imant’s trajectories
In a conversation with Vogue last year, Inge Grognard said: “Before, cosmetic surgery was just for the rich, and now with a little money everyone can do it.”. This democratization exists in parallel to the democratization of spaces, it is related to the issue of accessibility. El Centre de Lectura is based in the old palace of the Marquises of Tamarit since the turn of the 20th century. That was a time when electrical installations were booming and buildings throughout Europe would be incorporating them. Why then are there almost no plugs in the Fortuny Hall at the Centre?
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Victor, you’re working with a certain idea of contour. I see it in the defined lines of the drop-down sculpture that mirrors the room or those of the cuts on the paper that give shape to the fake plugs. But an idea of contour that also refers to the contour of the eyes. The contour of eyes gathered in the makeup made by Jonah Kawri Ramírez Sturzenegger. Because makeup also understands things. The gaze works on the contours, which are a place of passage to go to another place. A magnetized geometry that encourages the circulation of the gaze without allowing it a rest or a stable place to stay. There is a need for non-permanence in imant.
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Over the years, it seems like the Fortuny Hall has had a versaillesque relationship with its own accessibility: the Hall has prioritized, like the French mirror hall, its character as a space of passage (lack of specific use and generation of infinite space thanks to the walls of mirrors). Mirror-objects not only generate space artificially, but they take the look to bounce it back to another place. This also happens in your drawings and with the reliefs in the form of plugs installed on the walls: the perception is attracted to the back of the iron structures that support them.
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In 1906, the Electra Reusense had 4 machines of 600 horses to operate 8 dinamos that maintained 38 voltaic arches of public service.
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Victor, you don’t give up an expressive dimension. The chosen forms and matter present an impasse between illusion, the possibility of improvement; and pessimism. The switches that remain as a model, the translucid blueprint paper, the low-density of the population of the room with works, the general lightness, the prototype air that at all times is imbued in the sculptural work… there is an insistence on the appearance of provisionality, of prior study, of what is proposed but that will not be, as if it adduced some irreversible reason for not going forward. It is between the promise of the future of the renderer and the glazed eye of the self-sacrifice who gives up. As if the room, surgically speaking, was already inoperable.
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Honestly, I don’t know if imant is a place of hope or desertion.
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–Jordi Vernis Lopez
The works in imant have been produced between Los Santos de Maimona, Extremadura, Santander, Barcelona and Reus.. The relationship between this network of spaces is established approximately 70 cm high off the ground. The works roll, fold and fit in folders for easier transportation.
In Extremadura I participate in the study group Observatorio de la Luz, where our research process revolves around the change of land use. Before agrarian, now as a sole producer of electricity through photovoltaic mega plants. Our work deepens on the statutes that shape an energy cooperative.
In Santander, where I was living for a few months in 2024, I used an abandoned bridge as a studio. This bridge was half built, without the ramps that would allow it to be crossed. It exists in proximity to a dolmen. In the closest streetlight to the bridge, I wired a plug where I connected an extension cable to be able carry out some material processes. The plug remains in Santander.
In Barcelona I am a member of Foc, an artist-run space. Over the last five years, temperatures have become extreme, making it almost impossible to work in peak summer and winter. This extreme thermodynamics influences working hours, bringing them closer to more animal cycles.
In Reus I have worked at between 60 and 96 cm off the floor, putting together several sculptures made of paper, iron, plastic and neodymium. The exhibition was put together with the intention of providing a network of plugs to the existing space. In this superposition there is a gap between the project plan for an infrastructure and the infrastructure itself – the plugs that were never installed when the building was inaugurated. It is this space where the sculptures exist.
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The collaboration with Jonah Kawri Ramírez Sturzenegger started about two years ago, when I invited him to do my make-up for some photos. This collaboration continues in imant, where we have worked on a sculpture and a drawing that are also part of the research process for an exhibition at the end of 2025.
I would like to thank Jordi Vernis López for his hospitality during the accompaniment, the Noela Covelo Velasco for his involvement during the assembly and the team of the Reading Center for his predisposition. I would like to extend the thanks to the Guirigai Hall, fluent (and the complicity of Praxis II), Fire and Light Observatory (Jose, Laura, Jara, Azahara).
–Victor Ruiz Colomer
