Working on the very memories of the Museum, and the recollections of what used to be the preventive and correctional prison, the project by Alonso Gil reproduces in large scale one of the prison cells of this panopticon, when it was still a prison. The cell becomes a big drawing due to the paintings and drawings executed by him on the walls and ceilings with fluorescent paint, which is recharged with light and glows in the dark. When the lights are turned off, “ghosts” start to appear. Strokes and words stand out, showing us images and texts similar to the former prison cell’s in other times, which usually make reference to the imagery of repression and marginality, or which also haunt the artist's oeuvre. The intentional use of graffiti as a subversive kind of writing allows Gil to recover for the project even those graffiti in the city’s streets, or those making reference to current problems in the region.
The project was conceived in the domain of the artistic practices that pretend to re-signify the duet art-life in the dialectics of resistence-creation. It identifies that marginalised, liminal and troublesome space where street language meets the excluded one, and where game is lit together with transgression and intentional criticism. His installation in the Museum was accompanied by a series of big-size drawings made by the artist with diverse techniques, mainly watercolour and photographic emulsions. They were similarly allusive, as sketches of The Cell, to prison memory and the socio-political context. This project is nourished with those experiences, worries and interests which, since the beginning of his career, have been marking him as a versatile artist.
Alonso Gil (Badajoz, 1966) studied in the School of Fine Arts in Seville. In 1989 he exhibited for the first time in the gallery Ascan Crone in Hamburg. In 2000 he obtained a scholarship from the Polloc Krasner Foundation. Ever since, his production has taken very diverse paths and his work has been broad and exhibited throughout the world. |
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