PHotoEspaña 2009 : Mabel Palacín @ Museu Colecção Berardo, Lisbon

Mabel Palacín, The Right Distance, videoinstallation, 2002-3.

LISBON.- Museu Colecção Berardo opens an exhibition of audiovisual installations and a photographic series rethinking about the role of image in the digital world and its role as reality maker. These works of recent production analyze how image have been introduced in our lifes, diluting the boundary between reality and fiction.

In her works, Mabel Palacín has shown a clear concern for the way images have penetrated our lives, diluting the border between reality and fiction. She considers images an agent for building reality and the camera a research tool that maintains special relationships with the real.

The artist presents two works made specifically for this exhibition that deal with the image’s double nature and the reconsideration of photography in view of its new condition within the digital universe.

The Hinterland video owes its title to the area right next to a city, a territory on the boundaries of the metropolis and in a wider sense to a settlement’s zone of influence, the area surrounding the city. With this term, she defines the space of mutual influence between photography and the moving image. The new photographic work explores how images work using four filmed sequences that are combined three times thus becoming 12 possible stories. According to how it is seen, the interpretation of each sequence can be double or multiple: what it is and what it could be. The exhibit is completed with the video La distancia correcta (The Right Distance) (2002-2003).

Mabel Palacín (Barcelona, 1965) studied art history, cinema, photography and video at the University of Barcelona. During her career she has received the Altadis Prize for the Plastic Arts (2003) and the Paris Photo Prize (1997), among other awards. Her work has been displayed at the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica in Barcelona as well as at the Helga de Alvear gallery in Madrid and the Tomás March gallery in Valencia.

Mabel Palacín, The Right Distance, videoinstallation, 2002-3.