Manuel Franquelo Things in a Room
Manuel Franquelo Things in a Room
April 16 through May 16, 2015
40 WEST 57TH STREET NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10019 212 541 4948 MARLBOROUGHGALLERY.COM
T he
chisel of nature
Daniel Wolf
I never liked being photographed. It is more than the general insecurity shared by all mankind that manifests in the way we feel about how we look. I don’t like the way I look in photographs because I don’t think I look that way. The camera is a brutal distorter. It distorts according to the shape of the lens. A photograph is the flat representation of a convex image that takes the shape of the outer most part of the lens. This mis-representation always disturbed me. Everyone knew what I looked like except me. And looking in a mirror didn’t help much - the image was flipped, and instead of looking at a convex image, I was looking at a flat image. This dilemma would raise questions late at night when I could not sleep. What was God thinking? What meaning was intended? Perhaps we are meant to know ourselves without the aid of visual recognition. But why? I still have no idea. Now, at least I know what I look like. For thousands of years one of the primary branches of art has described reality as perfectly as possible. I remember studying sculpture in Ecole des Beax Arts in France and learning techniques hundreds of years old that allowed a fairly good representation of the face and head. The question then was, how do you accurately represent a point in space in relation to another point in space? In sculpture this was done with a very scary looking machine that used many long needle-like structures that could be positioned to copy and memorize the position of one point on the face. In a digital age we are not finding one point on a surface but we are taking hundreds of images, finding perfectly focused pixels and then stitching them all together into a composite image. I first saw an image by Manuel Franquelo as I walked around Factum Arte’s workshop. As I was shown around this bustling studio, my eye caught a bookshelf on the wall. I registered it as a bookshelf with a slight something to it, but so slight that I did not make anything of the slightness. When I approached the shelf I was shocked and confused. It was not real. It was an image. My brain knows how to assimilate photographs. Photography is my first love in the art world and I still look at them every day (don’t we all?). But I did not know how to immediately assimilate this photograph. Something was different, enough of a difference to unsettle me. Decades of brain programming that assimilated a convex representation in two dimensions and turned it into three dimensions was thrown out the window. I was simply confused, a bit perturbed (and frankly still am a bit perturbed) due to the fundamental shift of perceiving three dimensions from a two dimensional representation. Photography was described by its English inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot, as the “Pencil of Nature.” The approach developed by Manuel Franquelo is closer to the “Chisel of Nature.” This may be one of the defining representational shifts of our time — and to be aware of history in the making is a gift.
M anuel F ranquelo T hings in a room Extracted by Adam Lowe from conversations with Manuel Franquelo that started in 1996
“The passage of time (my history) leaves behind a residue that accumulates: photographs, drawings, the corpses of long since driedup felt pens, shirts, glasses and returnable glasses, cigar wrappers, tins, erasers, postcards, books, dust and knickknacks: this is what I call my fortune”. Georges Perec Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, 1974
Franquelo’s new works blur the distinctions between reality and representation (and between painting and photography) in both intellectual and visceral ways. They are still lifes in the Spanish tradition of Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560 – 1627) and Francisco de Zurbarán (1598 – 1664). They are timeless rather than decisive moments in time, composite images in which “focus” is both uncompromisingly clear and the tool by which the images are made. The hands in paintings by El Greco (1541-1614) or some of the noncentral elements in paintings by Diego Velazquez (1599 – 1660) or Juan de Valdés Leal (1622 – 1690) are intentionally depicted out of focus, blurred, not fully established or defined in order to assert the temporal nature of our perspectival understanding of the space we inhabit. The word “focus” emerged at about this time and is first used in the mid 17th century in books on geometry and physics. It derives from the Latin word meaning ‘domestic hearth’ – the place where people are concentrated – a locality, a single point. Now our understanding of focus is dominated by the way it is used in film, photography and increasingly in virtual reality. But as photography moves from image to form and adds 3D mapping to its vocabulary, focus and focus stacking are assuming important roles. Human vision is a complex thing. Light enters through a pair of not very high-resolution “cameras” positioned a few centimeters apart and seldom identical. The light is transmitted to the visual cortex at the back of the brain by nerves activated by electrical impulse. This action potential seems to be triggered by changes in local light levels with the nerve cells acting like individual pixels in a composite image. The eyes are constantly in motion informing the response in our brain as it creates the illusion of an image from a mosaic of glances, memorized information, peripheral vision, orientation, registration, repetition – vision