Marco Godoy
What we still have to talk about
What we still have to talk about is the work that saw Marco Godoy selected in the 24th edition of the Visual Arts Circuit of the Community of Madrid. It is a casting of the façade of a church in Barcelona (the Iglesia San Felipe Neri), a building visibly affected by the bombings during the Spanish Civil War and with which citizens coexist today.
Alongside this wall, two photographs are presented in which the portrayed intend to leave a record, to generate a document: the artist’s grandfather marching to take part in that war, and his father celebrating the death of the dictator. Two images that in some way protect him and allow him to take distance from events which, despite belonging to another time, he returns to time and again.
Godoy transforms the façade of San Felipe Neri into a wall. A wall that signifies many things: the wall itself, but also a ruptured surface, a surface which suggests and reveals, protects and strengthens, defines and symbolizes limits. The time and space beyond which the relationships that govern the considered identity are no longer valid. However, the artist does not position himself on any side of the wall, but inside it, in the negative of it, in the reverse. In the tactile and tangible part, that which embodies personal and family histories, and which still continues to fester.
The exhibition room as an objective and de-contextualized place to resolve what still remains unsettled is another of Godoy’s interests. How does the spectator face that which the artist considers a document of war? What value do they decide to grant it?
