The "Visual Gravitation" project revolves around the relationship between receptacle and content in the context of the museum and the artistic construction from a photographic reference. The purpose is to create a link between the intention of the receptacle or museum and the content and meaning of the artistic work. In other words, using the architectural receptacle (Museum) to create artistic content (Art).
In this relationship arise concepts and questions that define the final work, such as: Which works of art can we find in the museums depending on their architecture? Is it more important the architecture of the “Museum” or the artistic content ? What is the interest of the institution towards the spectator? Is there an architectural difference between museums that show institutional, commercial, or political art? What is the future of the museum in the long run? What is the relationship between the exposed works and the Art Market? Has there been an excess of big-name architects in the construction of the museums and a shortage of artistic content because of a lack of financial management? What is the future of the museums after a pandemic like the COVID 19?
To reflect about these relationships the idea is starting from an analogic, medium-format photography as the working material. In this sense, the first phase is finding the architectural spaces. The second one is the essay: playing with small pieces, creating new volumes and displacing the photographic reference to a reflection about the architectural shape, turning it into a remade image with an expanded meaning of the edified space.
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Managing a work of art to deed only itself is an old ideal of the modern arts: cut the ropes that bind it with natural reality and let itself prove its value, contained in its pure limits. Resuming this venerable pretention without incurring in the abstraction and, furthermore, doing it beyond the photographic media seems like an impossible task. However, Grijalvo has found the way to brace the autonomy of his images, weakening their bind with the real reference –without losing it- and vindicating their condition as objects. Grijalvo starts from the calm study of those levels to isolate them by cutting and separating them from each other. Having respect for their basic components and introducing the void in the photographic image, he manages to build a real depth, non illusionary. What the artist does is not now an exact replica of another thing (mimesis), but a presentation of a new object (poiesis) that needs no external approval.
Jaime Cuenca.
