FONS AUDIO #46
Rogelio López Cuenca
‘A dotted line.’ That’s how Rogelio López Cuenca (Nerja, 1959) describes the subtle but effective disruption of the conceptual order that his works bring about. The Andalusian artist likes to mention his origins as an experimental poet precisely because many of his works use language as a catalyst of reactions, as a vehicle that can lead to paradox: visual devices and linguistic acrobatics that invite reflection, very often of a political nature.
The juxtaposition of elements from seemingly unrelated spheres and the use of formal aspects of advertising feature in these early works from the late seventies, with which López Cuenca officially landed in the visual arts world after being met with ‘uniform, total and absolute rejection’ in the world of literature.
In FONS ÀUDIO #46, López Cuenca looks back at some of the key aspects that led to the creation of three works now in the MACBA Collection: ‘No (W) here Postcards’ (1998), ‘Beaux Arts’ (1992), and ‘Musée Élan’ (1989). He also describes that transition from literature to artistic practice, to a different way of developing his conceptual, semantic, and, in part, purely pop culture interests.
Modified logos, fossil metaphors, utopian traffic signs, comments on format, reflections on the implications of the medium and on art’s capacity to generate small breaks in the everyday life of those who receive it. To ‘slow down the interpretation of signs,’ as he puts it.
His membership of the Agustín Parejo School artists’ collective, along with many others who were disillusioned with the endemic stagnation of their own political affiliation, is another example of his interest in mixing politics and poetry and in exploring what Gerard Genette calls ‘paratexts’: ‘those liminal devices and conventions, both within and outside the book, that form part of the complex mediation between book, author, publisher, and reader…’
Andrea Fraser
In FONS ÀUDIO #47, Andrea Fraser comments the work 'Little Frank and His Carp', in the MACBA Collection, which registered her performance in the atrium of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 2001. Recorded by five hidden cameras, 'Little Frank and His Carp' follows the artist’s movements from different angles and shows the changes in attitude and emotion generated by the male voice of the audio guide.
Cildo Meireles
Meireles has the ability to materialise philosophical ideas through small gestures and a great economy of means. His processes are simple, owing to his propensity to not complicate things. In FONS ÀUDIO #45 Cildo Meireles talks about his works in the MACBA Collection.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Rogelio López Cuenca that we were unable to include the first time around.
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.
(…what military music is to music)
This project by Asier Mendizabal runs through hymns, marches, choirs and "charanga", revealing unexpected results and relationships.