Imitación a la Vida

Courtesy of Galería Ángeles Baños.

A mirror, says the encyclopedia, is “a shiny surface in which images are reflected.” A space-less place par excellence, without density, yet capable of containing everything—even the infinite; a threshold between the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic, gathering and condensing all that surrounds it. And what is an image? “1. The visible appearance of a person or thing as the result of certain optical phenomena // 2. The reproduction of the figure of an object on a mirror, screen, etc…”
An image is always a reflection, a bottomless well—something intangible, uncertain, and undefined, whose meaning is not limited to what we see or recognize, but is bound to a whole reservoir of memories and latent mental visions in our minds.

The screen as a residual surface, and as a reference in our visual imagination, has been a recurring theme in the work of Juan Carlos Bracho, as has the landscape—as a mirror of ourselves, of our most unfathomable consciousness. But are we truly critical and aware of the reality around us and shown to us, or are we simply hypnotized by those reflections, by those images we consume compulsively and around which our thoughts revolve?

Throughout his career, Bracho has reflected on the theme of landscape through abstraction, fantasy, dreams, or the gaze of the other, but for the first time, the protagonist of the video performance “Imitation of Life” is a real landscape: the garden as an expression of a domesticated, codified, and intellectualized environment.

In this new work, true to his practice, Bracho—patiently and with a detached attitude, stripped of the aura traditionally attributed to the artist’s figure—performs an action recorded in real time and edited in a single sequence shot: the erasure of the silver backing from a large-format mirror that fills the entire scene. The chemical solvent applied by the artist—with a spray bottle that melts and dissolves the image—turns the mirror into a simple pane of glass, revealing what was hidden at first glance: an image that is nothing more than a continuation of the view we initially see fade away. A play of reflections in which our gaze, fixed on the screen, experiences a full 360º shift once the action concludes.

The final result of this long single take is a narration without climax, in which the weight of story and action dissolve, giving the image a fully plastic (visual) dimension. This suspension of narrative allows the viewer to immerse themselves in the creative process of constructing and receiving images that slowly transform before their eyes.

“Imitation of Life” is ultimately a piece that delves into the most intimate sense of the idea of landscape—a synergistic element in constant change and metamorphosis—and into the mirror as a surface that reflects what does not belong to it. A reflection on perception, on the screen, and the images it endlessly emits—ever more ethereal, intangible, and devoid of meaning.

La Línea, Cádiz, 1970. Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Cuenca. He currently lives in Madrid.