Log (automimesis), 2013

In the display space, almost in the dark, we find placed in the floor something that is the only element illuminated, whose light is not very clear if comes from somewhere in the room, or from the object itself. As you approximate it seems that what you have in front of you is a log, or maybe a kind of image of a log, perhaps both, because you can perceive volume and a slight vibration in its surface that is well-defined but also shows a sort of pixilation.

The installation Log (automímesis) is the development of a research line started in 2005, in which the reflection about image is the core. It began with a simple gesture: to put a series of printed pictures in the same place they show. In the final images obtained through this work methodology we can identify something strange, something disturbs us and make us questioning. It is a feeling we can describe with difficulty, like seeing something we have seen before, or in this specific case something that replaces what we must be seeing. Photography, pulled out of its context and placed on the location it has been taken is inquired, transformed, revealing us different aspects hidden until that moment as a result of the friction between representation and that represented.

In subsequent works other factors come into play extending the implications a manipulation of these characteristics can have. First by including different elements of human manufacture, which show how their identity become blurred, facing us up with the mechanisms used when we conceptualize and operate with language. Later using light image in the form of photographs or videos. In Log (automimesis), we can experience a similar sensation than in previous pieces but through something we can define now as “saturation” instead of “occultation”, an effect that is the product of transforming persons and objects by the action of the light of their own images.

Therefore, these works try to make best use of the multiple possibilities of combination of different visual representation types and techniques, studying in depth what kind of effects can be obtained. This research line consists in the exploration of all variants of this visual strategy, a procedure quite simple in origin that has been gaining in complexity while the production of the different pieces progressed. The installation I present is its subsequent development, and tries to go further into the reflection about representation, media, image and technology.