Paco Chanivet and Guillermo Ros at Espai Tactel / Barcelona

Però no tinc temps per a aquesta merda ara mateix, com si m'importessin els concursos de pixades entre monstres

Paco Chanivet, Guillermo Ros

text by Carles Àngel Saurí

17 September - 7 January, 2020


Espai Tactel

C/ Ca l’Alegre de Dalt 55, Baixos C

08024 Barcelona


















































Però no tinc temps per a aquesta merda ara mateix, com si m'importessin els concursos de pixades entre monstres.


1. Since the Corporation went off and left everything empty there has been nothing else but dogs. Espai Tactel Toormix has stopped being the tourist destination of choice and has become a pisshole. In the past their resorts were a joy of different species and androids, coming here to get away from their unchanging realities. However, since the last frigate disappeared having emptied the planet of resources, dogs have been the only survivors in this ruin of a world.

 

2.  Diary Fragment

“Three weeks of relentless work in 85% humidity, we have been consumed by the aesthetic trance, transfiguring our desires, fears and frustrations into a pack of nightmares.

We have made our bodies work to 150% of their possibilities. Pandemic, smoke, cement dust... the drops of sweat were used to give the dogs something to drink. While we were giving them their reward we were able to continue forming them. Now that they don’t wear a collar, they are unleashed, and they wonder about becoming part of whatever surrounds them.

(...)

There are mosquitos and the facemask is soaked. The dogs are now eating stones, medication, fallen leaves. At least while they are eating they leave time for me to stir up my ideas, of which I can only perceive a slight buzzing like flies in a jar.

Every time I have a project I close the door, the session, my life. I turn my back on life and feed the dogs.”

 

3. ii n n n n n n n n   

Both Guillermo Ros and Paco Chavinet share a productive need: to understand the material: They both are affected by their resources and the processes used. Also, this influence leads to a contamination of the material they are to transform. The transformation means retreating with the material with which they explore their reality in their work. In their process of control over the material they often find they are overwhelmed by the context. Their works seep into their life and work rhythms. Outside forces such as the pace of capitalist reality becomes like a whip that beats their works and causes scars that they prefer not to hide. Without falling into the trap of romanticising precariousness, Paco and Guillermo project not only a series of fictitious imaginary worlds, but also a position on their professional context. This is resolved through the construction of a universe of symbolic, autobiographical and textual references that speak of and refer to the artistic system and their politics.

 

The two artists conceive the exhibition as a fragment of a universe found outside the expositive framework. In a type of narrative more related to the construction of lore than a narrative line, each object, gesture and inserted characteristic plays a role in the background of the narrative universe. Textures that reference back to the quarry where the stone was first found, gestural memories of the ancient monuments carved in stone in Egypt, ironic metaphors on identity... There is no unjustified gesture, this is a crucial point in the language of both artists; each object is woven into the metalinguistic, auto-referential or narrative coherence. “I don’t have time for this shit now, as if I cared about pissing competitions between monsters” is a fragment in time of projected universe by Paco Chavinet and Guillermo Ros. Two of a litter that come together, two creators who find a dialogue starting from a series of canine characters and objects.

 

One day Kanye West twittered “When speaking about sections of the company I like to use the word arms instead of divisions”. Badly translated the word “arms” can be read as limbs as if Yeesy thought of his company as a cyborg body with as many arms as sections, like a hyper-capitalist Shiva. The dogs in the exhibition suggest the same structure, they are projections of both artists. Limbs, arms, and dogs... Each with a role, like in classical theatre where each character responds to an archetype, Guillermo and Paco’s dogs play a role in this dungeon.

 

And as in the dungeons all identity dissolves; the dogs eat from the same trough, sleep in the same cages, roll around in the same piss... Each with their own features and their similarities hybridized both litters share the same needs, fears and horrors.

LITTER X 

Guardian: parasitized by stone, infected by its own material.  Hypertrophied dog, using its own body as productive tool. Amputated head, marble nucleus and marihuana tail. 

Machine: the technological arm that allows us to carry out the work. Machine which needs to be connected to an energy flow, an arm under the control of the flow of creative desire and the womb.  Element necessary for the survival of the litter in its capacity to relate to the context which is affected in a violent and devastating way. 

