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A World Without Barriers
Original title: Un mundo sin barreras
1995
-1997
Mixed media on blackboard
Dimensions: 4 units: 83.5 x 64.5 cm each
Reference: ACF0670
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The diverse elements that Federico Guzmán uses in his output is no obstacle to detecting some of his conceptual assumptions, which have remained constant since his first works in the mid-1980s. Since that time communication has been a recurrent theme in his work, which explores the act of transmitting messages with a shared code. He starts from the fact that communication is an activity that defines the essence of what it is to be human. This is why he frequently leaves aside any possible content—the broad analysis of systems of signs and rules—to focus on the way in which such an everyday act can produce an alteration in the individual and in his relationships with others.
From the late 1980s Guzmán included large numbers of cables and telephones in his work. This emphasis on interconnection can be observed in works such as Islario or the installation El silencio homologado, which he presented at Espai 13 at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona in 1989. On that occasion he hung a series of drawings on the walls of the exhibition room, connected by means of a complex network of telephone equipment and lines. The work reflects on the boundaries between public and private exchanges in a world where there are ever fewer barriers to the circulation of information.
El problema de Aladino is one of a group of works made with the same materials. It consists of a canvas fixed to the wall, part of which has been painted with a material that conducts electricity. Two ends of the line defined by the painting emerge from the canvas and occupy several metres in front of the wall it is hung on, a space in which there are five circular rubber elements. These are connected to each another and to the conducting material by a disorderly network of thin electrical wires. The work invites us to reflect on the very essence of communication by showing how the world is being covered by a physical network linking machines and people.
Un mundo sin barreras belongs to a set of works that Guzmán made together with other people as part of his questioning of the notion of authorship in relation to works of art. Based on the everyday act of writing concise messages, the work consists of four framed blackboards on which short phrases have been written and different shapes drawn. The simple strip of wood that serves as a frame has been painted. The direct precedent of this piece is the group of ten works that Guzmán presented in 1995 under the generic title Blackboard Jungle Dub, a title that suggests various parallel references. One is to Evan Hunter’s novel about the lives of American teenagers in the 1950s, which was the basis for the well known film The Blackboard Jungle, the first feature film to include rock and roll on its soundtrack. Another direct antecedent is Guzmán’s intervention at the first Johannesburg Biennale, the result of which was later presented at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona.
In these three cases Guzmán invited secondary school pupils to paint, draw and write on blackboards, based on motifs that he had left in view on the surface. The result is a spontaneous accumulation of ideas and images, a faithful reflection of the concerns and tensions of a large group of people. More than a document of its time, the artwork thus becomes a space for reflection. This space—defined but with imprecise borders—allows the artist to be a witness to and catalyst for the concerns, tensions and ambitions of a broad social group.
