Alejandro Vidal - Press release

 "Demons Dance Alone"
Video, photography

November 2nd - 25th, 2006
opening reception: Thursday, November 2nd, 6 to 9pm
Galerie Adler New York City

 

Galerie Adler is pleased to announce the New York solo debut of spanish artist Alejandro Vidal.

Alejandro Vidal's (* 1972, Palma de Mallorca, Spain) recent video 'Tactical Disorder' (2006) inquires into the relationship between the state of security and the culture of fear. The increasing number of security measures which are driving us to a "post-political" scenario ,thereby changing the political register away from the State, from conventional concepts, and from accepted identities, saying instead that politics emerges through lifestyle, through Art and discourse. It's now impossible to differentiate between technologies of control and regulation. Vidal highlights the lack of communication and the limited political emancipation of our contemporaries.

Some of Alejandro Vidal’s previous videos begin as a point of inquiry into the power of fear and the control it exerts over contemporary urban societies. Vidal culls his symbols from street culture, punk music scenes, performative death rituals, and popular film figures. While his work focuses on common depictions of violence to which we as media consumers have become desensitized, his interest lies in deconstructing these representations. His videos highlight the performative aspects of violent acts coupled with the power these performances have on our everyday attitudes and behaviors. He examines the underlying consequences of what we absorb through the political, social, and media messages we receive in the state of alarm in which we live today.

Vidal’s work often presents the moments leading up to or the aftermath of a scene of violence. What remains or hangs over such a moment is the anxiety of the unknown, the anticipation of something terrible that allows our minds to twist and create deeper fears than we need. Examining these reactions within the confines of art allows us as viewers and as members of society to apply that critical structure into our everyday thoughts and reactions.

Best regards
Ulrike Adler
 

 "Deciphering Scars"
Video, photography, installation

April, 15th - June, 11th 2005
opening reception: Friday, April, 15th, 7 pm
Galerie Adler Frankfurt am Main

 

Frankfurt am Main, March 2005 – Social conflict, self-defence and violence are the issues explored by Alejandro Vidal (*1972, Palma de Mallorca). Gallery Adler, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, presents photographies, video projections and an installation by the young Spanish artist in a solo exhibition from April 15 to June 11, 2005.

With critical distance, Vidal investigates aesthetic positions prior to the act of violence. He brings together influences and concepts from video-manuals of self-defence to 80`s punk, early rave techno or 90’s cult movies. He brings all these concepts together to organize them as an attempt of understanding an historical moment and its implications. Vidal sees the connections between radical politics, music movements like punk, rock or hip hop and suicide. All them linked with the need of an audience and a staged mise en scene.
Vidal investigates the social, political and economic implications of contemporary Art taking a critical look at the way in which marketing and politics distort our attitudes towards violence and life within our cities.

‘A thousand lonely Suicides’ is Alejandro Vidal latest series of work. The photographs - shown in the exhibition - portray an ex-convict who after an homicide attempt tried to commit suicide in front of the police, just before being detained, using the ancient practice of hara-kiri.
Hara-kiri is nothing but a last performance ritual, in front of a selected public. This selected public participates in the ritual; without it hara-kiri wouldn’t exist, the action would just be a "killing yourself".
Politics, rock stars, etc… share this public dependence, they need to kill themselves actually or metaphorically with the public as an active-passive tool and as a part of the violence they execute.

Seppuku (切腹 from the kanji "cut" and "stomach") is a Japanese word that means ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku is better known in English as hara-kiri (腹切り, literally "cutting the stomach", written with the same kanji as seppuku but in reverse order), which is considered the more vulgar term. Seppuku was a key part of bushido, the code of the samurai warriors; it was used by warriors to avoid falling into enemy hands, and to attenuate shame.

From the 1920’s & 1930’s the media started to reach mass audiences through politics. We have met this idea before and we call it propaganda. Looking at recent history we see how the media manipulated audiences for ideological and political purposes.

The various slogans founded in the lyrics of early punk bands, to the proliferation of bands in the early eighties, punk rock, like hip hop or techno and electronic subcultures had a strong relationship with explicitly anarchist and radical political content over the years. The experiences of anger and exaltation that rock music provided for countless young people were not in themselves political experiences, but rock could become a potent political force when linked to real political organizing. Adorno was convinced that music could be so powerful it could force individuals to realize their existence.

Vidal takes a critical look at the way in which media and politics distort our attitudes toward violence. Cautiously he explores „state security“ and its terror codes. He talks about a "culture of fear"; the more awesome the system is, the more society exploits fear, the more superficial our values are becoming.

 

A thousand lonely suicides, 2005