Abel Jaramillo at Galería Fran Reus

Artist: Abel Jaramillo

Exhibition title: El Protagonista es el fuego

Venue: Galería Fran Reus, Mallorca, Spain

Date: March 23 – May 31, 2019

Photography: Bartomeu Sastre / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Galería Fran Reus, Mallorca

During the 80’s the French psychoanalyst and philosopher Felix Guattari wrote a screenplay in collaboration with the American filmmaker Robert Kramer: Un amour d’UIQ [A love of UIQ], the script for a film that was never made. This script narrates the contact between the human race and a subatomic entity and shows the interest of the authors to rethink the cinematographic apparatus and the political implications of cinema. A script that condenses a desire, a tension between image and text, an structure that wants to be another structure. From this script, the “Essay for a missing script” project is formalized in three acts that overflow different relationships around the original script.

“The need to have walls” is the third act of this project, which takes as an starting point the movie The State of Things (1982) by Wim Wenders, in which a film director and his team moved to Portugal to record a science fiction movie called “The Survivors”. Wenders film addresses the director’s difficulties in finishing that film. A hotel and a pool by the sea is the main location of the film and the place to which this narration is directed.

An structure that holds water, a wall that hides a text, a voice that narrates an absence.

All this here is fiction, stories only exist in stories. And the protagonist is fire.

– Is it a film?
– It would have been a film. – (…)
– It’s a film.

Abel Jaramillo, El Protagonista es el fuego, 2019, exhibition view, Galería Fran Reus, Mallorca

Abel Jaramillo, St (the need to have walls #2) (2019), Digital photography on Hahnemuhle paper, 105 x 60 cm

Abel Jaramillo, St (the need to have walls #1), (2019), Digital photography on Hanhnemühle paper, 105 x 60cm

Abel Jaramillo, El Protagonista es el fuego, 2019, exhibition view, Galería Fran Reus, Mallorca

Abel Jaramillo, Estado líquido (2019), PVC impression, metallic structure, photography, plasticized digital printing, fishbowl pecera y green absinthe, 300 x 200 x 250 cm

Abel Jaramillo, St (Stories only exist in stories) (2019), Foam and vinyl, Variable measurements

Abel Jaramillo, The need to have walls (2019), Iron structure, wood, digital prints, digital photography on Hahnemühle paper, HD video (17.05 min), 250 x 350 x 200 cm

Abel Jaramillo, The need to have walls (2019), Iron structure, wood, digital prints, digital photography on Hahnemühle paper, HD video (17.05 min), 250 x 350 x 200 cm

Abel Jaramillo, The need to have walls (2019), Iron structure, wood, digital prints, digital photography on Hahnemühle paper, HD video (17.05 min), 250 x 350 x 200 cm

Abel Jaramillo, El Protagonista es el fuego, 2019, exhibition view, Galería Fran Reus, Mallorca

Abel Jaramillo, Nota al pie (2019), Digital photography on Hahnemühle paper, iron, mp3 player, headphones, read with sensor, Variable measurements

Abel Jaramillo, Nota al pie (2019), Digital photography on Hahnemühle paper, iron, mp3 player, headphones, read with sensor, Variable measurements

Abel Jaramillo, St (The state of something #1) (2019), Digital photography on Hahnemühle paper, 110 x 80 cm; St (The state of something #2) (2019), Digital photography on Hahnemühle paper, 110 x 60 cm

Abel Jaramillo, St (The state of something #1) (2019), Digital photography on Hahnemühle paper, 110 x 80 cm

Abel Jaramillo, Estado líquido (2019), PVC impression, metallic structure, photography, plasticized digital printing, fishbowl pecera y green absinthe, 300 x 200 x 250 cm