Text by Ferran Barenblit from the catalogue edited by Galeria Senda for the exhibition (Nov / Des 1998):
Luis Vidal - "Lindos"
The real homeland of a man is that of his childhood
Rainer Maria Rilke
Uncertainty is one of Art's most powerful tools. Referring thus not to the inherent quality of the artistic creation of being unable to define itself clearly, but to the work of art's ability to permeate its public with much more doubts that the creator himself could ever imagine. It is a mechanism that allows art to diffuse a sensation that is altogether imprecise, blurry and eerie. All different art manifestations imply the consideration that only very few ones don't conceive art as a form of communication, of exchange between two subjects. Both creator and spectator are equally active and are part of the work of art itself according to their own experiences. The uncertainty referred to above is the one that gives the work a unique worth, the capacity to begin a dialogue, to introduce things, to move everyone who looks at the picture.
This attribute of uncertainty is probably one of the most surprising characteristics in the work of Luis Vidal. His art, the Lindos ("Cuties") are part of his very own universe, particularly disturbing beings partly because of the many impressions they leave on the spectators. They are beings of vague and ambiguous values, and offer themselves to us with all their faces, leaving the interpretation to our own judgement and -hard to accept as it may be- our own desire.
The right context to understand Vidal's work is analyzing what is happening in this turn of the century. We've experienced decades of blind trust in science. In the past, European culture has given full credit to Science, times in which respect and cult to knowledge enlightened the path of thinkers and artists: the Renaissance, the Century of Lights. Times in which truth was sought through knowledge. Thus, Science struggled to provide an instrument of understanding the world on the side of the blind beliefs. Those were times of contradictions, but with an unconditional faith in finding that abstract thing that is certainty.
Nevertheless, our world has assured us another belief: the faith in science, in all its developments and advances. It is perhaps a hope that technology will solve all the problems that surround us, and thanks to it, our life on Earth will be better. None of this is new. About one hundred years ago, European culture confronted the positivist dogma established as an antidote to the preceding crisis. During that time in the Eastern world there was a developing trust that world intervention -scientific congresses, licenses, great public works, industry- would help in the conquest of happiness. Expressionism, a much-criticized artistic movement, was the answer to such absurd circumstances. The series of events that unfolded the World Wars developed distrust on the infinite progress of comfort.
Today we live on similar circumstances. It is unheard of a day that passes by without hearing about a new scientific approach that will allow faster computers, better genes, or a longer lifetime. These elements in the hands of a globalized liberal society, in which ethics has lost its meaning to be replaced with an endless quest of economic solvency, are extremely dangerous. They do but ratify our failing to study and understand the mechanics of our world in general. It is surprising that the context similarity between both worlds -ours and the one 100 years ago- has similar effects in certain artists: they give their works all the possible expression that they are capable of giving. So, again, we find ourselves with expressionism, with all its communicative ability and inevitable capacity of planting such uncertainty.
Luis Vidal's self-created universe must, then, be understood in a context in which art has charged itself with that same expressionist strength. Vidal has created a world inhabited by characters baptized under the name "Lindos" (Cuties) What are Lindos? He himself has sometimes written:
Lindo = new born
Such affirmation might seem obvious, yet it is essential to understand these mysterious beings that dwell in his installations. The assembly resembles that of a film scenario in which a series of infant bodies take on different chores: they walk, talk, visit art expositions, and even interact with flesh and bone humans. Bodies of babies with faces of adults, and bodily postures unsuitable to children. Thus is how the Lindos state their first contradiction. It is doubtless an infant body, a form that we all accept as nice, and to which we immediately attribute the love, caring and respect that we all feel for the newborns. But to our astonishment, the Lindos are far from childhood schemes and what we find in their expression is vital circumstances and values that go beyond our expectations in such puerile environment.
Luis Vidal did not create the world of Lindos all of a sudden: it was a long process in which such characters came to life. The human body, its physiology and somatic essence has been a constant theme in his work. One of the very first explorations on the subject were his latex structures reminiscent of body parts; many of them resulting almost impossible and invite us to question the very core of our physical existence. HisPret-a-porter project, 1995, consisted on pieces with the form of breastplates or shells, a proposition for a system of the transformation of our visible armor. The elements that adapted themselves to the body, allowed for sex change, skin mutation and other metamorphosis. Such anatomic inspiration forwarded him intoBuilding in process of dialysis, which, in 1996, turned an entire two-story building into a live being in need of blood cleansing. Vidal installed in the interior of the structure -which later became Galeria Senda- a complex web of arteries and veins, transporting the infected blood needing to be hailed before returning to its original dwelling.
Further into the subject, in 1996, the Lindos came to life. Experimenting with his own urine, Vidal created adult pampers based on corporeal fluids' queries, he called them "lindors". There was already a search of human essence on a medical problem, the incontinence. Not long after that, and as a compliment to such cellulose wrappings, Vidal gave birth to the Lindos: both the newborn Lindos and the lindors shared a plastic wrapped room in the New Art of Barcelona.
After this society presentation, the Lindos took their first steps in Lindos Paseos (or Pretty Walks), in 1997. In this occasion, the babies took on their own personality walking along the shore and attending long talks among themselves. Here, the notion of learning was present: a baby would teach another how to walk. Perhaps because of this, some of them appeared severed, without a leg. Vidal's photographs, images reminiscent of the cinematographic scenes mentioned before, recorded their journeys. Such scenes invite us into new dimensions: we witness the protagonists and their acts. Thus a new magnitude is manifest, an extent to which we see the narrative of the different stages of their existence. The viewer must complete the course of the lives of the Lindos, imagine in what situation are they immersed. Some of the scenes are accompanied by text that reveals romantic and sensible characters like the female Lindo (Linda) that tells her male partner:
"I'm afraid that the sea, when its waves draw back, will erase my footprints from the sand and this pretty walk will be just a dream".
Later in 1998, came the Paralindos. In this work, the Lindos become actors in an installation made exclusively for them: .i world in which furniture and objects are made to match their size and even the paintings are placed at their height. Although, in opposition toLindos Paseos, Paralindos gives full-grown humans a chance to interact and share with the mi,»in characters their own reality. Our sad discovery is all in this room, everything in this particular universe, is entirely find exclusively made for the Lindos; there is no room left for a thought of us. Here, the Lindos reveal to have an existence much richer in expressions and also unravel devotion for contemporany art. Vidal's latest presentation,Quiero ser Lindo (I want to be a Lindo) brings an adult that longs to be a child.
A disturbing reaction is expected when we witness the Lindos in action. An ever-present element in the human representation in art is the subliminal interpretations adjacent with the obvious flesh and bone ensemble. In every portinit, overy nude, in any forms of art we could find artists have attributed all the greatness and the misery of our existence, our aspirations and our fears. Since the Lindos are people, they, too, bear such nuances that evolve around their images. Nevertheless, the Lindos are children, making it harder for our relationship with them. We are all troubled by thoughts of infancy as something more than mere beautiful and safe, as a time in which there is tension and struggle.
The Lindos are perturbing entities because they contradict our relationship with children and probably with our own history as well: they are lucid beings, intelligent, observers with a greatly complex sexuality. Most disturbing of all is precisely the existence of a libido in the lives of the Lindos. Our culture denotes childhood as a period of purity, ingenuity and non-sexuality. To confront ourselves with child sexuality is a dangerous path; it will ultimately take us to confront our own past, and thus discover our present sexual behavior.
Throughout history, the beginning of human life has been present in art in an almost exclusive way through the figure of Jesus the child, who scarcely bears any human traits. Aside from Him, art has adorned itself with joyousputti, representing that old denial of sexuality and childhood complexity. Luis Vidal's artistic success is not only the creation of the world of the Lindos -children full of passion and distinctive ideas- but also his own universe; a universe very close to ours, with parallel ambitions and desires: But above all, it is a coherent whole with particular rules in which everything has its own sense: even our own presence.
Ferran Barenblit
Fotografías: Pep Cerezo y Luis Vidal
Texto: Ferran Barenblit
Traducción: Jocelyn González
Edición: Galería Senda
Model: Ivonne Cárdenas
Fotomecánica e Impresión: Gráfiques de Yebra
Coordinador: Albert Quílez
Encuadernación: Podium
Con la colaboración de: D l E N T E X
LIST OF WORKS
"Paralindos" 1998
(Montaje - Instalación)
Galería Senda, Barcelona. (Nov.-Dic. 1998)
