Art and memory: Pere Noguera

Art and Memory. Contemporary Artistic Initiatives

Pere Noguera

Carbon Paper

Archive – War Family Series

DVD Loop War Family

112 carbon paper copies

The installation Carbon Paper is a variation of the project “Archive Series – War Family” presented in 2011 at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona. Based on the coherent use of suggestion characteristic of Pere Noguera’s work, in his rereading he now incorporates the subtlety of a material as fragile as the photocopy on paper. 112 copies cover the wall and surround a screen with film images. This combination of disparate elements constructs a sharp reflection on the fleeting nature of memory. Photographic clichés of almost phantasmagorical faces and wild landscapes that could be from a cross-border area are shown half erased or disguised by the technical simulation of carbon paper, while on the screen we can glimpse ambivalent and disturbing sequences. Almost bucolic family scenes collected in amateur films are set against war scenes of a documentary nature that refer to the Second World War. The film recycling of these “found” materials enables the creation of a visual diptych, “War Family”, which expresses the intrinsic contradictions, instability and weaknesses on which wellbeing and potential moments of happiness rest. Carbon Paper refers to a convulsed relation between the individual lives and collective events and lets us see a possible re-production of the personal memory of the artist in which war and exile seem to be two structuring factors.

Pere Noguera (La Bisbal d’Empordà, Girona, 1941) began his career in the framework of the new poor, ephemeral and conceptual poetics of the 1970s. His artistic practice is based on the process, deconstruction and fragmentation which brought him closer to Arte Povera. He has developed works on the conceptual processes of photography and electrography and he was one of the first to work with photocopies in the seventies. Moreover, he has explored the concept of “archive as a ready-made” based on found photographs and films which reflect a way of understanding photography and its process. In recent years, he has gradually revised this task in keeping with the new digital processing. Pere Noguera, who received the ACCA Award in 2011, has had numerous exhibitions in national and international centres.

2nd July to 4th November 2012

MUME Hall

Art and Memory. Contemporary Artistic Initiatives

This space is devoted to the periodical exhibition of contemporary artistic initiatives based on the relations between art and memory – individual and collective – associated with historical and political events. In this respect, priority is given to those works that, based on a documentary, emotional and reflective perspective, consider the function and influence that memory and the figure of the witness can have both in understanding 20th century history and in a possible critical approach to the complexity of today’s world.