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

Collection

Carnac, 1 de agosto, 2008. Lección de historia [Carnac, 1 August, 2008. History Lesson]

Image caption
JORGE RIBALTA

Carnac, 1 de agosto, 2008. Lección de historia [Carnac, 1 August, 2008. History Lesson]

  • 2008
  • Gelatin silver printing on Baryta paper
  • 20 x 25 cm each
  • Cat. F_166
  • Acquired in 2014
  • Observations: The works are numbered.
By:
Yolanda Romero Gómez

The artist himself has said that this work is based around a guided tour (a 'history lesson') of the 'Ménec alignments' of prehistoric standing stones in Carnac. The tour then continues along the Kermario and Kerlescan alignments, via the great menhir of Le Manio, set in the middle of a wood by a horse-riding centre.

The Carnac stones, which date from 5000 to 3000 BC, are one of the biggest and best preserved prehistoric sites in Brittany, in northern France. They feature a large number of Neolithic monuments and form part of an extensive megalithic area that stretches as far as the British Isles. The extent of the Neolithic remains suggests that this was a single area of influence and exchange. The meaning of the prehistoric stone alignments and circles is open to debate, though the prevailing theory is that they were used for astronomical and ritual purposes. The enigmatic standing stones aligned in a field are reminiscent of sheet music left by the remote past for the future to interpret.

For Ribalta, the various interpretations are what we call 'history': 'In 1903, Aloïs Riegl established that the value of monuments lies in the fact that they are the crystallisation or fossilisation of the artistic will (kunstwollen) of their times; that aesthetic experience is rooted in historical memory: it is born from observing stones moulded by human hands but deformed by time and the weather. Monuments are in fact documents. The monument/document dialectic is part of the modern philosophy of history. The angel of history, looking towards the past but dragged along unstoppably by the hurricane of progress, gazes at a growing pile of ruins. It can be assumed that in the bottom layers of that pile we would find something like Carnac.'

Carnac, 1 August, 2008. A History Lesson (2008) is a clear nod to the photographer and writer Alan Sekula, one of the great benchmark producers of documentary photography, and more specifically to his work Geography Lesson, in which he presents a narrative sequence based on 75 images that speculate on the links between the Canadian landscape and the dynamics of financial capitalism.

Yolanda Romero Gómez

 
By:
Isabel Tejeda
Jorge Ribalta
Barcelona 1963

Jorge Ribalta divides his time between working as an artist, an exhibition curator, a critic (he is a regular contributor to the La Vanguardia newspaper), a writer and a cultural activist. He has written a major book called Servicio Público. Conversaciones sobre financiación pública y arte contemporáneo (UAAV - University of Salamanca, 1998) and worked as Head of Public Programmes at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (1999-2009). These are all essential facets of his biography, as is his political questioning of the uses of and mechanisms for documentary records, with photography playing a core role. The exhibition 'Monumentmaschine' ['Machine Monument'] at the José Guerrero Centre in Granada (2014) is a highlight of his career as an artist. Highlights of his writing career include his publications Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografía (2004) and Historias de la fotografía española. Escritos, 1977-2004 (2009). His most important work as a curator is in the thesis expositions Processos documentals. Imatge testimonial, subalternitat i esfera pública (La Capella, 2001), Una luz dura, sin compasión. El movimiento de la fotografía obrera, 1926- 1939 (MNCARS, 2011) and Aún no (MNCARS, 2015).

In his output as an artist, Ribalta uses small, analogue photographs, mostly in black and white. Each separate image is meaningful only as part of a set of photos with juxtaposed semantic features. He thus draws up a simile with the setting up of an exhibition as the translation and interpretation of images in a choral sense, and film montages: 'Photography is part of things. It is a fossil, but the montage brings the images into relation with one another and returns them to life. This montage of images hints at the illusion of movement produced in film. Placing images together involves not only linking the different processes and tasks shown and making them legible, but also setting the images themselves in motion. Giving life to stones is creating an illusion of movement'.

Ribalta has staged solo exhibitions at the University of Salamanca (2006), the José Guerrero Centre (Granada, 2015) and the Helga de Alvear Foundation (Cáceres, 2015).

Isabel Tejeda

 
«Monumentmaschine», Württembergischer Kunstverein (Stuttgart, 2016).
Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 3.