WWW.ALEJANDRO-VIDAL.COM
In an apocalyptic world identical to our own, the survivors will don relics of pop civilization—leather pants, zippers, exposed rivets, and shiny boots. These will be the symbols of salvation, storyboards of our species on the edge enslaved by a strict mor(t)al code, the only antidote to complete turmoil. Their weapons will not be invisible or infrared—instead they will be traditional, archaic, even centuries old. As the medium is laid to rest, wet, gleaming, polished pictures with algebraic purity and no digital effects will prevail. As our crusaders sharpen their swords and plot their next moves, the procedure feels increasingly sacramental. Some say war itself is a ritual, quoting history time and time again, but rather it is a virus. Rituals are intimate, each subtlety of movement a part of that underworldly exercise of heredity. War, with distance, is anonymous and quantitative. Camus tried to conceive of that horror beyond reason in The Plague: “The thousand dead made about five times the audience in a biggish cinema. Yes, that was how it should be done. You should collect the people at the exits of five picture-houses, you should lead them to a city square and make them die in heaps if you wanted to get a clear notion of what it means. Then at least you could add some familiar faces to the anonymous mass.†By contrast, the lyrical measures taken by Vidal’s prophets suggest a poised, stylized, necessary violence. Incidentally, the movie theater is a place for forgetting, for invoking the past as a shield against the future or imminent fate. The elite ensemble of legionnaires in Vidal’s works construct a requiem for apathy, a mythology constructed for the survival of a state in which everything must appear real and easy….
SELECTED RECENT EXHIBITIONS
Solo Exhibitions: 2007 Blackout for Death Kling&Bang Galleri, .... Reykjavik .... , Iceland 2006 Material Dust. Fundación La Caixa, Barcelona ,Espai Montcada 2005 Aesthetics of Violence MOT, London ; A thousand lonely Suicides Play Gallery for Still and Motion Pictures, Berlin, Germany 2004 A pas de Loup, Salon at Museum of Contemporary Art. Belgrade ; Un tiro a todos los Diablos, Artra, Milano, Italy,
Group exhibitions: 2007 System Error: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning Palazzo dellle Papesse, Siena, Italy ; Repeat All, 13 Video Installations by International Artists ,Matucana 100, Santiago de Chile ; Shot and Go, A vision of international actual photography, Isola di San Servo, Venezia, Italy . 2006 Busan Biennale ,Korea ; Youth of Today, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany ; Crime and Punishment Tallinn Kunstihoone, Estonia Naked Life Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan ;2005 Parafraseando al Diablo Harto_Espacio, Montevideo, Uruguay ;2004 Personne n’est Innocent Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers, France