El Jol 87
- 1986
- Oil on fibreglass and polyester
- 203 x 171 x 23 cm
- Cat. E_143
- Acquired in 1993
Andrés Nagal started out as a painter but later showed a preference for sculpture, in which he experimented with industrial materials. His love of experimenting led him to work with oil, acrylic, iron, zinc, brass, lead, fibreglass and polyester, and to reuse items including tins, ropes, neon tubes and furniture. El jol 87 (1986) is one of the most paradigmatic of all his three-dimensional collages.
It shows an interior scene in the half-light. In the foreground, on a slightly raised platform, there is a round table on which a lamp and a brightly-coloured parrot stand. A lit cigarette also disrupts the boundary between space and time. Another lamp hangs from the wall behind the table and lights up a painting: a schematic portrait of a figure with a startled look. There is a window with a striped curtain through which somebody can be seen reading a newspaper, which is reflected, in turn, on the left side, as if it were a mirror. The sculpture, made of polyester and fibre glass, works as a complex installation that falls prey to mystery.
His work is highly ironic in terms of the different forms of expression and disjointed images around us. This work is part of a set of sculptures that Nagel worked on from the mid-1980s to the 1990s, where he offers a disturbing, burlesque and openly absurd vision of reality. Many of those works contain contemporary references from films, comics, posters and advertising, but also from old art. Here, he seems to opt for the feeling of the moment, the risk of explaining history in real time, where the complex may become very simple.
Other works by Andrés Nagel