| José Antonio Hernández-Díez MP3. Compositores (Mp3 Composers), 2002 |
| Photograph | Digital print mounted on Dibond |
| 157 x 227 cm |
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| Among the variety of formats that is a feature of the work of José Antonio Hernández Díez, and his interest in and use of mechanical structures as an exercise in dialogue between desire and frustration – a subject that has stayed with him throughout his career –, it comes as no surprise that he should feel attracted by the new technological advances of the digital era. Mp3. Compositores is a large two-dimensional piece that looks like a giant computer desktop packed with disordered sound archives that draw a crazy, chaotic map with certain important referents to the history of music, both classical and contemporary. On a white background, Mp3 Compositores brings together a vast number of composers and pieces that overlap and deliberately hamper access to the information. The archives, exclusively reduced to the visual icon that identifies them, in other words, with no possibility of being listened to and/or consumed, become a mere symbolic presence of something that does not really exist. The saturation of information reflected by the piece and the impossibility of any effective reception add up to a subtle new game between expectation and frustration, reducing what would be a great collection of music – where the artist specifies the archive copy number – to a purely aesthetic composition (icons and texts). A kind of personal cartography that favours an encounter between composers such as Handel, Debussy, Beethoven, Cage or Prokofiev. David Armengol |
