The illustrative production of Oskar Ranz (Pamplona, 1974) is sustained by the importance given to the process of producing the work, which in occasions he accompanies with videos of performances which comprise his intentions, entailing an authority of the creative act and of the artistic product itself. The key aspect is the technique that he uses and the process of his work until obtaining his ultimate work of art. Using collage/decollage, with scope for interesting mishaps, Ranz creates his works in different phases, which are physically and aesthetically amalgamated into a disarrayed final product.
Oskar Ranz. Proceso de trabajo/Work process
The self-portraits of Irene Andessner (Salzburg, Austria) reveal the paradox of the past in a speculated representation and through her works of appropriation; the biographies of women that she interprets are portraits of the present.
Irene Andessner Donne Illustri, 2003. DVD LOOP. 9´19´´
Donne Ilustri is to be found in a classic setting and the well known café Florian in Venice where the artist takes as a reference the series of oil portraits from the XIX century belonging to famous masculine characters such as Marco Polo, Tiziano and Goldini, installed in the “degli Uomini illustri” room in the San Marco square and she tackles them with a series of elaborated portraits through her own actions and transformations in ten Venetian women, amongst them the most famous composer of the city Barbara Strozzi, the most expensive courtesan Verónica Franco or the painter Rosalba Carriera.
Through the work of her cinematographic team and after the transformation process, of practically ritual characteristics, the artist persists with intellectual accuracy, she produces meticulous historical reconstructions and she scrupulously studies the biographies, that way she can acquire the personality of the character, turning into a witness of past times. However, her body turns into an instrument that does not only tell a story but also makes the past present and she also has an effect on space. From commencing the stylistic process of transformation, make up, hairstyles, wardrobe and theatrical scenery, the artist acts and interprets, so this process doesn’t just have an aesthetical element but it is also cognitively in key with the identification of other women.
Alonso Herraiz’s project (Seville, 1965), Chewing Gum Space Children e=√-1 is a reflection about the limits of science and the role it plays in relation to identity issues. His science fiction story projected in the past is endowed by thorough similarity alerting us towards the processes of showmanship given to us by the power of the agents.
Pablo Alonso Herraiz is an artist with plentiful interests in the world of the thought, from science to literature, these being major cultural references, Plato, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud or the marquis of Sade, to which the fantastic universe of children’s stories has to be added, a motive for inspiration that persists from his early stages. From 1996, the work of this multidiscipline artist represents a methodical investigation about human conditions, facets like the repression of our instincts, character disorders and the submersion into insanity.
Alonso Herráiz. Chewing Gun Space Childrens Project. 2004-2007
Last but not least the incorporation of recent works, “Flash Me” by Catalina Obrador (Majorca, 1977) supposes a more dramatic addition and completes the proposal with part of her Dictionary of Symbols that the artist has been accumulating over time and it came up as an idea for transcribing, to be able to abbreviate, a formulation to simplify the interpretation of her project and finally it ended up turning into the internal strategy of her work process. Her Dictionary of Symbols explores mysterious and sensual territories, full of elements that allude to the nature of the artist, her routine and existential conditionings, and what's more to a referential cultural world of Hebrew and Muslim religions that are produced from her plentiful trips around Egypt and Israel.
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