Manu Arregui

Streaming (installation). 2009

Industrial fan, curtains, wood and high density polystyrene covered with polyurea and paint, HD-Video player, LED screen, amplifier, speakers, subwoofer and photoelectric cell. Variable measures

Manu Arregui presents an exhibition made up of three works condensed into a montage that proposes a narrative.

The first of the pieces is made up of three rows of curtains that divide the pavilion, which they occupy and wave by the force of a turbine activated by the public through a photoelectric cell. The lightness of the curtains contrasts with the force of the fan, both make up an artifact that works under the artist’s usual formal parameters: volatility and sinuous movement, creating a simplified scenario typical of romantic gothic literature, triggering psychological terror. A phantasmagoria whose spectral motor force is revealed to the viewer.

“Stepped Object” is a sculpture with a length of 4.5 and a height of 3.5 meters, its structure is that of a staircase whose steps diminish along a zigzagging path, like an architectural trompe l’oeil that escapes towards infinity. The profile of the piece merges the characteristic faceting of the polygons in the three-dimensional objects of the digital world with the abrupt profile typical of precipices. Once again Arregui establishes relationships between virtual worlds and romantic iconography. He also extends the concept of his series Very unique object by including an extruded inscription with a URL that links to the original modeling placed on the Internet, establishing a poetic game between tangible and immaterial and thus calling into question the relationships between technology, intellectual property and characteristic fetishization of the art market.

Streaming is completed with a videographic work starring an androgynous-looking boy who falls into the void, evolving between an abrupt descent and delicate dance movements, interrupted at times by the iconic “downloading” in audiovisual viewing on Internet. The pixel distortions typical of the compression codecs in these videos are also used by the author to offer that particular texture of the digital world today. Arregui continues his research around the tensions between the real and the virtual, at a moment of creation we can see the character interacting with a computer, operating with a representation of himself in a portal where videos are shared, incorporating a written confession which suggests that it is made after his death.

The androgynous aspect of the protagonist, the fragility of his poses and the ambiguous treatment of suicide make us think about the imbalance of the individual against the processes of masculinization that society demands, in the political movements linked to the liberation of minorities, reflection about the body and the challenge to normality that the artist has been dealing with since the beginning of his career.