Isaac Cordal’s human figurines, standing only about 25 cm tall, are showcased around the exhibition space in the Victorian townhouse. They are made with cement and then reproduced using silicone moulds, representing a kind of metamorphosis, whereby man trades his role of citizen for one as a piece of urban furniture.
‘I woke up and I didn't jump on the mobile phone to find out what was going on, the reality of the world is shown on that touch screen, it's a window that besieges us from the outside. It is through this screen that more than the morning light enters the whole 21st century in a wild state, like a kind of tsunami that invades everything. Turned everything off. I open the window and the real world appears calmly, apparently untouched by events. The virus seems like some kind of truce in our siege of nature.
The proposal for this exhibition comes before the pandemic, but the virus and its side effects become the protagonist of the production process. Freedom of movement is restricted as well as access to materials. With all this it was necessary to make a mixture of works that whispered to the present our concern about the future.
I was surprised that many topics I had worked on in the past became more relevant to the current confinement itself. Globalization and its side effects at their best. Events were accelerating, creating a vertigo of the unknown. Our relationship with isolation, social distancing, the balcony as a panopticon, the romanticization of the confinement …
The news of the day invades everything. An invisible enemy became our roommate, like an annoying squatter for the welfare society.
Turn everything off but wash your hands’ (Isaac Cordal, 2020).
Click here to see a video of his works installed in the house.
