“Everything exists forever in the photographs of Xurxo Gómez-Chao, yet they point to the inconsistency of an existence as fragile as it is ephemeral.” (Manuel Olveira)
"Enigmas de lo efímero" seeks to offer a reflection on the evolution and cyclical return of creative models throughout the history of art.
"This is a project I have been developing since 2010, which first materialized in November 2013 with the creation of a sculptural element at the Museum of Fine Arts in A Coruña. The installation Xardín Interior opened a dialogue that I have been deconstructing over the past years, between the Classicism of Modern Art and the subjectivities of Contemporary Art." It is an analysis of the concept of ‘beauty’ through representations that, from the very beginning, distance themselves from observed reality and become self-aware in their own right."
The visual metaphors Gómez-Chao constructs by combining the most disparate objects, from a tin can to a paintbrush, with natural elements, create a singular poetic universe. The interplay of these elements, together with suspensions and volumetric arrangements, allows him to build ephemeral installations that are ultimately frozen and documented through photography.
His photographs resemble delicate planetary systems in which all kinds of objects float and interact within absurd totum revolutum compositions of striking visual impact and convincing aesthetic effect. These luminous, evocative, and always surprising works invite both contemplation and reflection. They suggest worlds pulsing with life, seemingly coursing through the capillaries of tangled filaments that provide formal coherence to the compositions while guiding our speculations in search of deeper meanings.
Xurxo Gómez-Chao has something of a Diogenes of the ephemeral, an artist-collector. Discarded or abandoned elements can “be reborn” in his studio with renewed meaning. They are fragments of materials wrested from the world. What was once nothing, or was dead, becomes perpetuated within the artwork, partly through the logic of chance filtered through a surrealist sense of irony. And always with a slightly sinister touch of kitsch.
A global glance at each work is not enough to fully appreciate it; rather, close observation and detailed analysis multiply the viewer’s aesthetic and intellectual satisfaction. Landscapes, objects, and portraits - whether drawn directly from his immediate surroundings or recreated in the studio using all kinds of remains (vegetal, animal, and even the most banal products of industrial consumption) - are combined or placed in dialogue with familiar tools from any artist’s studio: pencils, brushes, scissors, threads, and so on. With these elements, Gómez-Chao creates worlds and parallel realities. The beautiful and fascinating yet fragile and subtly uncanny presence of flowers and vegetal forms, evanescent landscapes, delicate and brittle compositions, and ordinary, seemingly insignificant objects confronts us with a world facing its potential or imminent disappearance. It is a fleeting, ephemeral, and transitory world that connects the “floating world” of pleasure and happiness with the “painful world” of earthly finitude.
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