Fag-ends: always fucked over, ashtray of despotism of a context which leaves you no choice but to loose yourself in your own role. Mask of contained anger.  It feeds on dry leaves, the waste material of a production that is only seen strewn behind its back. Made to go on producing in its body the pleasures of a material that it will only receive as an ashtray. 

Creator: Conceptual support of the litter. A hybrid between dog and human, where the dismembering of the body of the pack, the functions of this would be the control of neural fluctuations. Pressured by its own watering and over stimulated by the womb, it reminds us of Dr Guero while spewing smoke and bile from its exhaust pipe. 


LITTER Y

Drains: connected to two injectors from which come three cables which connect to the womb.  The drained thing which gives off energy. The emaciated dog, which for some time suction has stopped it being in an active state.

Habitat: devils parasite its interior, being seen in its joints which open and close  Dog beaten by its own forces and eaten up by its own aesthetic drive.  An incubator of smiling demons that reproduce in litters.

Neurotic: dog full of maggots in an urn. A type of bubble-like disproportioned head with rotten fruit.  A cross between a litter and a pack of ancient Egyptian felines in a group which corresponds to the most rational side.

Joker: The intuitive dog, the little one which brings the biggest bone. Three eyes of intuition.  Despite its size it dares to bring bones which it can’t manage, exceeding its size and possibilities. These playful dogs normally have their favourite prey. Soft creatures which let themselves be hunted by their smell.


4.  Parasitic Cycles

Wild dogs normally enter into a relationship with parasitical insects. A toxic relation which eats off the host and which offers the latter some sort of benefit. At some point in the process the object of the parasite realises the damage or harm done by the parasite. Over time the parasite occupies the body of the host and this becomes its home. Its symbiotic time period allows it to live hidden until being revealed. The body of the host becomes a shell in which hidden architecture is built up which then absorbs and sucks off the energy of the parasite organism. By the cathartic moment of revelation the parasite has been able to modify the appearance and internal structure of the host.

 

Formed and domesticated to fit into human life, dogs may be understood as the result of parasitic relationship. As a species that are another example of the subjection of nature to human use and control. Today, dogs, like medication or marihuana, are examples of how an organic being has been violently transformed by the desires of the human species. 

 

The exhibition is also a parasite, a virtual and tangible superstructure that sucks away the strength and time of the agents of the artistic world. The exhibition is a machine with a thousand arms that inject themselves and connect with the titbits thrown away by the artist in dog form. Espai Tactel Toormix is just another womb, an internal organ of a dismembered being, face and bodiless: a womb of a hive-like mind shared around the thousand and one exhibition spaces of the contemporary artistic system.

 

Fostered by the longed for copulation, the drained bodies activate the arms of the Exhibition by neuronal stimulation, ideas and desires. The desire to produce encourages an parasitic mating which the contemporary artistic system is fed on. This mating has more to do with the bite of the Cell than a friendly mating. This bite drains the body to become an organ-less skin, empty, soft and hollow. Like this scene, which once seen haunts you, in which the descendant of Dr. Gerno drains until the person is left with only the soft rubbery skin from which the body has been emptied, until the hand can no longer hold the wad of bills that it had been holding.

 

When Faust allows himself to speak to Mephistopheles he is conscious that from that moment on everything is going to change. Like also the yes from Lester to Lorne in the hospital from Fargo. It is like the yes of an artist on the materialisation of one of his or her pieces. The desire to produce may turn into a violent symbiosis in the framework of the parasitic mating of the art system itself. Artistic production shows us concentric parasitic circles that feed into the one enclosing its perimeter.

The maggots that start to come out of some dogs warn us of the accelerated state of the parasitic cycle. The already grown and matured insects have decided to reveal themselves in their last stage. They appear at the joints, at the unions between the limbs. Like demonic energies they germinate searching for the most fragile part of the host. Parasite-goblins moved by aesthetic synergies absorbed by the body of the dog, by the mind of the artist. Maybe you can hear the shrill laugh while you see yourself reflected in their eyes.


Carles Àngel Saurí. Independent Curator.