FONS ÀUDIO #35
Patricia Dauder
‘The body of my work, composed of drawings, films, canvases, three-dimensional objects, and photographs, responds to an essentially visual investigation into the possibility of seeing and representing beyond the immediate setting, beyond the physical and objectual world. My creations are characterised by a marked procedural quality’.
Patricia Dauder (Barcelona, 1973) is a patient observer of reality and its phenomena. Like a metaphysical ethnographer, she embarks on long cycles of research that result in the creation of multidisciplinary creative cosmologies. For example, a study of the passing of time and the traces it leaves on our natural and emotional landscapes has given rise to a series of works related to remains, erosion, and ruins. They include the film ‘Sporadic’ (2009), the sculpture ‘Maqueta #1’ (2014) –which forms part of the MACBA Collection– and ‘Maqueta #2’ (2014), as well her current ongoing intervention in an abandoned lot in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, ‘Trabajos Subterráneos’ (2015 – in progress).
Travel also plays an important role in Dauder’s work. ‘Wanderlust’ is the German loanword that we use to refer to a strong desire or urge to roam and explore the world. In Dauder’s case, this desire is expressed in the form of imagined as well as physical journeys. ‘Les Maliens (A Script)’ (2006), is an animation film made up of a series of drawings that the artist made in her studio, based on her ideas of what she imagined Mali must be like.
It wasn’t until 2007 that Dauder managed to travel to the African country with a camera under her arm. There she filmed ‘Les Maliens (A Film)’ (2007), a 16 mm essay showing her real encounter with the place. Other works like ‘Garden Island’ (2012), Green Kauai (2012), Orange Kauai (2012) and ‘Plymouth’ (2011) also explore this dual, imagined-experienced aspect of travel.
These places, in turn, lead us to a motif that runs through Dauder’s entire body of work: her interest in nature. Dauder advocates a certain return to more direct and essential ways of relating to the natural environment. A plea that is reflected in her travels and in her chromatic choices, in her physical and artisan approach to materials (paper, graphite, cardboard, fabric, plaster, timber, air, soil), and in her determination to achieve seemingly neutral forms with which she creates a certain fiction of spontaneous natural generation, or ‘derealization’ as Teresa Blanch would say.
Dauder creates and destroys, draws and erases, and adds and deletes, to shape essential pieces that are abstract in appearance and, in their ambiguity, end up projecting multiple associations and iconographies in the spectator’s mind.
Matt Mullican
Through a series of practices designed to examine all the folds and psychological strata of the real, Matt Mullican circles around notions such as virtuality, cosmology, subjectivity, and the idea of a memory theatre. In FONS AUDIO #36 he tells us about life on the other side of the mirror, explains different ways of handling a corpse, and talks about the mind’s endless capacity to create imaginary or parallel worlds.
Daniela Ortiz
Daniela Ortiz and Xose Quiroga carry out artistic research and actions at points where colonial narratives collide with migration control systems and with the consensus that underpins the nation state. In Fons #34, Daniela talks about the duo’s working processes, about different ways of spreading hidden knowledge, and about the nomenclature of the colonial monuments that populate the city.