Some people would use an empty shoe box to make a pinhole camera. The inside would be painted black and there would be an aluminum foil lens. The box would then be equipped to capture its surrounding reality. If you placed film o r photo paper inside the box, those surroundings would be reproduced onto photographic support.

Alejandro Garmendia places cut up photographs inside this potential camera. He also includes two drops of paint, one black, the other white. A small stone goes inside the box, the lid closes and the box is shaken. All the cut up photographs, the paint and the stone moves around to create new images.

A process which at first seems haphazard, without rules and given solutions, turns out to have a reason of its own. The end results are somewhere between the photographic logic and the logic of a painter, between one model of vision and another. This intense merger in a relatively small and dark space during a relatively short time reminds me of a camera’s exposure mechanism. But unlike a camera, this box includes existing prints which are being worked upon further.

The use of the camera implies an image, an image which by itself corresponds to what we refer to as reality. That is the starting point. But by cutting the image up, and putting it through the treatment in the box, this images relation to any reality at all is being challenged. In the process, it becomes a record of movement. Not more or less real, but its capacity as image is altered from one state to another. Coming out of Garmendia’s show box, excuse me shoe box, the transformation of the image suggests a certain autonomy. It suggests that images have their own power and bring attention to their ability to adapt to given situations and requirements. The further the artist succeeds in pushing his images to perform in different contexts, the stronger they grow.

Cecilia Andersson: These paintings, including its process, raise questions about orientation in space.

Alejandro Garmendia: I guess I have been searching for one reality in another. It’s the same in my collages too. I have mixed different scales until finally, there is no scale at all. I have also managed to create spaces that do not exist since the logical connection with reality has been broken. In the box the same thing happened but I didn’t set it up, it just happened.

C. A.: So it is not part of an ongoing investigation?

A. G.: You can always find a relationship if you look for it. I would say it is almost impossible not to find it. That’s why I don’t worry so much about looking for it; it is always there. It is mine and therefore it will have a clear connection to me. When you consciously start to look for this connection with previous work that is when you lose coherence. Otherwise, there will always be coherence, if that is the correct word... That goes for all types of creative work. All creative work has a motif there is a reason why it evolves. The only way to be incoherent is to consciously look for reason. That is when the work loses its reason to be, when a painter is scared of losing his identity for example, and continues doing what people expect from him. That creates a state of mind which paralyzes a creative evolution of the work.

C. A.: Meaning the work is an organic process?

A. G.: Yes, because the organic is always justified. It has its own existence and autonomy.

C. A.: If it is an organic process, are you ever afraid of terminating your pieces?

A. G.: No, on the contrary. I am afraid of the work bringing me to a predetermined place.

C. A.: How did the series began?

A. G.: It began at a time when I was between studios and had no place to work. I needed a system which would allow me to visualize large formats in small scale, since that was all I could do at the time. I thought of making a model and to inhabit it as if it were a miniature studio. That was my initial idea. But then I began thinking more practically, more radically perhaps, and that proved to be more useful and interesting. With the idea of working in a 1/4small scale which would still have all the characteristics of painting, I invented a sort of game. It consisted in placing parts of cut up photographs in a box. I guess I saw these photographs as equivalent to canvasses. I put two drops of paint in the box and a stone, and closed the lid. While I was shaking the box all the little photographs inside got painted by the stone. I completely forgot about the project until a short while ago and have now selected the photographs I liked As usual in my process; I have projected them on to larger canvasses prepared with photographic emulsion.

C. A.: These images all depict water. Why water?

A. G.: I like the water with its concrete and at the same time fluid texture. I like how its color changes, how it takes different forms and shapes. It is a reality which is easy to identify, but at the time of its interpretation it is enormous. But I don’t really need a reason to why I choose water I use it because I like it for something or other. I don’t need to justify an objective, a project or an idea. If one idea works to generate another and if it works to generate motivation, I stick to it. I used water but it could have been practically anything. At the time I started working on this series I saw an image I liked and it made me think about the many possibilities of painting water Snow, or sand on a beach would not be as interesting. You can draw water on a piece of paper and a child will know what it is, but sand? Can you draw it?

C. A.: What is your relationship to the stone?

A. G.: It is my projection on a small scale. I also see it as a system that I have put into function. When I placed the two spots of paint inside the box I realized there was a relationship between scale and time. I also realized it was possible to calculate the time. If the stone was, let’s say 1,000 times smaller than I am, the speed would be more than 1,000 times faster than myself. This means that the stone would be able to paint 50 images in 50 seconds. It would take me a year with that same energy, if it would be possible to calculate that energy. It’s like a game for me, but the relationship is a fact.

C. A.: So you are the stone?

A. G.: Again, the stone is my projection at this size. I interpret the images in correspondence to my I even though they have more energy than me, as all small things do. My interest in this project is not only in the change of scales. It is also a way of putting this sort of game, or system to work. One could call it a strategy, and it is in processes like this that i find the systems I later put to work.

C. A.: Is this a way of looking for justification for what you are doing?

A. G.: No, I have no need to justify. I just don’t have things that clear and I always look for new methods that works for me.

Cecilia Andersson