“The work of Ignacio Uriarte takes as a starting point, his former occupation in the office of a multinational company, in order to circumnavigate questions related to routines in the workplace. Conceptual and minimalist, Uriarte has consolidated a wide body of work through his meticulous, incisive, and sometimes obsessive practice, in which narrative and words are rare guests, while on the other hand, performance is the protagonist. Gestures, materials, distance, repetition and time are actors that he uses in order to disclose the significance of presumably uninspiring moments. Based on the same workflow and materials he used when working from 9 to 5, Uriarte traces an interesting relocation between two areas of the new cognitive worker of the 21st Century (i. e. the museum and the office), and he poses questions related to the cultural worker within this new paradigm, by simply doing the same thing in a different place.
1s & 0s is a title based on the artwork of the same name — a series of A4 sheets of paper on which ones and zeroes are typed randomly with different typewriter models — with the intention of emulating digital language by means of an illegible mumble. From this point onward a dialogue is established with other works which once again emerge from the office routine, placing emphasis on cultural labor and the impact that digital technology has had on it. In many cases artworks use formats and techniques which combine analogical with digital media and a binary aesthetic language — black and white, light and dark, positive and negative — conforming an exhibition with a nostalgic feel as if trying to resist the inevitable.
Two works serve as space/time axis: on the one hand, on the stairs we are welcomed by Acht Stunden zählen (2014), an acoustic installation designed in Berlin in which a monotonous voice is heard counting away for eight hours and using syllables as units of time. Uriarte’s installation is not only a reference to the span of time accounted for by a typical working day and the museum’s own daily opening hours. It also reflects the connection between time as an abstract category and language as a way of structuring and defining it. On the other, at the end of the visit, Rolling Credits (2014) makes use of the format commonly applied to film credits in order to display MARCO staff completely, from its very beginning. By including every single staff member, department and ladder, he spatially defines the project and offers a sort of picture of the Museum’s history.
Time (8 working hours) and space (the museum) give us the parameters from which all the other works are placed. The wall in the entrance hall displays Arabic Numerals (2011), an animation made from a photographic sequence which represents — sculpturally — our way of counting in Arabic numerals. The image shows the three digits ascending in form of piles of accumulated photographs up to the number 9 and then go back to the original 0 again, emphasizing the relationship between time and its enumeration, and therefore establishing a dialogue with the sound work in the entrance stairs. If each syllable was equal to a second there, 1,000 numbers equal 10:00 minutes here, which turns the video into a decimal clock.
Now inside the gallery space, 1’s&0’s — as we previously stated —, reflects on the relationship between people and machine in the digital era. Each sheet is typed on different typewriters, with their own characteristics: lettering and size, state of the ribbons, line spacing… In a whole, a grayscale vibration merges, looking forward to revealing a version of the ‘matrix’ in an analogical way. Forty years after Deleuze and Guattari had developed their machine concept — being it understood not only as a technical device and product but also as a construction and social concatenation —, the transformation of the machine and of the collective scenario changed completely, increasingly becoming more immaterial and telematic. But, in Gerald Raunig’s words, beyond the technological and communication-technical conditions, the crucial material of abstract machines is knowledge production and cognitive work. If the promotion of cooperation, relationship and interchange becomes crucial to structure post-Fordist production, the virtuosism of the abstract knowledge is its raw material.
Therefore, how are relationships settled in this scenario? Where can the body be placed with relation to the machine? How do the aforementioned subjects adapt to the new labor paradigm?
Surrounding these questions, Period (2014) refers to the full stop in writing. Through the arrangement of 224 enlarged images of the mark left by the period of different typewriters on the front and back of a piece of paper, Period develops a binary language which reflects on the analogical photographic process itself (positive-negative). Likewise, Binary (2011) consists of a series of photogram displayed as the result of some kind of experiment. Here, a number of paperclips get involved in a binary rise (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024) — numeric values which remind us of computer memory measurements. On gathering up on a black background, they accumulate until they shape a strange metallic amalgam, in allusion to a personal computer: a clip is the most primitive computer of all; it is used to order/compute information, and at the same time it is reminiscent of certain physical elements of the office environment which are about to vanish. In Upper and Downer (2014) a typewriter is back to function in order to quickly type black and red percentage symbols whilst the platen knob is turned manually. Black lines rise and red lines fall copying a color assignment widely used in accounting. The organic look of the lines might refer to the representation of value curves, manually or arbitrarily obtained in this particular example.
