PELLECER
THE WEIGHTLESS OF
THE OTHER WORLD
2019
Martian Observations
By Alexia Tala
The idea of a multi planetary civilization when thinking about global
warming does not seem so absurd, but the notion of being able to do it
through the infinite wealth of a person plays between ego and pride.
Elon Musk wants to get to Mars first and offer us the possibility of
expanding our civilization but Gabriel Rodríguez, has advanced before
arriving through trance.
The paintings on display are the approach of that trip. The purpose
is to respond to human megalomania, which germinates especially in
euphoric minds to which the world can no longer exercise limits.
The privatization of the world out of the earth, the colonizing system is
projecting to fly into space and reach beyond the atmosphere to land on the red planet. Elon Musk is the one who leads the space race today to take man to live on Mars. His plan began when he discovered that NASA would not have sufficient resources. The bureaucratic barriers and the inefficient solution, to buy technology from Russia, made him want to realize the fantasy with his own means. SpaceX became the second of the private corporations whose purpose is the colonization of Mars, and which aims to bring man to space in a sustainable way.
The artist after a long preparation and therapy, rescues the relationship between the trip and the power of the unconscious. Through hypnosis, he traveled to reach the Martian surface and thus inhabit landscapes that he had previously painted from photographs. The fact that he has directed through repetitive painting exercises the appearance of his paintings in his lucid dreams, are not a coincidence, but rather the purpose that has governed the project. To make the paintings, it has been based on images published by NASA, which it has chromatically flattened and made out of the frame construction expanding to the wall and removing the painting from its bidimensional condition towards the space that contains it.
The preparation of the hypnotic journey began with various exercises
of lucid dreams and repetition to be able to keep the paintings in their unconscious and enter them into their dreams. Already in a state of hypnosis, he was able to cross them and face them and somehow inhabit them. In this process of building the images of space, the influences are mixed interchangeably from images of the media to others created by their unconscious that are mixed obtaining interesting hybrids, especially when it is closer to hallucination.
The use of different methods to produce these states in the processes of artistic creation has a long history in the history of art. Always consistent with their own material research around painting, they occupy the wall, as I said, beyond their margins forming spots. This is explicitly related to the ectoplasm he cites in his sketches, based on old photographs. The organic thing that leaves the body, is
referred to in previous works, is something that spreads. Hence, the presence of these characters that release their soul leaving the body makes so much sense when relating it to the painting and in turn with hypnosis states, that is where the two issues meet and the spreading of paint on the wall also refers to an organic matter. Deepack Ananth wrote about the framework as a way to create both a physical and metaphysical place to observe the work, and determine the context
of where it should be experienced (experienced).[1]
Rodríguez not only leaves the confines of the framework but also exceeds this definition, taking the experience to an intangible place and another level of consciousness.
In the assembly of the works in the room, we find other forms of tension with the nature and aesthetics of the painting. For example, in the literal allusion to the universe of advertising, through a painting on a billboard that indicates that the space race has been accompanied by an advertising career at the same time. The presence of models of houses for Mars ironic speculative eagerness about the territory and its value. The videos end with this same spirit, where the dimension of
human failure in its hunger for evolution of the species is highlighted by images of accidents in space missions.
The weightlessness of the Otherworld is the way to tell the mission pictorially. The paintings expose the travel record and seek to convey the trance, the limbo that conceived them. With its desolate esplanades, its aesthetic reminds us of the landscapes of romanticism. This perhaps because contemplation gives a kind of approach to the landscape that somehow protects it. “That is far from my destruction, only willing to look at me,” something like inhabiting them without touching them.
[1] (Hard, 1996: p.153)
Installation view at
Extra Gallery, Guatemala City
Early XX Century Mediums claim that a substance called Ectoplasm came out of their mouths, noses and ears during the sessions. This ectoplasm
was the materialization of the soul and came out of the body. Something similar happend to the paintings in these Project, the ectoplasm came
out of the canvas and grew on the wall.
As Elon Musk is offering to colonize Mars, some Japanese architects have already design some
houses for life on Mars. These billboard offers nothing but another billboard.
These images were taken from NASA publications.
These pictures of lakes on Mars looked photoshoped, so I decided to paint them plain and artifitial as they looked.
