La Mirada Blanca

Communication with the purpose of culturally promoting artists included in the Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Collection, works protected by intellectual property rights. Their total or partial reproduction or processing by any means, or their transmission or cession in any form is forbidden without the authorisation of the holder of the rights to the works.

TECHNICAL DATA

Author: Ángel Marcos (Medina del Campo, Valladolid, 1955)
Title: La Mirada Blanca (The white gaze)
Year: 2010
Technique: 1 laserchrome photography on paper (mounted on Dibond) and 25 light boxes (inkject printing methacrylate)
Size: unique installation of variable measures (photo 140 x 180 cm. / light boxes 36 x 46 cm. e.o.)

This installation, a unique piece by the artist Ángel Marcos, is comprised of a large-scale photograph and 25 light boxes. It was acquired by the Fundación María Cristina Masaveu at the ARCO International Contemporary Art Fair (Madrid) in 2010. It is the first work in the series The White Gaze, an invitation from this Valladolid-based artist to set aside our conventions when approaching other more or less distant cultures. That concern, which here is captured in images inspired by his travels through China, is the conscious, committed act of a traveller with an open gaze whose series on Cuba and New York have also shared this common denominator, the concern with understanding and explaining a world in which globalisation should not prevent contradictions from being resolved.

The photographs of Ángel Marcos are characterised by their scenographic nature and the elimination of anecdotes, evoking the memory of the place solely through the testimony of the objects and space. The journey, meant as the physical displacement and personal inquiry or newfound awareness, is the key to his work, where the technical qualities and ethical commitment expand the audience’s reflection beyond the direct impact of his distressing images. The journey as a constant, the departure, the essence of the sensorial experience. What underlies these pieces is the yearning for understanding of a consumer society which is nothing other than a metaphor for the end of the revolutionary dreams, the condemnation of a kind of advertising misunderstood as a dogma of faith in the media, and a perennially clean, pure gaze when facing conventionalisms.