José Luis Martinat – “País con futuro”

Reception: December 13th, 2023, 4 - 8 pm

_VIGILGONZALES Buenos Aires - Presidente Porque Saenz Peña 628 - P4. Buenos Aires . C 1016

The unprecedented sound installation País con futuro by José Luis Martinat uses fragments of the homonymous vinyl, a collaboration with the Peruvian publishing house Meier Ramirez. This 12-inch vinyl features fifty locked grooves, closed loops that constantly reproduce electoral slogans drawn from Peruvian political history. The album seeks to convey feelings of hope, strategically repeating words such as "change" and "transformation". The robotic voice in the installation homogenizes the texts, questioning the construction of the discourse and highlighting its mechanicity in the political arena. Martinat, as a Peruvian migrant in Sweden, uses his work as a means to process and reinterpret political and social complexity, offering a critical reflection on the vacuity of political discourses. The installation invites viewers to confront the depoliticizing effect of an apparently empty discourse.

The connection of the art with the Peruvian reality is manifested in the collection of materials in Lima's wholesale markets and the collaboration with the Grados family, Peruvian embroiderers with a long tradition. The resulting work criticizes the system and, when shared, becomes a reason for collective distress. The use of recycled fabrics and their association with velvet symbolize the versatility of Latin American material culture.

The three-brick installation El juicio final: Los elegidos (2021), establishes a dialogue with the triptych "El juicio final" (Catedral de Lima, 1625-1630) by Vicente Carducho, connecting the precariousness of construction materials with the religious imaginary of colonization. Martinat questions the relationship between religious values and economic debts in Latin American countries, raising questions about the capitalist system and its religiosity.

José Luis Martinat's career is characterized by his dedication to the study of discourses and the visuality of political power, exploring the relationship between the electoral vote and emotionality. His critical approach has developed from a meticulous study of the visual system of American politics, applying concepts such as the architectural extraction of the scenarios of political speeches through laser engraving. In the exhibition in Buenos Aires, this methodology is consistently applied and is present through two works that portray different instances of the stage where the debates for the 2023 presidential Argentinean elections took place.