Almudena Lobera at Tabacalera

Artist: Almudena Lobera

Exhibition title: Technical Images

Organized by: Promoción del Arte. Ministerio de Cultura, Spain

Venue: Tabacalera, Madrid, Spain

Date: February 7 – April 12, 2020

Photography: Galerna Foto / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Ministerio de Cultura, Spain

Note: Exhibition booklet is available here

For years, Almudena Lobera has been researching the capacity of human perception and its relationship with the construction of biopolitical, economic and socio-cultural structures. Studying the three coordinates of space, time and subject/body, her works focus on weaving them into a narrative, with a context and language of its own. That narrative is a reflection on how we visually perceive an object: the material properties, angle and frame that define the space and time in which it exists. Lobera thus hatches a plot based on a subversion of the system of codes that questions the relationship between reality and post-produced image. She exposes the devices that constitute her work, revealing the configuration of the visible even before it reaches our retinas. But she also challenges the socially established means of its comprehension, creation and organization: text and its narrative, history and its tellers, or agents and their hierarchies. What and how we see are just as important as what and how something is said and who says it, and all these factors shape our perception.

‘Technical Images’ includes a series of works resulting from the experiments carried out by the artist in Japan during the Tokas residence (Tokyo Arts & Space) in October and November 2018. This time, Lobera plays by upsetting two of the classical communication axes: the use of the same language, in this case divided into three (English as a western lingua franca, Japanese and computer codes), and transmission in different media / technologies, making a transfer in both directions between traditional actions and analog, and mechanical and digital.

During her stay she was accompanied by the text by Vilém Flusser ‘The Universe of Technical Images’. As a communication theorist, he already predicted in 1985 —in his life between Europe and America, between German, Portuguese, English and French languages— a future change in the way of understanding the environment through the creation and circulation of images techniques. The “devices”, the technological machines that use computational logic, already produce and distribute these images. In his scientific development, Flusser raises the possibility of imagining and creating a new reality, a telematic utopia.

In each action of the videos included in ‘Technical Images’, the artist stages a quasi-symbiotic relationship between the organic and the technological, reflecting on Flusser’s ideas. Her works transport us from a “classic” analogue action to a new gesture related to the digital world; from an image of the body to a text that has been coded—and pounded, written, translated and traced; from cultural and musical traditions to the software and machines we use on a daily basis, two worlds that coexist in contemporary Japan, on the highest level of scientific sophistication but also in the most ceremonious rituals.

The confrontation of these cultural, written and technological codes, and their decomposition both in gesture and image, help us to think about new technologies, the semiotic elaborations that they entail, as well as their neurobiological influence. The poetic treatment proposed by Almudena Lobera invites us to open our eyes more, to read more carefully and to execute with a new understanding. Awareness of each of the codes and their way of operating means the possibility of transforming them and being able to think of new relationships and ways of understanding our society, its past, present and future.

– Marta Ramos-Yzquierdo

Almudena Lobera, Technical Tokonoma I, 2019, Wooden structure with bases and interior lighting, 295 x 478 x 111 cm

Almudena Lobera, Kakemono I, Capillary printing, 2019, Drawing and printed fabrics glued on paper, 150 x 80 cm

Almudena Lobera, Vase I / Vase II, 2019, Sculpture in two joined pieces, 55 x 30 cm / 63 x 26 cm

Almudena Lobera, Line Spacing, 2019, Books with painted fabric binding, 37 x 40 x 30 cm

Almudena Lobera, Technical Images, 2020, exhibition view, Tabacalera, Madrid

Almudena Lobera, Chapter I, Reading, 2018-2019, Single-channel video, 16:9 black and white, audio 2’50’’, Wall mounted wooden frame with inserted screen, 141 x 111 x 24 cm

Almudena Lobera, Chapter I, Reading, 2018-2019 [videostill]

Almudena Lobera, Palette ASCII I, 2019, Acrylic on raw canvas in wooden embroidery frame, 100 x 130 x 4 cm, Technical Sheet Palette ASCII I, 2019, Photogravure and screen printing on 300 gr Zerkall-Bütten paper, Sycamore wood frame, 100 x 80 x 4 cm

Almudena Lobera, Chapter II, Typing, 2018-2019, Single-channel video, 16: 9 black and white, audio 3’29’’, Free-standing wooden frame with inserted screen, 245 x 193 x 88 cm

Almudena Lobera, Chapter II, Typing, 2018-2019 [videostill]

Almudena Lobera, Palette ASCII II, 2019, Acrylic on raw canvas in wooden embroidery frame, 100 x 130 x 4 cm, Technical Sheet Palette ASCII II, 2019, Photogravure and screen printing on 300 gr Zerkall-Bütten paper, Sycamore wood frame, 100 x 80 x 4 cm

Almudena Lobera, Chapter III, Translating, 2018-2019, Single-channel video, 16:9 black and white, audio 3’01’’, Wall-mounted wooden frame with integrated screen and one-person seat, 120 x 184 x 45 cm / 42 x 45 x 45 cm

Almudena Lobera, Chapter III, Translating, 2018-2019 [videostill]

Almudena Lobera, Technical Images, 2020, exhibition view, Tabacalera, Madrid

Almudena Lobera, Palette ASCII III, 2019, Acrylic on raw canvas in wooden embroidery frame, 100 x 130 x 4 cm

Almudena Lobera, Technical Sheet Palette ASCII III, 2019, Photogravure and screen printing on 300 gr Zerkall-Bütten paper, Sycamore wood frame, 100 x 80 x 4 cm

Almudena Lobera, Chapter IV, Tracing, 2018-2019, Single-channel video, 16:9 black and white, audio 2’54’’, Wooden structure (tatami) with inserted projector and practicable bench, 27 x 273 x 273 cm / 42 x 183 x 56 cm

Almudena Lobera, Chapter IV, Tracing, 2018-2019 [videostill]

Almudena Lobera, Technical Images, 2020, exhibition view, Tabacalera, Madrid