There is something attractive and stimulating in the unfamiliar and anyplace “that is neither close or familiar immediately transforms into an incipient opportunity” (PHotoESPAÑA 2019).

This need to find a place, real or imaginary, where we create our own reality as a mirror of our expectations, is fundamental to the human condition. Even if imaginary, we can escape to this reality, feel safe and secure, and identify with our desires. The group exhibition OFFLAND An ideal place, at least explores the need to change our reality into something we can live with.

Without any disservice whatsoever to the other group exhibitors, Yorgos Yatromanolakis’ ‘The Splitting of the Chrysalis and the Slow Unfolding of the Wings (2018)’, as exhibited alone in the final room of this group exhibition, is an exhibition in itself.

In that context I allow a few smart phone images, the transcriptions from the Yatromanolakis’ work, and my own raw reaction – for want of more considered wording – to reveal the very nature of this work as an experience.

[Transcript – Gordon Sutherland, After the exhibition]

It is hard to put into words, or digest, ‘Yorgos Yatromanolakis’ ‘The Splitting of the Chrysalis and the Slow Unfolding of the Wings (2018)’ [Photographs and projection on loop (5 minutes)]. If it could be stated with words it might be a poem a short story or a chapter in a novel. But it isn’t, it’s a multimedia projection of [a series of] photographic images, music and field recordings which uses the tension and inversions in the images to bind the our internal workings – those that we don’t want to be seen on the outside and pull them to the surface through a quagmire of feelings and preconceived rubble. Perhaps the viewer arrives just to that point where these feelings are just about to break through the skin – which, if it still has some elasticity might accommodate, still, some “adjustments to the external world to meet our emotional needs” (OFFLAND An ideal place, at least 2019). and through which we Protection and isolation prevail but only just. [When seen from the photographic perspective or photocentric perspective] The recordings and music elevate the imagery (or vice versa) – for surely the raindrops night rain is falling towards the heavens like rising stars and the waves are like in reality volcanic eruptions that blast through [those] internal rocks formed at the dawning of time as each of us knows it.

Luckily, or fortunately, ‘The Splitting of the Chrysalis and the Slow Unfolding of the Wings (2018)’ is a projection, of image and a soundscape that defies the need to be put into words.

Arpiles, Madrid, Calle de Galileo, 16.06.19

Wrote in the Taberna de Garnica

Yorgos Yatromanolakis from ‘The Splitting of the Chrysalis and the Slow Unfolding of the Wings (2018)’

[Transcript – Legend, Print Exhibit, From the exhibition]

Introspection helps us to have a better understanding of ourselves. At the same time, it is a way of accepting what we don’t want to see on the outside, of transforming it into beneficial feelings. The inclination to adjust the external world to meet our emotional needs both protects and isolates us. Creating this particular world through images helps us to understand it and make it our own. This is what occurred to this artist, who finds himself having returned to his hometown on the island of Crete. Immersed in a harsh context, the night and its enigmas become his refuge.

[Transcript – Legend, Projection Video Loop, From the exhibition]

The artist’s unexpected return to his place of origin prompted a slow process of change and acceptance over the course of four years. It seemed like a step backwards on Yatromanolakis’ personal and professional trajectory and also involved confronting the traumatic past that he had long tried to escape. By making reality subjective to the point that it is reduced to sensations is an eloquent form of acceptance, of internally conceiving a kind of intimate exile that fills the void caused by pain and loss. In doing so, the images convert reality into a territory of fiction predominated by a kind of dream-like quality. The word nostalgia comes from the Greek work nostos (meaning homecoming) and algios (meaning suffering and pain).

[Endnote #1 – Gordon Sutherland]

I have purposely avoided providing a link to an online loop of the video projection. Interested viewers can do so, although the experience will be masked by the intervening filters of the internet connection, monitors, sound quality, and the environment surrounding the viewer.

There is life up to the point before you have experienced Yatromanolakis’ installation ‘The Splitting of the Chrysalis and the Slow Unfolding of the Wings (2018)’ [Photographs and projection on loop (5 minutes], there is the intensity of feeling from the looped images and music, then there is life afterwards.

Overall, the Group exhibition OFFLAND demonstrated – if anything – that not all gallery spaces need to be ‘professional’ [commercial?] for the images to have an impact, but as a whole the lighting in some of the galleries let this exhibition down. Due to reflections of both natural and artificial light, not all the images could be viewed effectively. This in no way undermined the content of the exhibitors’ work, but meant the viewer had to strive to find the angle which allowed some of the images to be studied.

The installations were more effectively presented, such as the work of Yatromanolakis discussed above, and the series ‘Bauen’ by Emilio Pemjean (PHotoESPAÑA 2019; Pemjean 2015).

In this installation, photographs are placed at the rear of box installations housing miniature scale models (maquettes) with the viewer kneeling on the floor to look into ‘spaces’ through miniature windows. The effect is one of looking into a real, life sized room, although the installation boxes are approximately 100 x 60 x 60 cm. The installation is accompanied by wall mounted printed images of the boxed ‘architecture’ as viewed through the windows.

[Endnote #2 – Gordon Sutherland]

Reflecting. Writing in my notebook at the Taberna de Garnica nearby the Centro Cultural Galileo.

Sources

Pemjean, E. (2015) Bauen. Available at https://www.emiliopemjean.com/Bauen [Accessed 16 June 2019]

PHotoESPAÑA (2019) OFFLAND An ideal place, at least. Available at http://www.phe.es/en/exhibition/group-offland-ideal-place-less/ [Accessed 16 June 2019]

Images

All images of the exhibition installations and prints by Gordon Sutherland during and after the visit to the Centro Cultural Galileo, Madrid on 16.06.2019