Fernando Sánchez Castillo and the Bomb Disposal Squad Create an Exhibition at the CAC Málaga

MALAGA.- Method of Discourse is a clear example of the creative play that underpins the work of Fernando Sánchez Castillo. Using a title based on the celebrated Discourse on Method by the French philosopher René Descartes, Sánchez Castillo deliberately inverts and alters the terms to reveal that absolute truth and certainties do not exist and to emphasise the need to question official versions and precepts established by technological progress. Contemporary art becomes a tool with which to demonstrate that things can be different thanks to its freedom of thought and action, which are absent in other facets of modern life.

The modification of an object’s use proposed by Marcel Duchamp is particularly present in Sánchez Castillo’s exhibition at the CAC Málaga. The principal work, specially made for this space, inverts the normal function of a robot used to deactivate bombs in order to turn it into an artistic device with which to construct a series of sculptures, paintings and video installations. Art and politics thus combine to reveal a new reality to the viewer: the other side of the face of power. This site-specific project is a defence of dialogue and non-violence with robots as symbols of the intellectual revolution that restores to art the capacity that it has always had to transform society.

Sánchez Castillo’s projects are not devoid of an element of risk and challenge. As the CAC Málaga’s director, Fernando Francés, has noted: “his daring, transgressive style, which frequently takes risks, encourages the spectator to engage in an intellectual exercise which, through the medium of contemporary art, raises questions on past events and issues and on ones central to society today. This has made him one of the most highly esteemed Spanish artists internationally as well as one who has enjoyed meteoric success in his career. His exhibition at the CAC Málaga focuses on the international language of art as a neutralising element that encourages change, in a way comparable to other artists who have exhibited at the Centre, such as Jonathan Meese with his Art Revolution.”

This intention also underlies the video Pegasus Dance, created in collaboration with the anti-riot police in Rotterdam (Holland). It shows the vans used by this squad in the course of their work, but here, rather than instruments of repression, they operate in favour of art and culture through a romantic, performative dance.

The interest shown by Fernando Sánchez Castillo (born Madrid, 1970) in the iconography of Spanish sculpture is reflected in Alimentador de pájaros, which takes the form of a bust of Philip V that functions as a dispenser of bird seed and which has been installed outside the CAC Málaga’s building. Once again it plays with the idea of giving an object a new use that is more functional than decorative, and here suggests the idea that the king was the figure who provided his subjects with food.

The last work in the exhibition, Evento, is an homage to the social changes brought about by popular action and urban revolutions, hence the fact that it is made of bronze elements, which is a material that has traditionally been used in sculpture for images of power. It presents political street demonstrations from the viewpoint of urban spectacle.

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