is dependent on movement and the visual cortex is making sense of a vast amount of data as it forms a multilayered “picture” of the things we see. Human vision is dependent on a mix of optics, memory, compilation and processing. It is noisy, located, perspectival and subject to error. Perhaps the computer vision strategy used by Franquelo is more “true”. It is still located but the computer controlled “pan and tilt” head carrying the optical system revolves around a single known point. A focal ratio is a dimensionless number but a low f-number produces a sharp image and a shallow depth of field. By repeatedly re-focusing and rephotographing multiple captures of the same target will one will find that each capture contains different information - from this pool of data it is then a question of selection. The selection involves the blending of the pixels from different focal planes by maximizing the contrast with the surrounding pixels. Once identified, these “sharp” pixels are merged to form a composite from which both 3D data and image data can be extracted. The algorithms which control these actions have their own poetry. The more elegant the algorithm the closer the relationship between the object and the image. The technologies behind Google Earth enable you to hone in on a single location anywhere in the world, but Franquelo’s images are far more local and question the nature of reality and representation itself. His interest is in the way we see more than in any narrative embedded in the images. Of course, the objects featured in his still lifes reveal a great deal about him - what Georges Perec called “his fortune”, but the real subject is mimesis. The goal is to make an image that is like the real world on as many levels as possible. Mimesis was the most highly rated quality and governed the understanding of art in ancient Greece, an art based on skill and inseparable from technique. The ability to transform pigment into something that can convince the
eye and the brain was the greatest proof of creative skill. It is a concept that articulates a notion of realism in which the world is tranformed into a representation. For this to be convincing, the representation must retain as many correspondences to the model as possible. Mediation and transformation are key words. Cezanne was interested primarily in relationships as he painted his apples consumed by doubt and aware that the painted mark applied with a brush could never completely capture the complex and dynamic nature of his external world. Franquelo has come at the problem from a different direction and uses all the tools at his disposal. Manuel Franquelo is an artist whose primary medium for over 30 years was painting but he didn’t only use brushes, he made his own tools to construct his re-materialized realities. He used optical tools to supplement his manual skills. In his studio, a camera lucida would sit next to precision milled airbrushes made on his lathe, sonic distance sensors and an assortment of electronics were as important as pencil or pigment. This exhibition shows that he is continuing in the same way. Between 2010 and 2014, in a quest for surface detail, he designed, built and programmed the Lucida 3D laser scanner to capture the low-relief surfaces of paintings, walls, doors and carvings. During the process he moved his attention to the creation of composite images. He takes the trouble to do the programming himself – not because he is making “new” discoveries, but because accurate representation involves great subtelty, and the time spent in reflection while cultivating an intimacy with the behavior of the physical world defines the character of the image. The works in this exhibition are still lifes. Their stillness is important. They are life-sized, static, flat images that we perceive as three dimensional forms. They do more than trick the eye - they outwit the senses and force a fundamental reassessment of our relationship with the space we inhabit – the relationship between the represented and the real is blurred and brought into focus at the same time. Images of the studio where the works are made reveal the lengths the artist goes to in order to ensure the colors, the contrast, the surface and the shadows are exactly as the eye sees them. It is important that the images are physical objects and their materiality is intrinsic to the way we respond to them. They are made on aluminum panels coated with a half chalk ground - a mix of animal glue, white pigment and calcium carbonate that has been used by painters since the start of the tradition of oil painting. They are in pigment applied using digital piezoelectric technology and purpose built flatbed printers that construct the image in layers. They are waxed with a microcrystalline wax to create a natural surface that is neither gloss nor satin but has a physical depth that unifies the surface. They reveal that they are representations while telling your brain that they are physical objects. They are not trompe l’oeil. They are composite images that talk straight to the visual cortex while asserting their presence as works of art. Manuel Franquelo is an artist. His tools are not only paintbrushes and pre-prepared paints, they are also the mechanical and electronic systems he builds, the algorithms he writes, the 3D scanners he makes. His interest has always been on how the physical world is transformed into a representation of itself and how through many mediated actions it becomes something we can respond as if for the first time. Curiosity seems to be the key – his works are more than images, they are curious things that are the result of deep and time-consuming reflection.
