Playtime

Ana Jotta, Ignasi Aballí, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, Lea Lublin, Mònica Planes, Samuel Labadie

Madrid
Jun 1 - Jul 26, 2019
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BUILDINGS like crystals.

Walls of translucent gass.

Sheer glass blocks sheathing a steel grill.

No Gothic branch: no Acanthus leaf: no recollection of the plant world.

A mineral kingdom.

Gleaming stalagmites.

Forms as cold as ice.

Matematics.

Night in the Science Zone.

(Hugh Ferris, The Metropolis of Tomorrow, 1929)

In 1967 Jacques Tati premiered Playtime, placing a critique of modernity above plot or characters. Monsieur Hulot – a universal character in Tati’s films – is transformed into a man who can not even fight against the environment around him and who is continually trapped in spaces of which he can’t escape. In his previous films, when his character was faced with a problem, he was looking for a solution to solve it that often had comic consequences, but in Playtime, modernity has not only displaced the individual, it has also destroyed Hulot’s creativity and his means to confront it.

NoguerasBlanchard is delighted to present the eponymous exhibition Playtime, an attempt to take a step beyond the gag and observe the type of reality we have created and how it has become strange. The expression of this reality is a conflictive process: man has lost his natural relationship to the world, but modernity does not regret that loss as it considers that such a relationship was only a hoax. The imposition of hostile developments to the average citizen, both in scale and in sense, is a growing tendency; they in turn force the individual to inhabit the city through a cluster of activities that could well be summarized as production-consumption. Architecture becomes a metaphor for revealing totalitarian atrocities. It is no longer necessary to listen to these constructions and complaisant aesthetics – obedience, of Latin etymology, means to hear audire, what is before ob-; ob-audire: obey -, as they have become a constant background noise.

On the other hand, going beyond a simple criticism of modern architecture, Tati wanted to draw attention to its depersonalizing effects and thus make “the defense of the individual against this social atomization that we suffer.” The exhibition Playtime fluctuates through the ideas explored in Tati’s film, approaching, from different angles, the strange relationship of the individual with modern life.

With special thanks to àngels barcelona (Barcelona), espaivisor (Valencia), Estrany-de la Mota (Barcelona), Formato Cómodo (Madrid) and ProjecteSD (Barcelona).

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Installation

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Roberto Ruiz

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Roberto Ruiz

Selected Works

Ignasi Aballí
This Is Not the End

2012

16mm lm transferred to digital

10'

Ana Jotta
And, Then I, He Said, Then

2017

Drypoint, viscosity print and monotype on 300g somerset soft-white paper

48 x 39 cm (18 2932 x 15 1132 inches)

Mònica Planes
Colección de jardines: la ciudad

2017

Cement containers with wheels

20 x 20 x 10 cm (7 78 x 7 78 x 3 1516 inches)

Mònica Planes
Colección de jardines: el camino

2017

Cement containers with wheels, brick

20 x 20 x 10 cm (7 78 x 7 78 x 3 1516 inches)

Lea Lublin
Terranautas

1969

Vintage photograph, black and white

17.7 x 17.2 cm (6 3132 x 6 2532 inches)

Samuel Labadie
Block, El Quiñón Residential

2015

Graphite on paper

67.2 x 52 cm (26 1532 x 20 1532 inches)

Samuel Labadie
Terrazzo Floor, Southdale Center

2015

Patchwork

225 x 225 cm (88 1932 x 88 1932 inches)

Isidoro Valcárcel Medina
Conversaciones telefónicas

1973

1/4 magnetophone tape transferred to digital

1h 18' 24''

Drag