Cabinet Nº 43 (Tillmans) is an oil painting which at first sight looks to be a conventional still-life, with a tumbler placed on some glass plates and a couple of part-metal spoons that provide a pretext for showing off her skill with reflections, transparencies and highlights, as still-life painters are fond of doing. These objects are accompanied by pieces of fruit, which serve to include contrasting colours including orange/yellows, blues and purples. All this is set out on a tablecloth where there are also some leftovers and a crumpled, used serviette. However, a glance at the frame of the picture changes that initial impression, because it does not coincide exactly with the edges of the painting. Two horizontal white strips separate the scene shown from the top and bottom of the frame. As a result, it may be wrong to consider the painting as an ordinary still-life. In fact, the work is a recreation of a photo by German artist Wolfgang Tillmans (winner of the Turner Prize in 2000), who produced a major series of photos of still-lifes that helped earn him a reputation as a contemporary icon of the genre. Gamarra’s painting is a copy, a reproduction, but also a translation from the language of photography to that of oil painting which changes the meaning of the original. Even the apparent realism of the painting leads viewers to re-examine this fundamental concept in the history of Western art. She evokes the possible variations, resulting in multiple meanings, that can be contained in a realistic depiction of the real. In her works, Gamarra revisits the meaning of the notions of art legitimised by history and the very process of perception and recognition of major figures in contemporary art. In this case the figure in question is Tillmans, one of whose works ‘New L.A. Still Life’ (2001) forms part of the Banco de España Collection.

This work by Gamarra is part of her series Cabinet, a project in which she sets out a dialogue between her own paintings and art in terms of images and objects for exhibition and trade. The series comprises painting based on appropriations of works by various artists including Manet, Modigliani, Hieronymus Bosch, Olafur Eliasson, Dan Graham, Andrés Serrano and Franz West, making up a sort of collection of ‘museum-worthy paintings’. Sometimes these pictures accumulate on the walls of a venue so that, along with furnishings and other objects, they recreate a collector’s treasure trove that also contains other paintings and where there are art fair stands, museum halls and viewers. She thus invites reflection on the elements that make up the art establishment: the ways in which works are exhibited, the attitudes of audiences, the way in which art is received and ‘consumed’ and the nature of the mise-en-scène associated with every exhibition space. But she also calls into question the idea of the originality of art works, of authorship, copying and appropriation. Gamarra’s work examines the technology of viewing and the hierarchical, coded nature of exhibition discourses.

In some of her still-lifes she blends pictorial language with words: a painting of flowers half hidden behind a curtain includes a Spanish phrase which translates as ‘still-life is a limit turned into a picture’. One of her landscapes in oils contains another significant phrase, which translates as ‘a painting is like a mirror on nature which makes things which do not exist look as if they really do, and which deceives in an amicably acceptable, honourable fashion’.

Maite Méndez Baiges