Bunch (2024) is the title of the main work that makes up the second exhibition of Miguel Ángel Tornero (Baeza, 1978), in the Juan Silió Gallery from Madrid, where a large hand crowns an accumulation of disparate elements: stone columns, cardboard boxes, vegetables, a loaf of bread, which, fragmented and decontextualized, are juxtaposed and contaminated with each other in search of new meanings. A suggestive amalgam, halfway between collagethe still life, the sculpture and the diorama, composed of images capable of disrupting any expectations that rebel to claim their space and corporeality. “Let’s imagine that the images spoke and could decide about their own destiny,” the author proposes. “The majority would be happy to stay in their digital sphere, on the screens, but others would no longer settle, they would like to be objects.”
Thus, in The Things (fallacious still life), The image has ceased to be reproducible to a certain extent and has reclaimed its more emotional aura. Tornero accepts the challenge, shaping a series of carefully constructed scenarios that transport the visitor to strange and anarchic universes where fragments taken from the city coexist. Pieces that in their entirety invite us to be surrounded, to discover their two faces, their gears, their vulnerability. Built using modules, they could be folded and stored. The series alludes to the contradiction of calling images things, while in its title they resonate The things of George Perecthe novel that established the French writer in the mid-sixties, whose dissatisfied protagonists will only find the essence of being in the possession of objects; the early reflection of a society trivialized and surrendered to the consumer society.
Tornero’s things belong to the least attractive part of the city. They are unimportant, they are part of everyday life, the pulse of a neighborhood: El Corte Inglés bags, hanging clothes, hams, boxes of soft drinks, gloves and the wig of a mannequin. There are also human figures, shadows, a stuffed bird, a cat, a Nokia 3310 and Castellano shoes. It is the very agglomeration of elements that makes them enrich each other and also differentiate them within the whole. An organization where the idea of a trail resonates, where a hundred unimportant things coexist. “We never look at just one thing; “We always look at the relationship between things and ourselves,” said John Berger.
“At no time have I intended to create a portrait of Madrid,” the author highlights. “I consider myself a photographer in the way I relate to the world through the camera. In how I go out into the street attentive to what is happening, to something that awakens your senses.” The series represents a reconciliation with the city, with the gestures of the flâneur, after Burn Ramon and The night in Bucket, where the vegetal landscape structures the work. Tornero will resume the spirit of The Random Seriesfor which, almost compulsively, he photographed different cities. On this occasion, the images served as raw material for the elaboration of some collages carried out taking advantage of the error of an artificial intelligence program; a software who was not trained to sew images of different kinds.
The things (fallacious still life)is another step in his investigation into the role of images. A process in which intuition and free association play an important role and the limits of the photographic medium are expanded. “My work has a lot to do with what has been happening in recent years in the image scene; with the reconfiguration of what the photographic experience is, with the digital revolutions, with post-photography in general. It’s about my reaction to it,” says the author. “Almost never what I show is what I shoot,” he warns. It will be through the different types of manipulations and investigations that he incorporates into his artistic work that he will shape his pieces. On this occasion it makes use of photogrammetry and 3D scanning incorporated into mobile phones as a new registration format. “I am interested in using domestic techniques that in some way everyone has within their reach. Going from digital to manual, adopting technological advances without feeling dominated by them.”
The tattooed body of a diva: Altamira
The Andalusian artist will be present this year at the next edition of Paris Photowhich returns to the Grand Palais between November 7 and 10. It will be presented by the Juan Silió Gallery within the sector Emergence. Curated by Anna Planas, artistic director of the fair, it will present 23 individual exhibitions that cover the different experimental proposals of a new generation of artists—among them those of another Spaniard, Jon Gorospe, represented by the Cámara Oscura gallery. Turner presents Rockstar, a project created specifically for the Altamira Museum. “It has to do with the term itself, “rock star.” Altamira presents herself as a diva, but also as a temple or tattooed body, as could be that of Keith Richards”, explains the author. Again, by using the collage and the incorporation of flashthe author will inspect and reinterpret the cave in search of new forms. “I wanted to see what that body tattooed thousands of years ago tells us. Observe it as a palimpsest where the first forms of art are found. A living myth that continues to generate new meanings,” adds the author. “A cave is a hard place, a good place to rethink the concept of beauty. A strange land for man, where one enters by accident, and one sees the bowels of the earth. From its grotesque darkness, capricious and extravagant forms emerge that, however, bring us closer to the sublime. I set out to build a new set with all the elements that constitute it. Its surfaces, and volumes, and also its mysteries and codes yet to be deciphered.”
The Things (fallacious still life). Miguel Ángel Tornero. Juan Silió Gallery. Madrid. Until November 8.
