àngels barcelona

Hèrcules espectacularitzant-se, 2007

Impresión digital
180 x 229 cm. Ed 3.
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The project, using the genre of the self portrait as a pretext, casts a very critical gaze on the position of the author in order to remove it from the system in which he himself—or any other artist—cannot seem to escape.

With caustic sincerity and a healthy dose of (self)irony our “Hercules” confronts an artworld—rather, any world of cultural production—characterized by the spectacle, by a society which forces the artworld's absorption into the economic and historiographic systems to which it is closely tied. With the cultural and political action of art reduced to mere, deactivated, representation, the space of art has stopped being the public space par excellence and has become one of the fundamental scenarios for the consolidation and expansion of the system.

The project is composed of three pieces realized in very different media and as it is characteristic of the artist's work, it negates any limiting notion of style. It includes a photographic piece, Hercules spectacularizing himself, which portrays the artificial production of the “Hero” in our societies; the performance, Public Hercules, throughout the duration of the opening (the material generated from this piece will then be exhibited also). The third work is Hercules (A self portrait losing economic value and gaining cultural capital) which provides the title for the show and is it's central element to the project. Hercules is a work of art and, at the same time, a legal contract. Directed to the collector, this work guarantees the initiation of a process that will bring about its complete depreciation in terms of its exchange value, while at the same time it is reevaluated as a cultural product.

Hercules spectacularizing himself / Hèrcules espectacularitzant-se (2006-07) Impresión digital de una transparencia de 4x5‘‘. 180 x 229 cm.