South London-based artist Carlos Cortes was busy exhibiting and choreographing in the heat of the Spanish summer.
This summer has been a busy time, working across a range of projects that span different disciplines and environments.
First I was preparing a one-man show in Saragossa, Spain in the Galeria Pilar Gines of Saragoza Despite this being the city where I was born, it’s more than sixteen years since the last time I exhibited there.
Lately I have come to see my paintings – or rather the characters in them- as sort of performers that travel and inhabit the galleries in which they are exhibited, creating different narratives. These are new dramas that unfold according to the architecture, the other paintings with which they share the space, and their relationship to the viewer.
I spent some time looking for local materials, following my usual recycling strategies. I came up with some interesting structures, looking very much like a contemporary version of the church altarpieces that have always been an important source of inspiration in my work. (Works in the exhibition in Galeria Pinar Gines, Saragoza above)
I realized that exhibiting in my own city after such a long time brought with it a sense of intensity and a formal clarity that I was striving for. Because the show was a mini-retrospective, it also gave me a sense of perspective that sometimes is difficult to get when you are continuously producing and showing your latest pieces. Sometimes going back to your own roots can have an energizing effect.
Exhibiting in Saragossa was unlike in London where everything is very professional and you are on your own. It was also nice to have a lot of friends and family coming to an opening from all over Spain.
After that I went to Valderrobres, a unique medieval village where I ran a sort of community project for the Valderrobres Contemporary Dance Festival. Working with local people we had to come up with a number of interventions in which we used a combination of movement-based pieces and some elements of visual art and installations. It took a while to get a group of local people to engage with what so far has been a completely unknown art form for them (Contemporary Dance? Installations? What is that?) but once they started to understand the possibilities of a collaborative approach and the enjoyment of improvisation and free movement, the group coalesced into a very fine creative ensemble. On the second day of the festival the workshop participants created a ‘landscape piece’. (See left)
The village children painted lots of long and colourful sticks that were later used by the audience in one of the final performances. Thrown over the Gothic Bridge, and falling upon the water, they became a moving painting that gently shifted shape and colours while floating down the stream… (see right)
After our first public show (we had three short interventions programmed), we got a great deal of interest and suddenly everybody wanted to join us.Hundreds of local people and visitors gathered around the castle to see the unusual performance. (see below)
I think the seeds for future projects of a similar kind are sewn and that’s probably the best measure of success for projects of this nature.
Working in Teruel, an area of Spain that is still quite unspoilt, has been a pleasure. I keep very fond memories of my childhood holidays in this beautiful and rugged landscape where you can still swim in fresh water streams and the nights are long and sweet in the summer time. The organic nature of an architecture that seems to come straight out of the natural rocks was also a stark contrast with the concrete jungle in London to which I’m accustomed these days, and it made me wonder how long am I willing to endure the pressures of living in the big city.
However, London is nowadays probably ‘the place’ to be for a contemporary artist, so I suspect my dream of life in the quiet village will have to wait for a while. As soon as I’m back I have to start working for my new show in Holland, which is coming up in September!
The Valderrobres Festival of Contemporary Dance took place from the 1st – 3rd August.
Carlos Cortes, Visual and Performing Artist, often shows at GX Gallery in Camberwell. See his article for Dulwich OnView on his exhibition there in February 08.
