"En la era del artificio"

La obra Mutaciones vi (2004), de Javier Pérez, incide de otra forma en el asunto carnal: es como una enorme y preciosista lengua niquelada que descansa sobre dos ampulosos espejos redondos. Y también en esa línea preciosista y sensual, donde el ritmo y el color son esenciales, la videoinstalación Asylum (2001-02), de Julian Rosefeldt, compone un exquisito ciclo iconográfico distribuido en nueve enormes pantallas montadas en una gran sala oscura. Rosefeldt trata el delicado asunto de la inmigración desde la perfección visual y la sutileza conceptual, y con un toque de lirismo subyugante, mostrándonos distintos grupos étnicos marginados -gitanos, negros, musulmanes, prostitutas orientales, etc.- en entornos simbólicos sagazmente escenificados.

Si otrora la complejización de las formas helenísticas, románicas y barrocas fue considerada como signo de decadencia, hoy la prolijidad objetual-visual y el retorcimiento del discurso del arte contemporáneo son vistos como una plausible sofisticación de las tendencias vanguardistas, cuyas diversas herencias se entrecruzan en el paraíso promiscuo de la producción artística actual. No existen casi límites técnicos, conceptuales, discursivos o morales para el polifacético artista contemporáneo. Al menos, la selección de obras de Barrocos y Neobarrocos ... nos ayuda a encontrar placer en este delirio.

Vivianne Loría

Self-destructive desire, unhealthy eroticism and a macabre attraction towards decadence and putrefaction were reiterative elements in the artistic trends of the 20 th century that aimed to stand up to the fussiness of the bourgeoisie. Long after that confrontation had lost all meaning -given the capitulation of the bourgeoisie culture to the mass society-, back in the eighties, the rebellious airs of all last century's belligerent dadaisms, surrealisms and conceptualisms dissolved. Today, provocation is a naive concept in art. Photography and innovative sculptural techniques -which currently include from epoxy to silicone, and have recovered traditional materials considered low quality by the Great Art of past times, like wax- have been used for years to construct endless theatres of horror that are fuelled, as in the Middle Ages, by the most warped fantasies of the terrified human being of the changing millennium. Bodies chopped into pieces, scattered entrails, horrific tumefaction, impossible faces on semi-human beings and awful beasts born from apocalyptic nightmares, plague contemporary art, with more or less good fortune.

From this position, on entering the exhibition Barrocos y Neobarrocos. El infierno de lo Bello (Baroque and Neo-Baroque. The Hell of the Beautiful) -on display at the da 2 in Salamanca- what we actually encounter is the end of a thread, of a dark vein, that trails back to the nebula of Mesopotamian Antiquity and explodes by periods, its major projection in the West being the fantastic fantasies of the Romanesque, the stylised Gothic figurations of death, the subtle gloomy air of Mannerism, the visual whirlwind of the Baroque and the terrifying fantasies of Symbolism.

On analysing Baroque art, we immediately notice the emphasis it places on the forms of the flesh: firm and provocative, livid, dead or torn, old and withered, human and animal. The liberation of the Renaissance regarding the glorification of nudity, managing to displace the dark medieval conception of the flesh, resulted in the celebration of the sensuality of the body. Flesh, be it of a skinned animal, a defeated enemy or excited maidens, appears surrounded by an environmental voluptuousness that sublimates strangeness or potentially horrific aspects. Disastrous or worrying elements are soothed by the luminosity of the bodies, to the extent that the disturbing implications of what is depicted are sheltered primarily in pre-Christian myths or in tales that recall exotic Eastern lands. Baroque sensuality was also expressed in the convulsed skies of ancient gods and of the virgins, saints and angels of the Catholic church. Clouds, foliage and monumental architectures were used to compose the suggestive settings of the Baroque, just as contemporary installations simulate other structures and environments, and appear loaded with different elements. The theatrical, a fundamental element of the Baroque, is also an essential component in contemporary plastic arts. Barrocos y Neobarrocos ... has selected works that support the notion of re-invigorating that aesthetic conception, in which the flamboyant and the terrible, the sensual and the ravishing, are expressed using grandiloquence, the dynamism of the composition and visual saturation.

In any case, we can identify different approximations to the Baroque on walking around the exhibition. Thus, we encounter the simplest form: which simply tends towards an excess of visual elements in the image, or resorts to twisting the object, alluding to the Baroque spiral, like the large polished aluminium sculptures by Thomas Schütte, Grosse Geister nr 4 & nr 5 (1997), resembling solidified whirlwinds; the painting Kzzzaapp!!! (2004), by Fernanda Brunet -depicting a whirlwind, clouds and lightning, like a tense Baroque sky-; the installation Dots Obsession (2005), by Yayoi Kusama -a white environment with large red dots and organic sculptural forms, reflected on a large mirror-; the elegant royal portrait by Hew Locke, Konihoor (2005) -which uses infinite kitsch elements made of vulgar plastic, like an updated version of Arcimboldo's portraiture-; the euphuistic erotic photographs by Liu Zheng -that show sumptuous scenes and morbid bodies-, and the excessively ornate reconstruction of Western art history via key works, in the photograph China Mansion (2003) by Wang Qing Song.

Moving on to a much finer interpretation, the exhibition also includes works whose relationship with the general concept of the Baroque is subtler. Richard Stipl's small wax self-portraits-busts, Choir i (2005), and Bill Viola's plasma screen video Six Heads (2000), genuine Renaissance-style physiognomic studies, adapt, the one to serialisation, and the other, to new techniques, whilst both are presented as final works, incidentally using both the Baroque's theatrical lack of moderation and visual profusion and the pleonastic spirit of post-avant-garde art. It is precisely this inclination towards re-iteration, and the actual conception of each work as a part of a redundant general discourse that characterises the contemporary trends that are heirs to the post-avant-gardes of the 1960s and 1970s, which currently still dominate the international art panorama. In this sense, installations, photographic works and pieces of all kinds require the viewer to have a general knowledge of the work of specific authors in order to access their genuine value, as occurs here with the photographic images by Matthew Barney taken from Cremaster 5 and with Viola's Six Heads .