Fundación Telefónica presents Casa de Humo by Javier Vallhonrat, a reflection on the concept of doubt. It offers a journey through open narrative spaces consisting of four video installations and four photographic series, all in dialogue with each other.
The installations are formed by the reading of these narrative spaces. This in turn creates a model of relating to reality with the languages that allow us to experience and construct it. Through their viewer experience at Casa de Humo, the visitor can relate with the artistic object. Indeed, the ultimate goal of Javier Vallhonrat is to create something moving for viewers.
The pieces in the exhibit form a common temporary territory and invite viewers to experience them through their mobility. The goal is to create within the viewer a sensation of doubt, vertigo, frustration, or lack of resolution, so that finally this experience can open him/her up to integrating various choices, even antagonistic and contradictory ones.
For Vallhonrat, Casa de Humo is articulated through the dialectic of two languages: that of the video installations and that of still photography. The movement of the four video installations with screens in pairs, “Vuelvo a ti”, “Gabriel”, “Casa de Humo” and “Rooming in” develop paradoxically the concepts of spontaneity and predictability, anticipation and frustration. The stillness offered by the four homonym photographic series broadens even further the possibility of perceiving all that can be communicated, such as the empty spaces produced in all communication processes. In fact, according to the author, “visual communication increases these empty spaces exponentially.” Finally, this dialectic game simultaneously constructs an insatiable narrative expectation, while the absurd, doubt, vertigo, irony, abstraction, discontinuity and ambiguity prevent the stiffness of a closed narration.
Casa de Humo is an exhibit geared at achieving an emotional temperature in the visitor as he/she relates to the work. It dissuades him/her from trying to find stability in the narrative, and in its place, offers something temporary for which no solution has been found. Thus, the exhibit deliberately presents suspended narratives in the format of photographic sequence, with the possibility of defining or closing these spaces constantly postponed.
The key behind the pieces in this exhibit is the interrelation of space and time shown through light. As the artist puts it, “The representations of architectural spaces, whether photographed or not, always propel me to master memory, emotions and the subconscious.
JAVIER VALLHONRAT AND ARTWORK AS EMOTIONAL OBJECT
Javier Vallhonrat (Madrid, 1953) says that according to logic and timeframes, the National Award in Photography should not have gone to him four years ago. This meant official recognition of an intense and innovative career, one with a strong presence in current art with his constant pushing towards interdisciplinary borders and constant quest with forms and concepts. His work is a masterful combination of experimentation, research of the medium and creative sensibility. Javier Vallhonrat’s creative itinerary consists of precise concepts, like successive conductor wires in a constantly expanding search to convert the piece of art into a seductive and emotional object, as evidenced in his series “El Espacio Poseído”.
Javier Vallhonrat studied painting at the Superior School of Fine Art of San Fernando, Madrid, but photography is finally the creative path that he chooses. Recipient of Spain’s National Award for Photography in 1995, his work in the fields of fashion and publicity have brought international attention to his innovative and highly personal style. He has created different series of work; first about the human body, with special interest in its relationship to space; and later, about architecture, with models of homes and reconstructed romantic landscapes through works of engineering. His art has been exhibited in L.A. Galerie (Frankfurt), Hamiltons (London), Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin (Paris) and Galería Helga de Alvear (Madrid).
