Colecciones de arte

Barcelona Pavillon II, 1988/1998

DESCRIPTION

In these images of the Barcelona Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe, taken between 1988 and 1998, in other words, both before and after the restoration of the building that represented Germany in the 1929 World Fair in Barcelona, the height above the floor and the depth of the image are determined by a specific installation. In addition to the purely formal elements shaping this installation -large monochrome panels, the height of the ceiling, the dimensions of the space- this idea of installing monuments of the recent past has to do with an invitation to live it in the present, to bring it up to date through the effort of an artist who works as a medium with the past.

Despite their evident similarity, the two images of the Pavilion are radically different regarding image conception. In the earlier work Pavillion I, with an angle rendering the columns prominent stanchions, the entire image is filled with the dynamic dance of perspective, while this Pavillon II seems to offer a view of emptiness, the centre of the image located as it is in an uninhabited area. Despite this, when placed side by side, both images have the same compositional structure: a centre of gravity off to the right, where the forced perspective of the picture window quickly leads to the back of the image.

The proportions of the ground, ceiling and wall are also similar, the line of pavement dividing the image in two.

In his small paintings of planes of colour, in his reckless and intense photographs of modern buildings and in his major installations of architectural colour and, although less blatantly, in his epidermal bronze reliefs, Günter Förg embraces a single theme: the coexistence of history's disasters and the ever modernised splendour of art, the contrast -which he wishes to temper- between the ruins of modernity and the auto-regenerative capacity of artistic activity. The installations in which the artist juxtaposes large planes of colour alongside photographs of modern ruins do not tip the scale toward the melancholy mood, as perhaps they did in some of his shots of the restored Dessau Bauhaus, but instead they address a coexistence that is current, a salvation in renovated energy. F. J. S. M.