PERRO Project - Javier Galán

PERRO

Tallin(Estonia) – 2019 March

Technical Sheet

-Date:

2019 March

-Location:

Hobusepea Gallery in Tallin (Estonia)

-Artists:

Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet (“Data Shop”, “Money Cascade”), Vicente Vázquez & Usue Arrieta (“The Age of Fiction”, “As near as zero as one pleases”), Néstor Lizalde (“PII”), Félix Luque & Íñigo Bilbao (“Memory Lane”), Javi Álvarez (“El Mundo un Molde”), OPN Studio (“Tracker”), Jaime de los Ríos (“wPortraits”) and Fermín Serrano (“It is not enough”)

-Sponsorships:

Mecenas, Almigor, Junta de Arte

On 5th July, 1993, the cartoonist Peter Steiner published a cartoon in the New York Times where two dogs appeared in front of a computer. One said to the other: “On the Internet, nobody knows you´re a dog”. That way he formally portrayed the internet identity, which is the projection of what I show so that others form the image I want of me. My self in a third state, that is to say: Me, the first, what others see in me, the second, what I let them see in internet, the third.

For a start no one has illnesses on internet, one is not tired, and most probably you have a magnificent aspect and with a little imagination you can be very rich, life in internet allows you to be what you always wanted and in real life you are not. Therefore, we fabricate the ideal projections of ourselves with the safeguard that if something goes wrong; we can always die to start over again.

Peter Steiner’s comic strip for the New York Times (1993)

Of course if we manifest ourselves as perfect beings that means we are not honest with others and neither with ourselves in the real world, therefore it is very suspicious that, even knowing that all this normally occurs on internet, this space is proffered as one from where we can project and improve the democracy of our life: Declare yourself on forums! or Shop from home! or Vote from your seat! One is not more democratic because you can hire sensations like politics, pornography or online banking without being seen, but rather due to imbuing ethics to a procedure that has none. Cohabitating in internet does not necessarily mean coexisting in internet that is why the rules are not at all clear.

The activist, the net.artist, the tax evader, the pornography addict, paramilitary groups, islamists, the neo-Nazi, the CIA, the real estate developer, the Vatican, students, immigrants or Minsters, all of us have the possibility of establishing bonds that would not be possible in our physical world and that need constant rereading. If instead of generating coexistence we just share a dry and barren space we would be projecting, or drawing if you like, a convenient space or “self-on-internet”, for a third space where crimes are not purged, everything has a previously known end, and which of course is so false as the made to measure suit we are wearing in front of others. A “self” marked by the view on a postcard which is always spring, mountains with a snowy peak, green fields and where people have a standard white-american appearance.

The artists appearing in this project are under 35 years, and in the opinion of the curator they stand out not only for their very personal artistic style and aesthetic consistency, but also for having managed to maintain a balanced capacity even humanistic analysis and when the ground beneath their feet has not stopped shaking during the last decade.

The latter is important, because the equation proposed in this exhibition equires so. The first unknown to clear is that it had to be a technique of social portrait of the nineteenth century which illustrate a collective behavior the XXI century based on hipertextualized appearances. At the present time we are none without appearing in search engines, not to mention without having a blog of opinion or at least a more or less developed web page, let’s say that at least appearing under the umbrella of one of those possibilities. And we are anyone because if they are going to get you, they will do on the network.

Our unknown is squared virtue of the work entitled “Nighthawks” of the US artist Hopper, which portrays a coffee shop set on a dark street. With large windows, lit from the inside with electricity. Inside I can see a well-dressed couple staring. Another man is sitting on the bar turning his back to me and neither does an apparent gesture of willing to communicate with anyone, and finally there is a waiter who looks at the dark outside to the street, thinking, perhaps, will remain a few hours of work at that hole.

Nighthawks (1942). Painting from the american painter Edward Hopper.

Therefore as things are, if the twentieth century illuminated the death of God, the the XXI century returns him to life through the incomprehensible network, infinite, the heaven above our heads, the renewal of lost faith. But certainly we are still under the fluorescent light Hopper with the proviso that the uncertain infinite is again in our side. Suited to all, man continued and will continue his same guidelines: believe until the end, even if it is based on lying to ourselves, saying that another world, which is not this one, is way much better.

PERRO is an exhibition proposal curated of Spanish artists that reflect the identities in the internet. Curated by Javier Galán, it had its first presentation and display at the Hobusepea Gallery in Tallin (Estonia) and it presents a collection of artworks from the following artists: