”DELUSIONS”, Gorka Postigo
5 June – 7 July 2012
La Fresh Gallery, Festival OFF -PHotoEspaña 2012
Conde de Aranda 5, 28001 Madrid
A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary.[1] Unlike hallucinations, delusions are always pathological (the result of an illness or illness process).[1] As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, dogma, poor memory, illusion, or other effects of perception. Delusions typically occur in the context of neurological or mental illness, although they are not tied to any particular disease and have been found to occur in the context of many pathological states (both physical and mental). However, they are of particular diagnostic importance in psychotic disorders including schizophrenia, paraphrenia, manic episodes of bipolar disorder, and psychotic depression.
In this series of portraits by Gorka Postigo (Madrid, 1978), the body becomes the canvas for representing emotions. Narcissism, drives, the unconscious: delusion as the definition of feeling, reflected on the body like a mirage or a hallucination, displayed with a tragic beauty, refusing to be modified, however much objective reality confirms the reverse.
The body has always been one of Gorka Postigo’s research fields. The body treated and understood like a canvas, similar to the perception of some pioneer artists like Yves Klein and Ana Mendieta. While the models pose in front of the artist’s camera an image is being projected onto them. The final image is a delusion, and the main question is whether to accept the artist’s delirium.
Wanda Wulz, Italian photographer (1903-1934) member of the Futurist movement, in 1931 took one of the most evocative images in photography, Io + gatto, which merged into a single image of a cat and a self-portrait. Gorka Postigo retakes that desire of delusional fusion. On the faces of the two models who have posed for the artist, he has reflected two frames of Romy Schneider, captures from the movie L’Important c’est d’aimer, directed by Andrzej Zulawski in 1975, and two captures of Jeanne Moreau, from La Notte, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni in 1961. Both movies share a halo of sadness and loneliness, dark scenery, anxiety, boredom. The four resulting images invade the viewer with a strange sense of melancholy.
”DELUSIONS”, Gorka Postigo
5 June – 7 July 2012
La Fresh Gallery, Festival OFF -PHotoEspaña 2012
Conde de Aranda 5, 28001 Madrid
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