Max Estrella is delighted to present a group exhibition featuring works by Diana Fonseca (Havana, 1978), Jorge Fuembuena (Zaragoza, 1979) and Charles Sandison (Haltwhistle, UK, 1969). Using differing practices, the three artists reflect on the passing of time and the relativity of this transit. Diana Fonseca uses artifacts connected to the measuring of time and architectonic remains which are witnesses of it. Jorge Fuembuena speaks about time through nature, subdued to an unstoppable dynamic process of change. Finally, Charlses Sandison approaches this theme through a generative projection where words and symbols are animated as if they were particles or stars.
One of the distinctive aspects of human race over the rest of the species of earth is our conception of time. From the beginning of civilization, scientists and philosophers have delved into the study of this phenomenon. “I measure time, I know; but I do not measure future, what is not yet; nor I measure past, what is no longer. What, then, is it that I can measure?” During the 4th Century AD, Saint Augustine of Hippo proposes the intersection of both optics in an undertaking that seems unreachable still today.
Albert Einstein publishes his theory of relativity in 1915, establishing a milestone in the definition of time linked to space. The renowned equation, which is the title of this exhibition, is part of this theory, and while it explains the equivalence between mass and energy, it also presents light as the constant that relativises the measurement and passing of time. This way, our own speed defines how we live subject to time. But, what speed are we talking about? The speed of the earth rotating around itself, or around the sun? The speed of the solar system in the Milky Way? Of our galaxy in its local cluster or the Supercluster of Laniakea? Or simply of our own pace of life? In spite of the groundbreaking aspect of Einstein’s research, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences did not award his work with the Nobel Prize for Physics, because they considered that the study of time and space was framed in the field of metaphysics. Maybe in this speculative area, we are left to cling to any observable and tangible evidence of this constant movement in the invisible coordinates of time and space.
Atlas Mundi (2019), You are the Way (2018) and Space is Time (2017) by Diana Fonseca, evidence this futile attempt to measure time and space. Deprived of context and their original utility, these objects represent our necessity of clinging to a tangible comfort. Fonseca also presents a work from her series Degradations, where fragments of buildings of Havana speak about deterioration as witness and result of the passing of time.
Photographer Jorge Fuembuena includes four pieces of this series The End of Cathedrals. Here, the breathtaking beauty of Jakobshavn landscapes, the biggest glacier in Greenland, allows the experience of the sublime contemplating a mass of ancestral ice, in a majestic natural space. The handling of light remits to a timeless place, where every change is measured in centimeters or maritime coordinates. Again, all of this is a sterile exercise of control of the environment through maps or sextants. Fuembuena, in his first exhibition in Max Estrella, proposes a reflection on how we navigate our time. Beyond gaining control over the future, we leave evidence of our incapacities and imperfections.
Finally, Charles Sandison exhibits Embrace! This piece participated in the Madrid Light Festival during October 2021. Generative animations featuring words and symbols are Sandison’s hallmark. In this new piece, he delivers a new creative exercise where human physiognomy is also protagonist. It is precisely the dynamism of all of these elements which proposes to the spectator the possibility of feeling part or particle in a whole. Connected through parameters that we do not entirely comprehend, we are left with trusting in the potentiality of the group.
