artnexus #43

José Alejandro Restrepo (Paris, 1959) is the most significant video installer in contemporary Colombian art. From his early works to date, video has been the fundamental resource that he has used in his work.

The cover reproduces a scene from his video installation Iconomía (2000), where, after reflecting on what the image means, he returns to a recurrent problem in his work. Here, the image is presented from two perspectives: iconoclasty and iconophilia; the former advocates the destruction of images, the second the tendency of its use, and even its adoration. These confronted aspects are the basis of the installation presented in two autonomous spaces. In one, a gigantic video image that occupied the totality of the wall slowly and repetitively showed a machine that destroyed, in full view of the surprised passersby, a lot of illegal videos. The other space had a hanging TV monitor, as if it were a sort of apparition; a canvas placed before the screen reduced the perception of the image. Gesticulating on the monitor was a sober, aggressive face. Drawn on the semi-transparent canvas was Holy Face, permanently transformed by the image of the monitor in such a way that the face, usually an object of adoration, was turned into a threatening figure.

In both spaces, he placed another TV monitor that constantly played parts of opinion programs and newscasts in which the testimony of the people revealed the survival of the notions of iconoclasty and iconophilia in the contemporary world.

For Restrepo, the antagonistic position regarding the image is not a historical problem. After the battles between iconophiles and iconoclasts in the Byzantium of the eighth century, the situation continues in force in the society in which we live.

The forms of representation, just like knowledge, are finally invented and controlled by those who wield power, and hence the changes and ambiguities that can be recorded with respect to images.

(See article on page 54).

IVONNE PINI