Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Busan02 de la serie Paraísos Artificiales [Busan02, Series Artificial Paradises]

Image caption
PAULA ANTA

Busan02 de la serie Paraísos Artificiales [Busan02, Series Artificial Paradises]

  • 2008
  • Printed on RC Luster paper mounted on KapaFix
  • 178,5 x 149 cm
  • Cat. F_474
  • Acquired in 2022
By:
Álvaro de los Ángeles

In Asian culture, a fascination with identical copying and the emulation of the surface appearance of things is viewed as the most efficient way of explore their true depths. The visible part of an object is not only a covering of other, hidden parts but a way of summarising and praising what is invisible or underlying. Wim Wenders devoted part of his documentary Tokyo-Ga (1985) to singing the praises of the full-scale copies made in Japan of dishes at restaurants, with replicas which are as exactly true to the originals as they are attractive as pieces of art. In a similar vein, the natural and the artificial are linked with the strange familiarity of what is recreated, and at the same time with the difficulty of discerning between original and copy.

 

The series of photos Artificial Paradises (2008) by Paula Anta (b. Madrid, 1977) shows shops with artificial plants and flowers that are surprising in their lushness and their resemblance to the natural originals. Taken in the South Korean cities of Seoul, Busan and Daegu, the interiors portrayed appear to exude life. Compositionally, the scenes are very similar, with frontal shots centred on a passageway that leads to the jungle-like back of the store, next to which all kinds of brightly coloured vegetation flourish as though beside a river. The metaphor can be extended, and the river-passageway can be compared to a paved path that makes the native vegetation deriving from its own materials sprout on both sides, like an artificial fantasy world that regenerates itself. In Busan 01, for instance, the stonework paving imitates wooden boards, thus closing the circle of perpetual artificiality. A wide variety of hanging plants recreates a kind of vegetable scenario, an evanescent vertical garden, in the white light characteristic of such locales. The same occurs with Busan 02 and Busan 03, making up a trilogy that generates a style. The elegance of the second, with its ample terrazzo floor, contrasts minimally with the third, which also shows the worn entrance steps and the plants spreading outside the store in search of the main stream. Anta’s gaze composes the rest: a catalogue of surprises, an equalisation (owing to its small differences) of the extraordinary that nevertheless becomes a plain copy.

 

In his essay Shanzhai, Byung-Chul Han explains the widespread culture in China of imitation, copying and creation of new originals with minimal details that differentiate them sufficiently to turn them into autonomous items. Shanzhai products are not intended to deceive anyone. Their attraction lies precisely in the fact that they specifically indicate that they are not originals but are just playing with one. Artificial Paradises examines the dichotomy of what is original in a copy, but does not judge its validity as a replica or its deception as an element of reality. In fact, as a solution it proposes the genuine possibility of seeing our environment as a succession of elements which are the visible face of the grand-scale industrialisation of the world, sometimes adapted to it and sometimes indebted to it. Finally, Anta seems to question the gravity of photography as a medium which purports to perpetuate the brief flowering of a still life or a vanitas project, posing as a reliable witness to its time. Here, she shows the truth of a time stood still, of a blossoming at its peak that will never fade: a broad smile immortalised.

Álvaro de los Ángeles

 
By:
Álvaro de los Ángeles
Paula Anta
Madrid 1977

Paula Anta uses photography to explore the relationship between nature and culture. This is a classic theme in art, which has come back to centre stage in aesthetic and conceptual terms in contemporary works. Her photo series, with or without the backing of installations, explore the historical need of human beings to relate to and change their environment. That relationship has not always entailed maintaining a sustainable balance or making sustainable life choices. She focuses on some of the conflicts that thus arise. Her main method is the photographic cataloguing of various examples that make up a single set or unit, a hypothesis in globalised terms.