Things in a Room (25yrs), 2013 Composite photographic image produced using special hardware and software designed and programmed by the artist. Direct pigment print on gesso coated aluminum panel. edition of 3 + 2 AP 34 1/4 x 70 7/8 in. 87 x 180 cm
Things in a Room (Untitled #1), 2014 diptych (two panels) Composite photographic image produced using special hardware and software designed and programmed by the artist. Direct pigment print on gesso coated aluminum panel. edition of 3 + 2 AP overall: 76 3/8 x 76 3/8 in., 194 x 194 cm each panel: 38 3/16 x 76 3/8 in., 97 x 194 cm (above, detail)
Things in a Room (Untitled #3), 2014 Composite photographic image produced using special hardware and software designed and programmed by the artist. Direct pigment print on gesso coated aluminum panel. edition of 3 + 2 AP 31 1/2 x 70 7/8 in. 80 x 180 cm
Things in a Room (Untitled #4), 2014 Composite photographic image produced using special hardware and software designed and programmed by the artist. Direct pigment print on gesso coated aluminum panel. edition of 3 + 2 AP 31 1/2 x 70 7/8 in. 80 x 180 cm
Things in a Room (Untitled #2), 2014 diptych (two panels) Composite photographic image produced using special hardware and software designed and programmed by the artist. Direct pigment print on gesso coated aluminum panel. edition of 3 + 2 AP overall: 86 5/8 x 86 5/8 in. in., 220 x 220 cm each panel: 43 5/16 x 86 5/8 in., 110 x 220 cm (above, detail)
Things in a Room (Untitled #5), 2015 Composite photographic image produced using special hardware and software designed and programmed by the artist. Direct pigment print on gesso coated aluminum panel. edition of 3 + 2 AP 31 1/2 x 43 1/4 in. 80 x 110 cm
1984 Naturaleza muerta, Galería Heller, Madrid, Spain. 1985 Realismos, Galería Heller, Madrid, Spain. 1986 Illustrates for the Spanish art magazine Álbum Letras y Arte, Madrid until 1989. 1987 ARCO’87, Galería Ensanche, Valencia, Spain.
Manuel Franquelo 1953 Born in Málaga, Spain. 1972 Moves to Madrid, Spain. Studies at the Higher Technical School of Telecommunications Engineering, Madrid, Spain. Attends life drawing classes at the Academia Peña, Madrid, Spain. 1977 Attends the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes San Fernando, Madrid, Spain. Teaches life drawing and pictorial proceedings at the Academia Peña, Madrid until 1985. 1982 El Dibujo, una realidad, Galería Heller, Madrid. Earns a degree from the San Fernando Higher School of Arts, Madrid, Spain. Wins the Antonio del Rincón National Drawing Award, Guadalajara, Spain National Drawing Award, Autumn Biennial of Art, Madrid, Spain. 1983 El Desnudo, Galería Heller, Madrid, Spain. Wins the Penagos Drawing Award and the Eusebio Sempere Drawing Award, Alicante, Spain. Recieves Scholarship Grant from the Ministry of Culture, Madrid, Spain.
1988 Andalucía, Arte de una Década, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla and Hospital Real de Granada, Spain. 1989 Existencias: 14 Maestros del Realismo, Caja de San Fernando, Seville, Spain. 1990 Diez años, Galería Gamarra & Garrigues, Madrid, Spain. 1991 ARCO’91, Galería Gamarra & Garrigues, Madrid, Spain. Los Realismos en el Arte Español, Museo Takashimaya, Tokyo, Kyoto & Osaka, Japan. 1992 Grandes Maestros de las Vanguardias Históricas: De Picasso a Bacon, Museo de Bellas Artes de Santander, Spain. 1995 Manuel Franquelo, Galería Gamarra, Madrid, Spain. 1997 ARCO’97, Galería Gamarra, Madrid, Spain. Wins Tomita Prize Grant Board of Trustee Award, Tokyo, Japan. 1998 Curates and participates in the exhibition La Estampa Digital, Calcografía Nacional, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Spain.
Propios y Extraños, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. Art & Machina, Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander y Centro Cultural Español, Lima, Peru. Estampa. Salón Internacional del Grabado y Ediciones de Arte Contemporáneo, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. Wins the Premio Nacional de Grabado, Calcografía Nacional, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Spain. 1999 Into the Light, The Royal Photographic Society, Bath, UK. Obra Gráfica, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. The Techno-Digital Sublime, Central Fine Art Gallery, New York, New York. A plena luz, Calcografía Nacional, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Spain. 2000 Noise, Wipple Museum, Kettle’s Yard, Welcome Institute, Cambridge, London, UK. Premio de Grabado en España, 10 años, a travelling exhibition around Latin America. Technical direction for Un sistema informatizado de talla digital para la reproducción fiel del relieve, con el fin de realizar una réplica facsímil de las Cuevas de Altamira, Madrid, Museo de Altamira, Santander, Spain. Creator and technical director of “Centro para la Investigación de la Estampa Digital” of the Calcografía Nacional de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Spain. Teaches Life Drawing I at the Art College of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid through 2002. 2001 Diez Tendencias, Diez Pintores, Fundación DávalosFletcher, Castellón, Spain. The Language of Things, Kettle’s Yard Museum, Cambridge, UK; travels to The Hatton Gallery, University of Newcastle, UK; Bury Art Gallery, UK Founder and director of Factum Arte, a research center for digital projects for the conservation of cultural heritage and for contemporary art, through 2006. Technically and artistically directs important projects such as: La Réplica facsímil de la Tumba de Seti I, Servicio de Antigüedades de Egipto, Luxor, Egipto; La Réplica facsímil de la Tumba de Tutmosis III, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; La Réplica facsímil de La Dama de Elche, MARQ, Alicante, Spain
Curates and participates in the exhibition Impresiones: Experiencias del Centro I+D de la Estampa Digital, Calcografía Nacional de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Fundación Municipal de Cultura, Valladolid, Spain; travels to Palacio Caja Cantabria, Santillana del Mar, Cantabria, Spain; Museo de Artes del Grabado a la Estampa Digital, OuteiroArtes, A Coruña and Munae, Spain; Museo Nacional de la Estampa, México through 2002
Madrid, Spain.
