The Pedro Oliveira Gallery is for the first time presenting a solo exhibition by Antoni Muntadas, in which the artist is showing the series Portrait, Meetings and other works on paper.
Portrait. This is a DVD projection in which one can only glimpse the hands of a gesticulating speaker, suggesting a choreography based on gestural stereotypes, which one concludes are identical to other moments, thus suggesting, given the gestural slowness, an idea of monotony that the spectator may interpret as being visible or invisible. This monotony is also presented to us through the perception of a translation transmitted to us – both the speaker and the translator gesticulate simultaneously – and yet the verbal and gestural languages go beyond that which would be obvious.
In Meetings, Muntadas presents a series of blueprint images (light box) in which the plastic values of photography are annulled, thus creating and emphasising the atmosphere characteristic to offices, working spaces in which hierarchies are set up. They are spaces of decisions, discussions, marketing campaigns and consumer strategies, stereotypes and statues that for Muntadas correspond to the icons of the contemporary world.
All of these icons are once again shown in a series of ”other works on paper“, in which the “concepts of cultural translation“ are repeated.