Toni Calderón
The Valencian artist based in Manchester, Ima Picó, broadened her career horizons and gained in experience when working in several residences around the world. Her visual imagery is not just consequence of the appropriation of some specific western urban symbols related to mass communication and media. Ima Picó has been artist-in-residence in Japan, Estonia, Finland, Mexico, Northern Ireland, England and Germany, and these experiences have provided her with an understanding of what Nelson Goodman consider as ways of making the world. She is a dynamic artist who combines her own practice with the coordination of a number of artistic national and international events. This ongoing relationship with several visual artists and global digital environments has a subtle but persistent influence on her work. Ima Picó is an artist of our time, to be more precise, she extracts elements from her multiple experiences that define more accurately the complex visual world we live in. An interest that oscillates between pure aesthetic with a delicate feminine connotation, which is one motivation in her artistic production, and cold, understood as not being part of a plot, a setting or a defined context. Her images and signs are in apparent contradiction, fluctuating between the undisruptive aesthetic attractiveness and the manifested denunciation that appears in many of her works. A dichotomy between discourse and form, that makes its interpretation complex and disturbing.
Throughout the last years, as a critic of art, I had the fortune to observe the working practice of one of our most international artists and to collaborate with her in the coordination of several events and exhibitions. It is admirable to see how her artwork evolves without losing her capacity to synthesise. It is evident that her work is developing towards an increasingly digitisation of the image. The use of light boxes or vinyl is the result of her exploration on new supports. Nevertheless, it is more interesting to observe the progression of the artist from creating individual artworks, in the conventional format, to creating large-scale and complex compositions that cover extensive surfaces. I remember when proposing this project, she considered from the start the idea of "environment", understood as an idea within an entire context, not a mere exhibition in a certain inoffensive space. The fact that the artwork is part of a whole makes it more attractive, because the viewer is introduced into a place that differs from the detached space of a conventional exhibition space. The view and the connection between the artwork and the observer are different. It is not the same to contemplate an image from the distance, than to be in the space where this image is developing and, therefore, where there is a relationship with the spectator. This matter is an element that determines the perception of the artwork.
Recently, the employment of vinyl links her to a new generation of urban artists who have replaced the aerosol for digital media. The creative process loses its freshness to become an elaborated study in the computer. Working on mural-based form, makes her more concerned on the aesthetic aspects in detriment to the concept, which is at this point more subtle. When she started using digital tools, her work was created with simple computer methodologies, as she was more concerned about the realism of the images than the technology itself. Now, in this exhibition or rather this intervention, the figures, signs and ideas have been simplified considerably in the conceptual aspects but not in the visuals.
When making a theoretical analysis of her work we find obvious references to the pop art in the 60s. Ima, as these predecessor artists, includes texts, signs and in particular, elements taken from the popular culture. It is true that all the artists borrowing concepts from the popular culture have a relation with this tendency. However, there is a link between pop art and the work of Ima Picó. In both cases, there is a focus on the incorporation of everyday elements in the artistic realm with an interest of functional detachment. In the work of Ima Picó, however, this process is not that clear and it is evident that the aims are slightly different. Although she includes vignettes, comic like texts, abstraction of forms and incorporation of signs from computer environments, she demonstrates an interest in using an extensive iconography in conjunction with the incorporation of photographic elements. There is a clear symbiosis between the real and the digital, understanding that we are already part of a whole. In an increasingly virtual environment where it is difficult to discern the real from the unreal, where the large-scale publicity is already a reality, she creates a framework of subtle appearance but full of interferences. Once again the communication is the key, the capacity that an artwork has of creating a dialogue between the subject and the observer. The reiteration of weak and non-relevant ideas is part of the past. We are already immersed in a moment where the real and the unreal are intertwined. Information and communication technologies have opened enormous possibilities and above all, we are aware that they are within our reach. At this stage is where artists like Ima Picó are capable of absorbing, defining and indicating, through signals, a language that provides us with an understanding, to a certain extent, of a part of our environment.
We live in an era when new iconographies and narratives related to the advancement of media technology, such as the Internet, encourage the creation of new visual languages capable of generating a new universe of sensations. Nowadays technology is not only an instrument used by artists to express their views about the world surrounding them. Today it is necessary to understand more the role of the new technologies, but above all, we have to realise that they are powerful tools of communication and global connection.
Toni Calderón. 2008
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