ORDEAL
Alegría y Piñero
From 25 Feb to 25 Apr 2014
CATALOGUE
In ‘Prueba de fuego’ (Ordeal), the axis around which the artists rotate is the work of the 15th century ‘La prueba de fuego de la condesa ante el emperador Oton III’ (The ordeal of the countess before Emperor Otto III) by the Flemish artist Dieric Bouts: the painter presents to us a scene that is apparently serene in which the characters maintain an emotionless and inexpressive attitude. Nevertheless, when we view the painting more closely, we see that the woman who is on her knees in the centre, who has the most serene face, has a hot iron bar in her hand: the stillness then becomes a contained expression, a suppressed movement that artists try to reveal through a process of exhausting the image.
Each work in this series is in itself an exercise, a test to which the image is subjected: the naked figure is duplicated, deformed, broken until it loses its centre, is on its knees and unfolded. Its face drawn 480 times, loses its silence and finds its expression in the margin of error of repetition. The optical device then dilates, contracts and fragments the latent time of the representation until revealing to us that which the image was trying to hide: its ghost expression.
The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition contains texts by Vítor Borrego "La Sustitución en el sacrifico. Entre la mirada y lo que es visto" (Substitution in sacrifice.Between a look and what is seen)
GAlLERY
TAGS
Alegría Castillo Roses (Córdoba, 1985)
José Antonio Sánchez Piñero (Cádiz, 1975)
Alegría Castillo Roses and José Antonio Sánchez Piñero, both graduates in Fine Arts from the University of Granada, began their artistic partnership in 2009 under the name Alegría y Piñero with the creation of the monument Homenaje a José Val del Omar.This project, based on the idea of sculpture as a camera obscura, as a viewing machine, was the starting point. Since then that have continued to work together on a single shared vision based on experimentation using essentially sculpture-related processes, with devices from the early days of film and photography, creating optical mechanisms that function as a means of producing and interpreting images.
Their research has led them down two development paths that have been rolled out in parallel: on the one hand, creating their own artistic project whose pieces have been selected for and obtained awards in various competitions, most notably the Flora y Fauna exhibition and art conferences such as Scarpia, Distopías desencajadas and DESENCAJA of the I.A.J., to name just a few. On the other hand, their work has also led to teaching workshops and giving seminars on Creación artística y artilugios ópticos (“Artistic creation and optical devices”) where, in addition to continuing their research, they have found a space to share their intuitions and discoveries in this field.
