Jordi Colomer

Using the camera as a means to investigate sculptural and architectural forms, Jordi Colomer tugs at the fabric of urban life. In this exhibition of new and recent works, he transforms the gallery space, intensifying the scenarios embedded within his still and moving images. Colomer infuses the galleries with a visceral aesthetic: His films are projected onto wooden panels, and a motley collection of beat-up chairs is arranged against the wall of almost every room. In his installation Anarchitekton, 2002–2004, four projected films and maquettes offer a lo-fi mimicry that strikes at the constructed fiction of an original. Sending his character Idroj Sanicne through the bustling streets of Barcelona, Bucharest, Brasília, and Osaka while carrying a cardboard model of a high-rise building visible along his route, Colomer evokes acts of both protest and devotion. Also implicating the urban backdrop, but through a sense of fantasy, Colomer’s En la Pampa, 2007–2008, a series of five films shot in the Chilean desert, depict two nonactors in various scenarios. Creating situations with limited props in a sparse setting, Colomer orients his audience, as well as his performers, according to popular postures and movements. A playful irreverence enshrouds this work as well as others, such as Papamovil, 2005–2008. Inserting his miniature, decidedly pared-down version of the Popemobile into urban environments, Colomer toys with the iconographic status of this sacred vehicle as well as the response of the viewing public. Meanwhile, Colomer manages to maintain a sincere and inquisitive gaze in Pozzo Al Monte, 2008, a group of photographs of a cemetery in a Chilean mining town that displays a profound respect for each fragile monument to the end of a life on earth.