Within the framework of the 2023 LOOP Festival, we present “Melancolía” by the artist and filmmaker Jose María de Orbe. The exhibition is structured into two acts: an exhibition of his most recent photographic project and the screening of his latest film “XXX, I”.
XXX, I
In his treatise on melancholy, Aristotle distinguished between symmetrical and asymmetrical humors. Whether melancholy was an illness or a quality characteristic of extraordinary men depended on the preeminence of one or the other. XXX, I is a journey along a mysterious road that explores the relationships between symmetry and its breaking; A journey through melancholy.
PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECT
“If modernity - and postmodernity - are the transitory, the fugitive and the contingent, as Nietzsche, Dostoievsky or Baudelaire foresaw, and Western society feels a special veneration for novelty, speed and progress, the opposite must be temperance, courage and the lasting: the eternal. At the mercy of the present and the ephemeral, the human being cannot help but wander, hurried and harassed, through a meaningless universe, pursued by the lack of time.”
Inspired by these words by Rob Riemen, collected in his book “Nobleza de Espíritu” (2008), I decided to work on images from the origins of photography, resignifying them and giving them a second life, a new encounter with light. I searched for photographic images in archives in the United States, the nation that was born and grew at the same time as photography. These images have their origin in the 1860s, during the American Civil War. My intention was not to review the conflict - which unfortunately would have been topical - but to develop a language with the photographic images of those years and the textures that the passage of time has engraved in them.
The new images propose reinterpretations of the past mixed with visions that are the product of my imagination. To do this, I have carried out a process of appropriation, through a slow and deep immersion in the original photographic plates, until I can identify with them in an intimate and personal way. In this dialogue, I have combined a current look at daguerreotypes and wet collodion plates with the original look of the authors of the images.
A process that has inevitably led me to a state of melancholy, not because I thought that those times and that original way of photographing was better than the current one, but rather so as not to forget where the roots of photography reside, the origin of photographic art. The images in this series, treated with current digital techniques, represent a union between past and present, between two ways of working that add up and enhance each other, forming a tribute to the solid and the eternal. I have tried to ensure that these images remain calm even in moments of confusion.
- José María de Orbe - September 2023, Ses Ruines, Menorca
ABOUT JOSÉ MARÍA DE ORBE Y KLINGENBERG
José María de Orbe and Klingenberg (San Sebastián, 1958) graduated in 1985 with a degree in cinematographic direction from the American Film Institute (Los Angeles).“Aita” (2010), his most notable feature film, was considered one of the top ten best films of the year by magazine Sight&Sound; the film received awards including The Silver Shell for best photography (Zinemaldi, San Sebastián); The Silver Puma Award for Best Film (FICUNAM, México); and has been featured at the MoMa - Documentary Fortnight (New York) and in London’s Tate Modern - Joan Miro Anthropology, among others.
Orbe combines his cinematic work with artistic photography and has created exhibitions in galleries and national entities such as Galeria Senda (Barcelona) and Galería Kur (San Sebastian).