Alejandro Vidal
A thousand Lonely Suicides

curated by Marco Scotini
Private view: Thursday, 15th September 2005, 7pm
15th September - 15th October 2005
Opening hours: Wed – Sat, 14 – 7pm


Play_gallery for still and motion pictures is proud to present "A Thousand Lonely Suicides", the first Berlin solo exhibition of Alejandro Vidal, an appointment with an exponent of the last Spanish artistic generation.

Inquiring about the state of security or the power of fear, Vidal’s work is concerned with the mise-en-scčne of violence and politics. Ski masks, urban tribes, hang-outs, punk music and DJ culture, martial arts manuals, performative rituals such as hara kiri, rave and techno scenes are all elements of the video works and photographs of Alejandro Vidal. However, Vidal’s research is not about the representation of violence, it is rather on its deconstruction: a kind of “anatomy” of its representation. In the works of the Spanish artist the image of violence takes possession of the codes that can be found in the mass media, advertisement and films (i.e. icons such as Bruce Lee and Robert De Niro in “The Deer Hunter” are sometimes present). The image in itself is not important, the importance lies in the ideological context and its interpretation.

For this exhibition, curated by Marco Scotini, Alejandro Vidal will transform the entire space of Play_gallery: he will move an empty rock stage into the gallery space; a spot-light will be pointing at a trash metal drums, a place where something has already taken place or is about to happen. In the completely black-painted space, Vidal’s installation “A Thousand Lonely Suicides” (2005) recovers the tensions generated by the combination of youth audiences, counter-cultural social conflicts and suicide as a form of release. “In it, the amassed image of the rock concert is re-politicised from an anti-nostalgic perspective, by taking counter-cultural fanaticism towards the sphere of collective resistance and urban guerrilla “ [J.Barriendos]

Two big video projections, photographs and light boxes will also be on display. The video, “Conflict, modern pathologies and tactics of disappearance”, will be presented for the first time on this occasion. If in “You can scratch that way without the record falling off” (2004) the punches of an old boxer are alternated with that of a young drummer, in the new video the hand-to-hand combat between two men alternates with one destroying a guitar and one with a jump rope in permanent training.

The rhythm of techno music as a soundtrack increases the psychological mechanism of Vidal’s works constantly questioning the narrative of our fears and our capacities to resist.