Tora, Tora, Tora!
EN/ES
Text by Miguel Rózpide Pazó
First published in OD-Magazine, Brussels, June, 2019
Who´s not a stranger? This constant combination of uncertainty and self-possession makes us the ghost of our familiar things. Part of what makes Gómez Selva´s pictures so gripping is the sense of intrusion in everyday situations. The concept of form released from our perception as a tool can set a misplaced assemblage of glass, coated steel and flawless surfaced plastic. This natural estrangement continues when mind loses its delusion of authority, consisting of a body moving to its limits, in conflict with its social landscape.
The objective of Gómez Selva’s research project is to reach an intermediate point between the study of a landscape for its symbolic and ideological value, and its formal value. The relationship between one's identity and another's legacy does not have to be synonymous with cultural or social intrusiveness, but this process of questioning and fragmenting conflicts of others allows the resignification and creation of multiple conceptions of the same landscape, even working from a point of ambiguity, uncertainty and the mutability of images.
Gómez Selva wants us to be tourists in our own comfort zone. He wants us to research our territory, as he says, understanding all its possible dimensions, such as social, cultural, political, territorial, economic or religious. There are countless factors from which to work a territory; factors that turn us into "intruders" when using certain identity values. The concept of landscape is linked to the territory and forms part of its identity, but is also an aesthetic and formal result of certain conflicts, legacies, and can even be considered as a mark of what a territory has once been, and of what it now is.
‘’Tora, Tora, Tora’’ invites us to consider our position in relation to the subject. It opens a debate about the manmade, both physically and psychologically. When I travel, and I think this is a common feeling, I face the realisation of how vulnerable the conceptual system which explains and gives sense to our lives is. Our perception is inevitably bound up with our everydayness. Sometimes it is necessary to step out and see from a different angle. That is what Gómez Selva offers us, the possibility of a familiar estrangement.
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First published in OD-Magazine, Brussels, June, 2019
Who´s not a stranger? This constant combination of uncertainty and self-possession makes us the ghost of our familiar things. Part of what makes Gómez Selva´s pictures so gripping is the sense of intrusion in everyday situations. The concept of form released from our perception as a tool can set a misplaced assemblage of glass, coated steel and flawless surfaced plastic. This natural estrangement continues when mind loses its delusion of authority, consisting of a body moving to its limits, in conflict with its social landscape.
The objective of Gómez Selva’s research project is to reach an intermediate point between the study of a landscape for its symbolic and ideological value, and its formal value. The relationship between one's identity and another's legacy does not have to be synonymous with cultural or social intrusiveness, but this process of questioning and fragmenting conflicts of others allows the resignification and creation of multiple conceptions of the same landscape, even working from a point of ambiguity, uncertainty and the mutability of images.
Gómez Selva wants us to be tourists in our own comfort zone. He wants us to research our territory, as he says, understanding all its possible dimensions, such as social, cultural, political, territorial, economic or religious. There are countless factors from which to work a territory; factors that turn us into "intruders" when using certain identity values. The concept of landscape is linked to the territory and forms part of its identity, but is also an aesthetic and formal result of certain conflicts, legacies, and can even be considered as a mark of what a territory has once been, and of what it now is.
‘’Tora, Tora, Tora’’ invites us to consider our position in relation to the subject. It opens a debate about the manmade, both physically and psychologically. When I travel, and I think this is a common feeling, I face the realisation of how vulnerable the conceptual system which explains and gives sense to our lives is. Our perception is inevitably bound up with our everydayness. Sometimes it is necessary to step out and see from a different angle. That is what Gómez Selva offers us, the possibility of a familiar estrangement.
︎