg in his Mnemosyne Atlas to create a kind of constellation made up of different fragments of images that can be understood in their parts and in their entirety. To achieve this, the piece is presented with a table covered by images as similar as they are different from each other, which the viewer can place in a projector at will, thus giving meaning to the infinite configurations that can be developed from their selection and projection.
For its part, in addition to being a device that is an essential part of the piece, the projector and its technical qualities allow us to think about the notion of the phantasmagoria of the image. While it allows the forms printed on the acetate to be seen through light, what can be seen is beyond the images themselves, that is, in the senses that we grant them as a result of their similarities or differences. Although the title of the piece is an allusion to the manipulation that De la Garza does with the images, the acts of disappearing, showing, fragmenting and obscuring can also be thought of in relation to the ways in which we see and relate to his images and their representations.
AC, September 2020.
References:
Direct conversation with the artist.
