Antoni Muntadas

Velan centro d’arte contemporanea, Turin
Through February 16

On entering the Velan Gallery, visitors immediately find themselves before a video called Portrait projected onto the wall opposite the gallery entrance. The still image shows only the hands of an unknown speaker gesticulating as he talks: his repetitive movements, captured in slow motion, makes his gestures seem suspended in time and space.

As a result the movements become more eloquent than words and allude to the vast repertoire of conventional signs that so characterize the world of business meetings. In fact this theme is not only found in Portrait but in the entire exhibition, aptly named Meetings Here Catalonian artist Antoni Muntadas offers us a new chapter in his art, which has always been focused on complex issues, this time the often artificial world of business. The language of gesture is a typical part of company management. Alongside this, however, the artist draws our attention to other characteristic elements of the business world, such as meetings interpreted as decision-making moments, highpoints in intricate marketing strategies, financing, and typical topics from.

All of these elements are emphasized by the repetitiveness with which they are presented in the various works on show. For example, some screen prints and a light box, which are linked not only by the theme of the exhibition, but also by the use of color; an intense blue background on which cut-out figures and scenes are highlighted by their white outlines. Such works emanate a very strong visual effect. In another piece for example, a group of people is sitting around a table examining various documents, the desks are cluttered with diaries, faxes, and telephones, and managers argue animatedly in front of their computer screens. Yet the whole scene is observed from above lending it an almost unrecognizable appearance.

What Muntadas shows us is the frenzied chaos which characterizes our working lives today; dominated by the speed of communication and the fragmentation of messages, which are almost always aimed at penetrating the subliminal dimension. Muntadas seems to be hinting at the need for reflection on the depletion of cultural models, which are being replaced by the standardized, empty ones mass media publicity.




Tiziana Conti
Translation by Anna Clarkson