The second hermetic law of alchemy, as above so below, seeks to evidence a dialectical, choral and polyphonic exchange between various potential states that any entity can have. There are material, esoteric, and mesoteric semblances, echoes and mirrorings that resonate just as metaphors resonate with their subject of interest. Thousands of mutants and cyborgs reside between the upper and lower strata of existence and perception; products of fiction and fusion. This in-between is constituted by a simulacrum that seems like but is not, that disobeys any fixed anchorage in veracity. Either but neither. This seemingly paradoxical phenomenon is what generates a very peculiar dizziness: an existential horror towards the ambiguous, indeterminate, inverted, what it reminds us of but is not.
We are thus faced with what is called Postmodern Vertigo, a panic, a dislocation of the senses and of the very structure that sustains our reality. It is not a rejection of reality or its existence, nor a denial of our existence as subjects. It is, rather, a questioning of the substratum we understand as truth and of the adjacent simulacrum that develops in the mind while perceiving and grasping what surrounds us. In this attack of vertigo, of Sartrean nausea, everything seems a fabrication to fill a perceptual and structural void in a reality too perfect to be true. In this way we propose an unfolding, a transfer of strata, perception and vision; a vertigo that turns things upside down, generating an altered, mutated and strange familiarity.
Raquel Bautista Useros
Raquel has lived in Barcelona since she began her studies in Arts and Design at the Escola Massana, which was later complemented by those in Art History (Universitat de Barcelona). In these years she has developed an investigation practice that could be described as an epistemological drift: What is set in motion in the hand, the eye and the word when we are faced with the unknown? Her practice becomes a kind of reclamation for images and stories as the sole way to condense, for a second, the uncertainties that arise from any certainty about this world.
Her projects, intertwining the visual, the performative and the installation, have so far been shown in group exhibitions in Barcelona (Centrifugacions III, Escola Massana), Cergy (Por Au Feu 3, ENSAPC) and Moscow (Innovative Costumes of XXI Century, Bakhrushin Theater Museum). She has been invited to participate in the recently created Proyecto Pardito residence in the Alcudia Valley.
Meanwhile, she is developing editorial research projects under the collective Luftmeer, which was born as a space for the reflection of visual and graphic manifestations as "visible thought".
Alba Mayol Curci
Graduated in English Studies from the University of Barcelona and MA in Aesthetics and Theory of Contemporary Art from the Autonomous University of Barcelona - Fundació Joan Miró, she obtains a postgraduate degree in Visual Culture from the University of Barcelona, and studies photography at Central Saint Martins College and translation at the AUB.
She participates in workshops and seminars with Dora GarcÃa, Gayatri Spivak and others, on psychoanalysis, feminism and deconstruction. She begins to work with text, drawing and photography out of an interest in marginal practices and techniques, and against the grain of received academic discourses on literature and visuality. From this point she moves towards a link with political contexts, to explore the possibilities of approaching the concept of militancy or activism from the areas of subjectivity.
She exhibits and develops projects at Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Bòlit Center d’Art Contemporani, Can Felipa Arts Visuals, Eastern Bloc Montreal, Arts Santa Mònica, Museu Abelló, Sala d’Art Jove, Fabra i Coats, among others. She has simultaneously worked in the Cooperativa General Humana project, on the possibilities of dissecting theatre as a bourgeois genre, interrelating installation, action and performance with video-art. Projects have been presented at, among others, Hamaca-Museo Reina SofÃa, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Madrid Escena Contemporánea, Fokus Videoart Festival Copenhagen and Loop Videoart Festival. She has published writings in a number of specialized media such as A*Desk, Unlikely Journal for Creative Arts, Graf and L’Espill Universitat de València.
Margot Cuevas & Gabriel Virgilio Luciani
Using as a conceptual framework the affective-corporal relationships between humanity and technology, Gabriel and Margot’s practices revolve around and through the emotional structures of semiotics and its somatic articulations - such as shedding light on the invisible structures of biopolitics that govern us, making them visible through theory and poetry. Their approach is emphasized by atmospheres and affective climates, using these as an expository approach to reflect our generational, emotional and relational inquiries.
Exhibition
As above so below
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Raquel Baustista Useros & Alba Mayol Curci
October 16th - November 13th 2020
Curated by Margot Cuevas & Gabriel Virgilio Luciani
Tangent Projects gallery
Opening reception Friday, October 16th from 18:00.
Tangent Projects gallery
L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Catalonia, Europe
Opening reception Friday, October 16th from 18:00.
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