Francisco Navarrete Sitja takes part in the Blow Up – Film & Visual Arts Platform

Blow Up – Film & Visual Arts, a web platform on film and visual arts in Spain, has invited Francisco Navarrete Sitja to participate in its “Gallery” section, which includes 10 images of previous works and projects by the artist, in addition to a brief reflection on what the image means for him in his work and artistic process

Among the projects and images presented by the artist the works from 2009 to 2016 stand out, specially the projects carried out in “Shared Territory” CASAPOLI 2016 Residence (Tomé, Chile) – a collaborative project between the artist and PhD in Oceanography Osvaldo Ulloa: a procedural initiative that establishes subjective crosses between the loss of oxygen and future of the South Pacific Ocean, tensions of the rural context in the bay of Coliumo and problems of representation in scientific practice-, “Residence in Art Colbún” 2016 (Colbun, Chile) -project that puts in dialogue the extraction and trip of the rocks for the construction of the hydroelectric complex, trajectories of the eradicated communities and utopian signs of the rural context-, and “Residencia Proyecto Norte” (Iquique, Chile) – research that articulates reflections on technical thinking in the representation of the territory, atmospheric fog phenomena in the Atacama Desert and dystopic imagery about the future of the Chilean desert- among others.

Regarding the artist’s brief reflection on the image, he comments: “Perhaps, by my pictorial training and constant formal experimentation with image and reproduction devices, I conceive the images as materiality. These are ductile, mutant, rough, abrasive, transient, organic, latent, and phony forces. Thus, after the expressive and affective value that I attribute to the perceptive, it is impossible for me to think of them as autonomous bodies. For me they do not acquire vitality until entering into relation with something, touch another one, some others. In this sense, I conceive what is represented in the image as something aesthetic until it does not enter into dialogue with a surface, with a medium. Hence, rather than crossing the image with the eye, I try to stop and speculate around them through its inscription surface. It is from this dynamic material and expressive that I play to interpellate the intensity and potentiality of the same, in different topographies, narratives and contexts. Being incredulous, tactile and having a bad minority, that game suits me well”.

+info