Catalogue > At random

In his essay Prison Time, Michael Hardt maintained that we have to construct a way for the moment of love to return, for it to be repeated endlessly and take on a tempral density, a duration that would become the material structure for a new time. That is what I wanted to construct, tinking in terms of the literal meaning of the word construct. To modify time and make visible not only something that generates a crucial change, but also something that apparently does not, whose change we are unable to perceive because of their fleetingness or because they are too commonplace. Using the strategy and the power of slowness. As Genet, who Hardt addresses in his Prison Time, might have put it, somebody could have achieved it even if it were only for a thousandth of a second. Things are not as they seem. They are much more coplex or contain more than we can see at first glance. Paraphrasing Frank Stella, "things are as they seem, but for me they are not as they seem...". Reality is much more complex, as well as changing and fragile. Any detail can breach it, one single event can transform a scene from reality into something completely different. We to are part of this reality, and that makes us just as fragile and changing. We are a reflection of what is happening around us. With this project, I continue transgressing reality, looking for ways to explore it further and find that which is difficult to see, accentuating the importance of what surrounds us in order to reach a better understanding and valuation. I have constructed a path twelve metres long by one metre wide for a trolley to circulate automatically along it in both directions. On it is a six metre high tower with a 500 watt spotlight. The trolley moves at a very slow speed from one end of the path to the other, pausing for one minute on both ends. It takes approximately one minute to cover the twelve metre stretch. At this speed, the trolley iluminates everything along its path as it comes under its focus. When bringing the work into the exhibition hall as we see in the intervention shown in the video, something that I touched on earlier happens: the structure somehow loses its core role and the place takes on a greater centrality, thus transforming it into an object and part of the installation. It takes on the false appearance of a stage set and reveals all its fragility, its harshness, or it is simply transgressed. Everything is a to-and-fro, a coming and going, endlessly repeating itself and marking this temporal density Michael Hardt spoke of. The idea is form this moment to keep on repeating itself and to generate a false way of controlling the uncontrollable, which is time.

Jaime de la Jara (Madrid, 1972) graduated with a degree in Fine Arts from de Universidad Complutense of Madrid in 1996. Since then he has won several prizes and grants, including one from the Fundación Marcelino Botín in 2003 and another from the Artistic Creation Awards of the Region of Madrid in 2008. His works have been seen in various exhibition and competitions such as: Generaciones 2005 and 2006 at La Casa Encendida and Destino Futuro, the selection of young artists by the Region of Madrid at the Botanical Garden, curated by Oliva María Rubio. He took part in LOOP 05 with an individual project and at the Planes futuros exhibition curated by Lorena and María Corral. De la Jara is on the roster of Fúcares Gallery in Madrid where he showed his work in the 15 inches project in 2007. It was then seen at art fairs like Balelatina (Miami, New York and Basel), ParisPhoto, Foro Sur, MACO, D-Foto, Vienna Fair, ARCO, Artorama (Marsella)? His work is in public and private collections like Fundación Coca-Cola, Caja Madrid, Fundación Marcelino Botín in Santander, Artium Museum in Vitoria, Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo, Region of Madrid and ABC Vocento. In 2005 he was runner-up at the ABC Vocento Prize. He is currently preparing a one-person show for Sala Tecla in Barcelona.