2002 Iconoclash, ZKM, Karlsrue, Germany. Signs an exclusive contract with the Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. Manuel Franquelo: El lenguaje de las cosas, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain.
2008 Summer Show, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain.
2003 ARCO’03, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. Art Espagnol Contemporain, Marlborough Monaco, Monaco. Segno, Spazio, Territorio, Pinacoteca Nazionale di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy. Estampa: Salón Internacional del Grabado y Ediciones de Arte Contemporáneo, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. 2004 ARCO’04, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. Exposed: Platinum Prints, 1988-2004, 31 Studio, Plymouth Arts Centre, UK. Photography and Photogravure, Marlborough Fine Art London, UK. Impresiones: Experiencias artísticas del Centro I+D de la Estampa Digital, Instituto Cervantes, Lisbon, Portugal. Art Expo Chicago, Marlborough Gallery, New York. Estampa. Salón Internacional del Grabado y Ediciones de Arte Contemporáneo, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. 2005 ARCO’05, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. 2006 ARCO’06, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. Obra sobre papel, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. Pintura, escultura y gráfica, Galería Marlborough,
2007 ARCO’07, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. Adquisiciones y proyectos 2003-2006, Museos de Madrid, Spain. Es cuando duermo que veo claro, Galería Marlborough, Barcelona, Spain. Summer Show, Galería Marlborough, Barcelona, Spain.
2009 Summer Show, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. Manuel Franquelo: Transfigurar lo insignificante. Pintura / dibujo / 1985-2009, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. 2010 ARCO’10, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. 2011 ARCO’11, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. De Luces Mixtas, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. Penelope’s Labour: Weaving words & images, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, Italy. 2012 Arachne’s Return: Scheublein Fine Art, Zürich, Switzerland. ARCO’12, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. De Luces Mixtas II, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. 2013 ARCO’13, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. De Luces Mixtas 2013, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. Colectiva de Invierno, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. 2014 ARCO’14, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. Visiones de la Realidad, Fundación Caja Canarias, Santa Cruz de Tenerife y San Cristóbal de la Laguna, Tenerife, Spain. De Luces Mixtas 2014, Galería Marlborough, Madrid,
Spain. Colectiva de Invierno, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain. 2015 ARCO’15, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain Things in a Room, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York. WORKS IN MUSEUMS AND ART COLLECTIONS The Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, Nagasaki, Japan Calcografía Nacional, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Spain Fundación BBVA, Madrid, Spain Museo Electrográfico de Cuenca, Spain The Royal Photographic Society, Bath, UK Falmouth Municipal Buildings, The Moor, Falmouth, UK Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Madrid, Spain Ignacio Batarrita Collection, Vizcaya, Spain Lord Tristan Garel-Jones Collection, London, UK Juan Abelló Collection, Madrid, Spain Arango Collection, Madrid, Spain Lord Jeffrey Archer Collection, London, UK Conde de Godó Collection, Barcelona, Spain Thorton Collection, London, UK Fernando Guereta Collection, Madrid, Spain Stoneman Graphic Collection, London, UK Ana Vallés Collection, Fundación Sorigué, Lleida, Spain Isaac Querub Collection, Madrid, Spain
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DESIGN /
Jara Herranz Fernández
P H OTO G R A P H Y /
Manuel Franquelo, Elena Giner
P R I N T E D I N M A D R I D B Y A R T E S G R Á F I C A S PA L E R M O
Important Works available by: Impressionists and Post-Impressionists; Twentieth-Century European Masters; German Expressionists; Post-War American Artists
Cover and backcover:
Things in a room (Untitled #3)
Composite photographic image produced using special hardware and software designed and programmed by the artist. Direct pigment print on gesso coated aluminum panel. edition of 3 + 2 AP 31 1/2 x 70 7/8 in. 80 x 180 cm ISBN: 978-84-88557-70-4 Depósito Legal: M-10493-2015
MANUEL FRANQUELO Things in a Room April 16 - May 16, 2015