Without losing sight of the aforementioned relationship between the digital and the analogical media, other works directly address the tools, materials and dynamics of the office work and its surroundings. In that way, Four Geometry Sets (2011) consists of 72 sculptural compositions made with four geometry sets. The resulting figures could be symbols or letters of a code — e.g. a Bauhaus alphabet. The intrinsic value of each geometrical form is pursued by mirroring, lining, chaining and overlaying, and subsequently playing with it. Although these abstract geometries might be perceived as a purely formal exercise, if we take into account the original function of the rulers — i. e. measuring space on paper —, their context (office work) and their symbolic value (correction and precision), the compositions acquire new meanings that shall be understood as a response to their origins. In the same room, Fluctuating Folds (2012) takes the act of folding a sheet of paper before putting it in an envelope as a starting point. The rule of thirds is slightly modified here, allowing a fluctuation in the trajectory of positive and negative folds, and therefore establishing a light and shadows play between geometric and organic shapes. On methodically and continually repeating the same exercise, routine becomes illegible, and an apparently simple gesture becomes sculptural on the wall. In Rotation 1 (2011), hot and cold areas of the wall are divided by an imaginary horizontal line. Looking as if they were pieces of paper, 15 A3 wooden panels trace an ascending rotation around their left-hand corner and their right-hand corner in order to cross that imaginary line in a hot/cold tone change. On the floor loop The Ringbinder Circle (2014), a circular installation composed by folders which search for a playful aspect with relation to ordering systems, despite keeping a new systematic order.
Within the gallery space, two confronting series question the relationship between quantity, effort, substance and result. On the side, Linealstrichstrukturverlauf (2012) shows 33 drawings in which a permanent marker charts black-ink lines, crisscrossing in a web of taught wires. The last of the installment leaves only a sprinkling of ivory dots where the paper once was, completely overtaken by black. Through a common and simple action, the more the quantity of work, the larger the covered surface. On the opposite wall, 44 Labyrinths (2013) displays eleven prints on canvas of labyrinths created using Microsoft Excel. Tracing the line in Excel is a manual process regulated by predetermined basic rules. Here, a winding line grows sequentially longwise, but the proportional space covered in black color remains the same. Hence, more work does not equal more results. The two previous series are accompanied by Semicircular Gradation (2014), which consists of a pencil drawing in fifteen grading scales (ranging 6 h to 8b), simulating a semicircular graphic of percentages gradually progressing in tones. Each section of the graphic shows the same effort, but the surface increasingly darkens.
In the following room, a series of works about manual labor dialogue in the space with blue [color] as the main character. Historically related to the working class, blue emphasizes the shift from the industrial to the cognitive world as an economic engine. Blue Collars (2008) is composed by 32 drawings made by opening a blue ink-cartridge and squeezing it out completely onto the paper. The paper is balanced making the ink flow into an open collar-like oval shape. Color and form make reference here to the etymology of the term — "blue collar" began to be used during the Industrial Revolution in the United States to designate the manual worker or employee. In Sequential Inclination 1 and 2 (2012), a more abstract movement of the pencil trace can be observed through a vertical geometry made in pencil and blue ballpoint pen. The directional movement of the trace in each of the drawings constitutes — as in some of Uriarte’s previous works — an organic space despite the stiffness of the shapes. Likewise, Blue Ribbon (2012) is a two-channel video in which the squares on a graph paper are being filled out in blue color. Arranged one in vertical order, the other one horizontally, the squares create a constant and repetitive flux which provokes a certain sensation of infinity, showing a never-ending working period despite the ongoing movement. Uriarte develops the same activity here in the museum as in his previous position as an office worker. Is the gap between the cultural and the service sectors so wide as we sometimes would like to think? Or are they both well-engaged parts of the same system, and in this dislocation they prove, precisely, that everything keeps on restlessly working?”
Juan Canela
Exhibition curator