In Journal de Hotel (2005-2006) ['Hotel Journal'] the examples are pictures of hotel rooms from cities around the world. The shots taken are the same in all cases: a front-facing picture of a double bed that has been slept in. The sheets, blankets and pillows are part of a combined set that is always similar but always different: a common way of using the public/private spaces represented by hotels. Today they are our home, and tomorrow they are someone else's. The rooms are decorated in a middle-class style with canopy beds, classic pictures, woven headboards, wallpaper, etc. The front-facing viewpoint, which seems to mark a distance from the object portrayed, can also be found in the series Palmehuset ['Palm-tree House'] (2007-2010). It establishes a dialogue with Artificial Paradises (2008), the series to which three pieces in the Banco de España Collection belong. The spaces shown in the first piece are greenhouses, umbracula and pavilions set in botanical gardens in cities such as Bergen, Madrid, Vienna and Edinburgh, while the second shows artificial plant and flower shops in South Korean cities such as Busan and Seoul, in a fascinating emulation of a lost paradise. The similarities in composition between the natural vegetation (albeit in an adapted ecosystem) and the constructs in perfect, artificial bloom, denote the same inquisitive attention on the part of the artist.

She also sets up a dialogue between different ways of constructing or adapting the world of plants in the image of humankind.

Taking photos and then presenting them in a different setting is always a subjective action, even more so when a space is first modified to serve as a backdrop for the images taken. In her series Börus (2007-2009), Edera (2012) and L’architecture des arbres (2013) there are various interventions that continually seek to bring to light the power of nature when it invades spaces which are unexpected or not prepared for it. Offices and transit areas, non-places in the first case; an invasion of black-painted ivy leaves covering the floors, falling through gaps like dark torrents or crowning classical Roman architectural features with uncertainty in the second case; and the subtle appearance in the third case of bare branches of trees like apparitions in rooms, passageways and stairways with sober, elegant architecture.

Travel is an important element in Paula Anta's work. The series mentioned above are set in interiors, but there is another, later part of her oeuvre in which physical location is distinctive and determinant: in it she intervenes in larger areas of her surroundings. Cases in point are Tule Baleeje (2014), Laal (2016) and Nube ['Cloud'](2017) where black pigment, leaves painted red (laal in Hindi) and the creation of a dust cloud against the landscape, respectively, give rise to unexpected scenes. Khamekaye (2018) blends the importance of location (the Grande-Côte in Africa) and human intervention, with 'landmarks' stuck into the beaches (khamekaye in the Wolof language) that simulate human beings and animals but are made of branches, sticks, nets and plastic, marking the entrance from the sea to inhabited areas.

Álvaro de los Ángeles

 
«Purificación García Prize» (Madrid, 2009). «Purificación García Prize» (Gijon, 2009). «Purificación García Prize» (Ourense, 2009). «10 Years of the Blanca Soto Gallery» (Madrid, 2010). «Craneo-encephalic Landscapes. A 3-Cushion Escape» (Madrid, 2013). «Critical Context. 21st Century Spanish Photography» (Madrid, 2013). «Artificial Paradises» (Madrid, 2018). «The Laughter of Flowers» (Madrid, 2022). «Flowers & Fruit. Banco de España Collection», Banco de España (Madrid, 2022-2023).
Vv.Aa. Purificación García. Concurso de Fotografía 2009, Madrid, Purificación García, 2009. Vv.Aa. Contexto Crítico. Fotografía española siglo XXI, Madrid, Ministerio de Educación, cultura y deporte, 2013. Paula Anta Manifiesto. Paula Anta, Santander, Nocapaper Books&More, 2017. Eduardo Merlo Tomar las islas, «Tomar las islas», Revista AD, 2017, p. 93, Julio/agosto 2017, n.º 126. Paula Anta Wanderungen, Alcobendas, Centro de Arte de Alcobendas y Nocapaper Books&More, 2019. Vv.Aa. XI Premio Bienal Internacional de Fotografía Contemporánea, Cordoba, UCO Press. Editorial Universidad de Córdoba, 2021. Vv.Aa. Flores y frutos. Colección Banco de España, Madrid, Banco de España, 2022.