Secrets hidden in broad daylight
In Lyle Rexer’s magisterial 2013 treatise The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography, the author follows the evolution of the “concrete art” movement. Therein, Rexer quotes the writings of the German theorist Gottfried Jäger, who wrote about “concrete photography”. According to Jäger, concrete photography followed a five-point set of criteria:
It does not depict the visible (like realistic or documentary photography).
It does not represent the non-visible (like staged, depictive photography).
It does not take recourse to views (like image-analytical, conceptual, demonstrative photography).
Instead it establishes visibility. It is only visible, the only-visible.
In this way it abandons its media character and gains object character.
As I was taking in Implicit, a new solo photography exhibition by Álvaro Pérez Mulas (at Instituto Cervantes, New Delhi), I was mindful of Jäger’s words, in particular the last proviso: that of the concrete photograph becoming the “only-visible”. What does this curious appellation imply? Let me explain: the genre of concrete photography was initially considered a subset of abstraction, but it is now regarded as something that can even be a polar opposite: abstraction can reduce a complex reality to an “ideal form” through what is visible while concretion “completes” or “solidifies” a vague concept; the idea behind the latter, therefore, is only visible.
To me, Mulas is a curious and potent mixture of both these approaches; Implicit provides us with quite a few examples. One of the most striking photographs is that of a large red door with a crooked latch. The colour is a loud and bloody red, draw- ing your attention immediately. The latch is slanted around 10-15 degrees from its intended place. Both these features, redness and crookedness, are a betrayal of any door’s purpose: to hide, to keep what is precious away from prying eyes. And yet, the selective reality of the photograph keeps us, the audience, from discovering what lies beyond that red door. This is what Mulas is trying to tell us about art and its thousand and one conceits: on a given day, there’s no telling which history is about to be displaced or even obliterated. All we know is that the taboo stories will be hidden in plain sight: like behind a big flashy red door.
The strategy of focusing on run-down buildings and their squalor has an environmental significance as well. When people move on from one building to another, the transition is not smooth: it is messy, unbearably loud and involves large, ugly-looking machines that sift through what Mulas calls “the sedi- ment that we leave in our absence”. Implicit captures buildings that are at least wildly outdated, if not broken outright. Abandoned lavatories lie side-by-side, like prisoners who have aged gracefully together. A snaking pipe’s shadow seems to upstage the object itself, hinting towards its current lack of utility. Prism-shaped hollows in a wall seem strangely malleable, as if they intend to open up and reveal a secret passage the moment you turn your back on them.
Mulas has, in the past, worked with comics, videos and even performance art. His father was a sculptor who taught young Mulas his first art lessons. “I was educated by an artist father, both at home and in the classroom,” Mulas explains. “So, for me, art became the natural means of expression. However, I am opposed to the traditional vision in which the artist chooses a field of work: sculpture in the case of my father Hipolito Perez Calvo. My approach is diametrically opposite. I believe that the medium should be adapted to the idea you want to convey.”
Mulas paid it forward by becoming a professor himself and more importantly, by not relegating his teaching duties to the backseat. To him, teaching is not separate from his artistic process. “I work as a teacher, which has been really good for my work, as these are two sides of the same coin for me. My visual work is influenced by my educational approaches, and these are, in turn, completely flooded by the creative process. So, when I talk about my work, I do not differentiate two fields of action. Surely there lies the origin of my interest in the perceptual system and its skewed interpretation based on vested interests; both to question it and to take advantage of it, to use it as a starting point.”
Implicit marks the artist’s second show at Instituto Cervantes. He has, up until this point, shown his work “in expanding circles” from his hometown Zamora, in Spain: Salamanca, Madrid, Ghent, Paris, Los Angeles, New York and of course, New Delhi. And on the evidence of Implicit, one sees his work growing in volume and prominence in the years to come.
Abstraction can reduce a complex reality to an “ideal form” through what is visible while concretion “completes” or “solidifies” a vague concept; the idea behind the latter, therefore, is only visible.
Implicit is on display at Instituto Cervantes till 23 August. Timings are as follows: Saturday and Sunday: 11:00 a.m. — 7:00 p.m. and Tuesday to Friday: 5:30 p.m. — 7:30 p.m.