arbor inversa/21st January/Photo-Video Exhibition/Galerie ZeitZone

Vernissage: Friday, 21st January 2011,  19:00

Roberto Equisoain: arbor inversa

Galerie ZeitZone, Adalbertstr. 79, 10997 Berlin Kreuzberg

January 21 – February 02, 2011

arbor inversa

Trees and rivers:

10 photographs of inverted trees with their crowns upside down.

3 video pieces of rivers whose water flows upwards, to its source.

1 fake painting with tree and river in a golden frame.

Then the Angel brought me to the center of the plane in which we were. There there was a tree whose roots were in the open air and the crown below and which had a lot of branches. Among the inferior branches of the crown, the first one was faith.

Hadewijch, Visions

Inverted trees appear in the Hebrew cabala and in Hindu and Christian iconography representing God’s wisdom and virtues. In 13th century, Hadewijch of Antwerp, in full ecstasy in the first of her visions, describes how an angel brings her to a garden in whose center is an inverted tree. It is the tree of the knowledge of God.

This exhibition consists of a series of portraits of mystic trees. They are absolutely normal trees, which only through a particular kind of attention are transformed into sacred ones. As Georges Perec suggests, a infraordinary reality leads to a extraordinary one when it is carefully observed. In this exhibition the mechanism that allows for this transformation is very simple: to turn them. Nevertheless, this simple operation implies something more than a mere perceptual change: it also indicates a rebel attitude: a basic and legitimate protest of reversing (and subverting) the real through searching its unforeseen, playful and critical dimensions.

This inversion of coordinates is a very simple action, but with far reaching consequences. Trying to mitigate an excessive scientism that abandons a human dimension in our perception and study of world, the philosopher Edmund Husserl in The Originary Ark, the ‘Earth,’ Does Not Move (1934) inverses the Copernican revolution: the earth does not turn around the sun, bur rather is again back under man’s feet as his essential geographical reference. In the photographs of this exhibition a new inversion literally takes place (the floor is up), this time with the aim of recovering something more intimately human: the supernatural, the irrational and aesthetic thinking: the relationship of man to the sacred.

But these are no more than words which, as mystics insist, don’t say anything; this text is actually superfluous.

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

arbor inversa

Árboles y ríos:

10 fotos de árboles invertidos, con la copa mirando hacia abajo.

3 vídeos de ríos cuya agua fluye hacia arriba, hacia el origen.

1 pintura falsa con río y árbol en marco dorado.

Entonces el Ángel me llevó al centro de la llanura donde estábamos. Había allí un árbol cuyas raíces estaban al aire y la copa abajo y que tenía muchas ramas. Entre las ramas inferiores, que eran las de la copa, la primera era la fe.

Hadewijch, Visiones

Los árboles invertidos aparecen en la cábala hebrea y en la iconografía religiosa india y cristiana, representando la sabiduría y cualidades de Dios. En el siglo XIII Hadewijch de Amberes, en pleno éxtasis, en la primera de sus visiones describe cómo un ángel la lleva a un jardín en cuyo centro se encuentra el árbol invertido. Es el árbol del conocimiento de Dios.

Esta exposición consiste en una serie de retratos de árboles místicos. Son árboles absolutamente normales, que sólo un determinado tipo de atención los convierte en sagrados. Como dice Georges Perec, una realidad infraordinaria conduce a lo extraordinario cuando se la observa con suficiente detenimiento. En esta exposición, lo que posibilita esa mirada transformada es un método muy sencillo: darles la vuelta. Pero esta operación tan simple conlleva algo más que un mero cambio perceptivo: también participa de una actidud contestataria; se trata de la protesta básica y legítima de invertir (y subvertir) lo real buscando lo inesperado, lo lúdico y lo crítico.

Esta inversión de las coordenadas es una acción simple, pero con unas consecuencias que se extienden mucho más allá. Intentando mitigar un excesivo cientificismo que abandona la dimensión humana en la percepción y estudio del mundo, el filósofo Edmund Husserl en El Arca originaria ‘Tierra’ no se mueve (1934) le da la vuelta a la revolución copernicana: la tierra no gira en torno al sol, sino que vuelve a estar bajo los pies del hombre como su referencia geográfica esencial. Con las fotos de esta exposición, literalmente, se da una vuelta más (el suelo está arriba) en este caso para recuperar algo todavía más esencialmente humano: lo sobrenatural, el pensamiento no racional y estético: la relación del hombre con lo sagrado.

Pero esto no son más que palabras que, como insisten los místicos, nada dicen; así que este texto en realidad sobra.

ZELIG/EQUISOAIN, 15th May, Photo-Video Exhibition

ROBERTO ZELIG

ROBERTO EQUISOAIN

Photo-Video Exhibition

Saturday 15th May, 20:00

Buntesdruckerei

Treppenhauskunst

Axel-Springer, 40, 3.OG

ROBERTO ZELIG

Photo

Chameleon Pictures

Site-specific pictures (scale 1:1), hanging in the very same space they’re showing. With this exhibition I want to call attention to the invisible, the unnoticed mundane. This pictures aim to pay attention to those small details which usually go unnoticed. Therefore these pictures do not add new images, but adapt themselves to existing reality and architecture, textures and colors. They are Chameleon Pictures.

Roberto Zelig  (Santiago de Chile, 1976) is a social quick-change artist who works in the field of site-specificity, mainly on the issue of multiple-personality, neurotic insecurity, as well as physical and mental mimicry.

ROBERTO EQUISOAIN

Video films

Series “Mujeres (Woman)”

Darling… I love you, 2003-2007, 5:20 min

Innocence, 2007, 2:58 min

All of us women are Joan of Arc, 2005, 7:00 min

Comedy 7, 2003, 2:37 min

The Insel, 2004, 7 min

Place, 2007, 4:48 min

Eternity,  2008, 6:45 min

Mistic of Love, 2010, 14 min

Photo

Gas stations

Night photographs of buildings of gas stations. The idea starts from a quotation from the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s: “I don’t want to own anything until I know I’ve found the place where me and things belong together. I’m not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it’s like. It’s like Tiffany’s.”  It represents the search of an imaginary paradise, the place that provides security – physical and mental security -, fictitious security, maybe fake security, but security after all, security more than enough for our own peace of mind.

Ramps

Series of photographs of interior ramps of car parks. It starts from a cinematographic quotation in Gilda: “I hate you so much, I think I’m going to die from it… darling.”  Hatred as a contradiction, as the beginning of passion. Maybe these photographs are the innards of an animal, a clean and cold animal, without viscosity, made of darkness and depth whose name, to put it without any kind of dramatism, is hatred.

Roberto Equisoain (Pamplona, 1973) is videoartist and photographer. He has lived and worked in Berlin since 1998, where he regularly exhibits his work.

He investigates the relationship between text and image within the frame of audiovisual recycling. His texts consist of reflections, puns, fragments of conversations or the reprocessing of other texts.  The images develop on the basis of reused film material which is manipulated or recontextualized. Both languages come into contact generating and creating new meanings in this way.

He also experiments with different forms of intimate documentary film, the exploration of urban space, with chance as a constructive element and with the poetic intervention in spaces.