Fantasy Island
Wednesday, 19 March 2014 18:20
Written by Luis A. Orozco
Fantasy Island is a project developed by Adela Goldbard comprising practices such as photography -a discipline in which Goldbard has excelled for many years- as well as documentary research and building sets with quintessentially cinematographic style and rigor.
The focus of this research is provided by the construction of scenes –in life-size locations- characterized by two main features: Firstly, its origin or model is a specific fact, a sign of our time, which involves accidents with identified flying objects, whose crew members -not everyone- have been important figures in our country’s current political world, fascinated and described by their enormous capacity as regards the fantasy world. Secondly, the aesthetics with which the artist recreates these scenes -which are extremely mysterious- has to do with a tradition of reconstruction, on the basis of a puppet, ghost news or popular myths, a practice for which Mexicans are famous all over the world.
The games of recreation and representation developed in this multidisciplinary project are accompanied by a documentary space that reflects the painful genealogy of events recreated in large format photographs (the mark of the artist) that reminds us of our recent history, which, however, appears to have been erased by smokescreens created by the same fire that consumed the objects and actors mentioned earlier.
Fantasy Island is a project developed by Adela Goldbard comprising practices such as photography -a discipline in which Goldbard has excelled for many years- as well as documentary research and building sets with quintessentially cinematographic style and rigor.
The focus of this research is provided by the construction of scenes –in life-size locations- characterized by two main features: Firstly, its origin or model is a specific fact, a sign of our time, which involves accidents with identified flying objects, whose crew members -not everyone- have been important figures in our country’s current political world, fascinated and described by their enormous capacity as regards the fantasy world. Secondly, the aesthetics with which the artist recreates these scenes -which are extremely mysterious- has to do with a tradition of reconstruction, on the basis of a puppet, ghost news or popular myths, a practice for which Mexicans are famous all over the world.
The games of recreation and representation developed in this multidisciplinary project are accompanied by a documentary space that reflects the painful genealogy of events recreated in large format photographs (the mark of the artist) that reminds us of our recent history, which, however, appears to have been erased by smokescreens created by the same fire that consumed the objects and actors mentioned earlier.