LA DAMA DE CORINTO (THE LADY OF CORINTH)

December 15, 2010 – August 28, 2011

The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Esteban Vicente presents La Dama de Corinto. Un esbozo cinematográfico (The Lady of Corinth: A Film Study), by José Luis Guerin, created for the museum’s spaces.

It is an audiovisual installation which revolves around the relationship between cinema and painting, placing the origins of both disciplines in parallel. It confronts cinematic and pictorial “staging”, where the screen is a canvas where both disciplines have dreamed.

The title refers to the mythic origin of painting mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History. Pliny relates how, before the imminent departure of a warrior, his lover decides to trace the outline of his shadow, cast upon the wall by the light of a candle. This primordial painter doesn’t work through direct observation of the model, but through his projection. In that mysterious choice, Guerin likewise recognizes the foundational myth of cinema. An ideal myth from which to think and dream of the screen as a canvas.

José Luis Guerin shows himself seduced by the pictorial images of antiquity which have disappeared, but which still underlie the classic texts and are, in turn, a permanent source of inspiration for new images. He begins with the showing of a short epistolary film, which introduces the spectator to the show’s intentions and tone. In the following rooms, the staging becomes a game of echoes, escapes, extensions, and correspondences with the contents of the letters.

We discover a new way of narrating through “projected-paintings” on screens, like canvases and projections spread out upon the wall, which reference one another, constructing and deconstructing the evoked myths and images.

Only images and words, like in “silent films”, black and white, light and shadow. Random images which reveal the pulse of the foundational myth. 

Sponsored by Junta de Castilla y León y Telefónica.