UNDER CONSTRUCTION
LAS COSAS (BODEGÓN FALAZ)
Ultimately, this exhibition is nothing but a contradiction. It means embracing technological advances while rebelling against their tyranny. Valuing the manual while relying on industrial machines. Contemplating the renunciation of the city once its trap has been discovered, while still clinging to the romanticized idea of it. Pursuing the search for the essential (or at least some form of truth) through a premeditated construction of false appearances. A deceptive still life that does not hide its mechanisms.
Hands, the manual, manipulation… these remind us that sight alone is not sufficient here, while also symbolizing the duality inherent in the city as a construct. They are essential tools during the process, yet a machine has replicated their gestures on a larger scale. The hand as creator, from above, also crowns Manojo, the main piece, which in turn recalls a claw arcade machine luring us in with the bait of a prize within reach that, in the end, slips away.
From flea markets and street stalls we have learned the power of juxtaposition—how accumulation and contamination make things more powerful, mysterious, and appealing, enriching and multiplying their meanings. “Las cosas” is also the title of that book by Georges Perec—a story from the 1960s that remains entirely relevant and engaging—where its dissatisfied protagonists are waiting for things, precisely, to change or someday be theirs. In our context, it may be nothing more than a yellowed paperback we stumble upon one Sunday at the flea market, sharing a stand with another hundred things: a Casio keyboard, a stuffed bird, a mannequin with a wig, an incomplete silverware set, a pair of leather shoes, a Nokia 3310, a Space Age lamp, leather mittens, an El Corte Inglés shopping bag, white figure skates, a pair of deafening cymbals…
It's hard to believe that certain elements—now decadent classics—were once symbols of modernity. Like us, they used to be cool, and today they might even be perceived as icons of resistance. In any case, there is still a palpable enjoyment and a need in the artist to live by looking, even as the structures of the tragicomedy seem increasingly unstable and the plot gasps for air. Everything has become expendable, precarious, and less surprising—starting with ourselves. And still (or perhaps because of that), we cannot look away. The city, still.
Amid the background noise, Miguel Ángel Tornero turns to instinct. He dissects, mixes, analyzes, and reassembles what he sees in a mechanism where play tempers the hum and allows him to regain control, understanding that the things we empower are, simply, things. And that is the final contradiction: that what concerns us here is not what truly matters.
RELATED ARTICLES: