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Artist Statement:
My current work elaborates on
spatial/textual/historical
tensions that reveal
contradictions between the
represented and its
representation, between the
small personal anecdote and
the grand historical
narrative. My photography
thus incarnates the failure of
male socialization and the
ways in which Latin America
still conceives and applies
power.
Between 1995-1998 I intervened
crashed car pieces with
photographic self-portraits
holding my little girl. It was
an attempt to challenge the
archetypes at work in
paintings like the Virgin with
Child of Il Duccio de
Buoninsegna, painted around
the year 1300 A.C. , so
abundant in catholic imagery.
The trashed car junk provided
a most appropriatte showcase
for masculine destructive
powers, a reference to the
Pantocratos "punishing god"
(as oppossed to the all
forgiving virgin Mary).
Several of these pieces,
including Toyota Corolla 92
(1996 and Taxi Year Unknown
(1997), were exhibited at
Body, Fragment Memory. In the
catalog of this show,
published by the Museum of
Costa Rican Art in 1997.
The critic Vivianne Loria
(current Lápiz Magazine
collaborator) stated in that
shows catalog: "In the Works
by Jorge Albán, the image is
diffused, hidden and enhanced
as fragments on a metallic
support, fragmented on it ...
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Artist Exhibitions:
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2005 Houses of Memory, Mexican
Cultural Center, Costa Rica.
1997 Concentric Times, Gallery
of La Nación, San José, Costa
Rica.
1995 Confluences, Gallery of
the Calderón Guardia Museum,
San José, C.R.
1993 Arqueticos, Galería of
the Melico Salazar Theatre,
San José, Costa Rica.
...
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Artist Galleries:
Jacob Karpio Gallery, San
Jose, Costa Rica.
Phone: (506) 2577963
jacobkarpio@racsa.co.cr...
Further Information
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Collections:
Museum of Costa Rican Art, San
José, Costa Rica
La Nación, most respected
Costarican Newspaper, Tibás,
Costa Rica.
Zurcher Arquitects, San José,
Costa Rica.
Jaime Tishler Collection, San
Jose, Costa Rica.
Noorderlicht Photofestival,
Groningen, The Netherlands.
...
Further Information
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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"This war on words is also waged in many of the photographic works of Jorge Albán, who uses intertextuality as one of the main resources of construction and meaning. For instance, in the series titled Las Palabras, the word Amoréxico is superposed on the pages of a diary full of engagements and activities. Meanwhile the lyrics of popular songs by rejected boleros can be read beneath the word, Submitted. Similarly, on the illustrations from books containing countless versions of The Prince and the Princess in the form of innocent fairy tales, the word Ill-Tamed, can be read. Here we are looking at ordinary or invented words, used exceptionally in the masculine form and taken by the artist from commonplace expressions and everyday conversation. Stressing their ideological and generic significance (…). Through his work , Albán questions some of the historically established roles of the sexes. Modifying and querying the stereotypes of strength and weakness, reason and emotion, public and domestic places among others."
From "Art in Central America, The Critical Glance", article by Tamara Díaz Bringas, Art Historian and Critic. Published in Atlántica, No. XX, 2001, pg. 52.
"...Jorge Alban's work portrays the struggle between representation and reality. Pretending to be detailed transcriptions of the real, his images deceieve us. In his own words "They attempt to show the cracks and crevices in our perception of reality", fragments passing for the whole entity. His subject matter is perfect: private properties, former houses or stores full of life that now lay abandoned among ruins in San Jose. Places where time stops, former private spaces now turned public, to aour gaze or used to urinate, smoke a cigarrete or make love. The photographic treatment of these disolated spaces allows us to penetrate places that seemed open but were actually closed, and are only stealthily entered, getting to know what it is and hinting at what it was, a place full of human implications that nowadays holds no more than traces."
"The artist retakes in this work his interest the the ruinous , started some years ago with his expressive photos on car junk. His vision no lonerg evolves around himself but turns to the aoutside, depicted in a detached that makes the ruins look ironically pretty. The use of digital capture and software that disrupts hyperreality, produces a disturbing reality in contsat tension with a past no one seems to care about."
From "First Confrontation in Art 2002-2003", catalog text by Ileana Alvarado, Art Historian, Professor and Curator. Published by BCR and the National Gallery, 2002, pg. 22.
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