There is a form of reflection which does not lengthen up to theory, but
crystallises and becomes work. The Greeks named it poíesis, and we might
recognise there, rather than in the field of old techné, the origin of
what we keep calling art. In fact, present artist, who are made to load
on their shoulders the weight of that self-conscience brought by
modernity, and with the inherited engagement of the universe of the
avant-garde, have managed to learn to move in the limits of reflection
with an unexpected ease -not with strictness.
Nevertheless, Àlex Nogué has reflected, actually, but has not only done
that. He knows that art is not so much a matter of communication of
thoughts, as rather the fact of laying certain -or uncertain-
experiences at publics disposal. Such experiences cannot be achieved
unless it is trough a concrete work, that is, by means of the physical
materialisation of countless reflections which are not always expressed,
associated feelings, elusive hints, gestures, operations which are
virtually unlikely to be identified and which, on the other hand, gain
new meanings, not only in the process of the making of work, itself, but
also, obviously, when it contacts the different spectators.
That might be the process Àlex Nogué referred to when he mentioned the
noun reversion. That word alludes to a kind of return from a former a
state, at the same time, though, to a transformation of sense. He calls
on a change in both the way of being and the way of performing. And it
is such ambiguity what takes us back to face our problem: the need the
artist feels to play his game, to unfold his experience between
reflection and action, between speech and product, between immaterial
word and physical object.
II
What interests us most at its particular moment, though, is to suggest
something further on the way Àlex Nogué has been approaching this
subject. You might say that his most notable wroth has been the one of
finding, in each case, the point, the suitable time to interrupt the
course of reflection; that is precisely how he made it productive. What I
mean is he has a capacity for introducing elements or turns, based on
which he tends to questioning the inescapable intellectual device which,
otherwise, might succeed in catching the work.
Such a fact is already made obvious in his first confrontations with the
world of nature; the clearly conceptual trend did not prevent him from
inserting "sentimental" or perhaps autobiographic reasons. Now I am
thinking about those funny photographs which subject is "The artist and
the Sheep" where Àlex Nogué appears at times with a touch of sadness,
others with a wide smile, just like a shepherd who, during the holidays,
approaches his herd: nature, and does not understand it -or not only-
like a "landscape" but like a complex field of experiences where one
must abide and go across and understand through the help of all
available feelings and even a few more.
One recognises a similar attitude in his "Carts", which he has been
making since the nineties. They are sculptures which are in a certain
way related to landscape, they are objects showing an immanent meaning
which directly derives from the long tradition of contemporary art, but
they are, as well, the crystallisation of an experience that the artist
himself usually senses a posteriori (and "a times extremely a posterori"
he states) and that does have not to do with one's own dim past, that
keeps unexpectedly coming back.
If Carts carried stuff (wood, dead nature, "landscapes"), "The house and
the clouds" (1995) took us at the right place to lay them, and to lay
ourselves safely. As the house shelters while clouds menace. The "house"
by Àlex Nogué, yet, was shown as a no-entry field, not only because of
the natural threat, but even for the human being, so that the “concept"
of house lay virtually closed on becoming "work" (of art). But, then,
the question would become as follows: will the artist have to go back to
"his" sheep and share the heartless exposure of nature?
III
This exhibition can be understood as an attempt to answer that question.
Its origins may be linked to those old worries on landscape. In fact,
we find a reading table for the first time in Àlex Nogué's work in a
recent item, called "building period", where a noisy cement mixer found
in the country, in a building site, unexpectedly accompanies the
spectator while he is at work hypothetically, consulting a book a
medicine.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the table is ready": the titles looks somehow
confusing. Here, it is not so much question of sitting down to have a
meal. But rather, once again, to start thinking: the spectator is
invited and, sometimes, in a very clear and even emphatic way to use the
exhibition hall as a space for work, for reflection and for an exchange
of experiences. The artists asks you to be calm, to pay attention, even
to keep a close concentration on each of the proposed situations: a
wheel-table which measurements are those of a grave; a table next to an
empty wall; another which does not seem to have found his place; and
some others equipped with "electric light table" and drawing books. That
might make us think of the installations by Armajani or Kavakov. But in
Àlex Nogué's there is a dominating austerity which outlines it, because
it gives up any spectacular hint.
That is the way: again, we come to find the above mentioned strategy:
the ever present reflection must be interrupted. Àlex Nogué does that by
letting himself be led by what he calls "a certain fidelity to the
unconscious", that is to say, to the hidden source of any experience.
But he does that by fixing it in both, the shape of a poíesis object.
And as a poetic one, in the relative sense of an unwritten poem. As far
as the spectator is concerned, he also can and will have to reflect, but
that will happen in the context of a surrounding serenity where his
thoughts will not be able to arise in an abstract way, but only in
connection within his own life. Actually, what the artist asks everybody
is but an exercise on one's memory.
Vicente Jarque
Catalogue of the exhibition’ exposition,
Ladies and gentleman, the table is ready.
Espais Association. Contemporary Art's Center.
Girona. (Spain) 1998