Martí Anson

Martí Anson (Mataró, 1967) usually works with photography, video and installations. The experience of the spectator is essential in his work. Often, spectators are confronted by irritating situations, or simply find their expectations are dashed. In Bon Dia (1999), for example, he invited the spectator to enter into a living room with an armchair, a plant, a television and a reproduction of a painting hanging on the wall. A door in the room led, along a lengthy corridor, to another room which was exactly identical to the first.

In 2002, in L’apartament, the artist invited us to share a curious experience, visiting a model apartment in which the rooms were distributed peculiarly: the entrance was via the bathroom, and this led into the kitchen, the bedroom, the living room and, after traversing the long corridor, the exit. In making the ordinary strange, or breaking with everything we are accustomed to, Anson makes us question everything that appears set in stone.

Already, in some of his first films, such as Invitation to Wait, The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty or I have been there, he stuck to his guidelines of placing the camera in one direction and shooting in a single isolated shot, keeping to (as well as perverting) the rules of place, time and action.

Without doubt two of his more mature works are Walt &Travis (a road movie that questions the conventions of the genre) and Fitzcarraldo: 55 days spent building a Stella 34 Yacht at CASM, which he correlates with Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. Anson took on an almost impossible mission – working on the construction of a yacht at the Santa Monica Arts Centre for 55 days (keeping to the established working hours of the week), only to destroy it at the end of the exhibition because it could not be taken out of the room through the door.

In 2008, Martí Anson has been one of the artists invited to the seventh contemporary art biennial: Site Santa Fe.

Montse Badia