José Fiol at Galería Fran Reus

Artist: José Fiol

Exhibition title: MACGUFFIN

Venue: Galería Fran Reus, Mallorca, Spain

Date: November 11, 2022 – January 23, 2023

Photography: Grimalt de Blanch / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Galería Fran Reus, Mallorca

The drama of the monster is knowing that it is made of pieces of hundreds of corpses. Its organs were the organs of others, which is why a single DNA cannot be attributed to its body. But also, and probably for that very reason, anyone can imagine a carved up monster, separated into parts. The case of the ghost is exactly the opposite as no one can imagine a carved up ghost. No one can even imagine what the pieces of a ghost would be like; a mobile mass which, even though it is clear and has a well-defined body, takes on the appearance of smoke, of a flow that no one can hold on to. If the nature of the monster was corpuscular, that of the ghost is fluid. And how is it possible to chop up, cut or assemble parts of a fluid? It seems impossible, but let’s not be so quick to answer.

To centre the topic: what is a Macguffin? Although it is extremely popular, we should remember that it is a concept coined by Alfred Hitchcock to refer to an element that advances the plot of a story, with the peculiarity that this element will ultimately be hidden. We will never know its true nature as it was a mere excuse to build the plot of the film, although its presence was essential for such a cinematic incident to have existed. The archetypal case is that of a briefcase containing secret documents, around which a plot of suspense will be created; of comings and goings of the briefcase, which will pass from hand to hand while the true story that we want to tell unfolds somewhere else.

The Macguffin exhibition, by the artist José Fiol, at the Fran Reus gallery, consists of paintings that are details of films. In other words, fragments of frames that were originally much larger and can be considered an interpretation of that narrative mechanism taken to the field of painting. The appropriation and subsequent redefinition carried out by the artist is subtle: the original frames are the excuse that caused these paintings that we now see to exist. They are the triggers that José Fiol used to tell us what he wanted to tell us. Frames that, even being there, like Macguffins they will remain hidden from our eyes. In this sense, Fiol’s paintings, being clearly figurative, delve headlong into the mechanics of the conceptual.

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-Agustín Fernández Mallo, November 2022-“original version in spanish”