My acquaintances point out that the two most recent entries in this blog are very political in nature, and besides that (which contradicts the original aim of the post collection) they bear no photographs. Am I by any chance running short of aesthetic experiences - they suggest?
Loads of work may well account for some recent lack of dedication to keeping an updated record for such experiences, I try to convince them - the number of blogs to maintain having recently increased too. And above all, I recently lost my iPhone4 along an unlucky visit to Gatwick airport last January, and even if I promptly got myself a new Galaxy S, the picture quality won't be half as good as it used to.
All those do however sound like futile excuses, that's true. So back to work then.
A few days ago I took this trip northwards into the Basque Country, destination Vitoria-Gasteiz. I feel lighthearted whenever I ride the north-bound train in Spain, and this trip was a mixture of work and pleasure (probably the best trips there are). Pleasure would be provided -as planned- by a Euroleague basketball quarter final game between the local team Baskonia and Maccabi Tel-Aviv, whereas work would imply a meeting at the Eusko Herriko Unibertsitatea (the local university).
Work and pleasure arising together in the same sentence incidentally brings to my mind some theory by Susan Sontag on compulsive photographing by tourists I read about a few weeks ago. As opposite to stressed holidaymakers (mainly from Japan and Germany, says the wikipedia article) who will feel guilty for not being at work and compensate their idleness by taking pictures on a sort of working scheme, I did take but one single picture along the trip.
This sculpture is displayed at the University Library entrance hall, and the figures in it are quite odd, with those big heads ans slim bodies. I'm short of references at the moment, but what comes to me is the outer-space creatures Tim Burton designed for Mars Attacks! (even if it's quite a long time since I last saw that movie and I'm not sure I do properly remember the funny attackers, other than when they disintegrate the U.S. President).
So what's special about the sculpture itself? First, the fact it had no label attached, so it was impossible to know who the actual artist was, or its title. I later tried finding it on an online compilation of open air sculptures in Vitoria -which are both ubiquitous and occasionally quite brilliant- but this particular sculpture is within the Library building, so it won't be featured in the collection of open air works. Any help from potential readers as to identify the work of art and its author would therefore be greatly appreciated.
Second special thing about this sculpture. While I was taking the picture shown above, a young student told me on passing by, that "the artist wouldn't like the way the sculpture was displayed". She kind of surprised me - I wasn't even able to react quickly enough -one does eventually grow used to one's own slo-mo reaction schedule and learns with time to take things easy despite all- to propose buying her a coffee in order to learn more about why she had said that. I mean, she seemed either to be a close acquaintance of the artist's or quite anxious for someone to buy her a coffee.
And third special thing about the work was it caught my eye for it strongly reminded me of some of Juan Munoz's best pieces. There was a recent retrospective exhibition on the author at MNCARS -aka Sofidou- in Madrid, and there were some impressive group sculptures on display - managed to retrieve a couple of pictures taken on the occasion.
It's not that this particular sculpture at the Library comes close to Munoz's best achievents -as one cannot walk around the standing figures, for instance, and that's what the young lady's remark may have meant- but it is indeed an outstanding piece of sculpture. Could be called 'The invaders' - and that would make it funny as well-
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