ART CITIES:Paris-Enrique Ramírez

Enrique Ramírez’ work lies in the gap where fiction and reality mutually enrich each other. Through metaphorical means, the artist questions our world and its migratory flows. His various approaches verge on ethnography and sociology. Fuelled by his findings of accounts of identity, cultural divisions, the conception of death, he produces films and installations within a poetic atmosphere. The artist speaks to us of historical events, navigates from mythology to daily events, and opts for the fictional tale, therefore transforming the assumption of a sociological study.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Michel Rein Gallery

Videographer and activist, Enrique Ramirez was born in 1979 in Santiago (Chile).  The sea is a recurring subject in his work, full of meaning and history. His creations express an obligation of memory, both personal and national, oscillating between political commitment and poetry. In his father’s workshop, Enrique Ramírez, found patched and worn sails, material memories of the winds and tides that have swept them, which the artist presents here in vitrines. On their surfaces, the projected shadow of a text/poem, a trace of the action of folding them on the beach before storage at the workshop. These archaeological vestiges summon several images: a nomad or traveller’s badly worn bundle of possessions, but also a shipwreck. Enrique Ramírez’ solo exhibition title “Mar mAr maR” is a repetition but also an act of resistance. For the artist symbolizes the world’s resilience. “Mar mAr maR” is not just the sea, in the literal sense, but you, me, the other, the friend, the stranger, the “other” world which the media are abandoning for lack of interest, it’s the immigrant, the displaced person, the wrecked ship, it’s the silent complaint of the earth when it meets the sea. As the artist sys “When I imagine a work, I try to project myself into a place I’m not acquainted with, a place which I would like to enter and be transported through… A place where darkness would help to better see the light of images, that light which is not only there to get us to travel, but which also invites us to share ideas, and ways of thinking, seeing, feeling, and listening… The sea is like a window looking out over this world of mysteries and opportunities”. The works in this exhibition try to answer these questions. They draw a map whose outlines are inspired by Joaquin Torres Garci’s, “America Invertida” (1943). This illustration of South America upside-down has become a symbol of the efforts made by this continent to assert its central place. Joaquin Torres Garcia put the South Pole at the top of the earth, like a visual statement of the importance of South America, offering another vision of the world and not the vision that the rest of the world tries to impose on South America. Water is omnipresent as a central theme in the work of Enrique Ramírez. Here the sea and its outbursts also reflect the search for oneself. Evolving in saltwater with all that is induced, results in purification, driving us to freedom. Water materialises the circulation of ideas, knowledge and exchanges. However there is also the underlying idea that water can sometimes be an obstacle, a barrier to all of this. This time we are not witnesses to a departure but to a long journey. The decision has already been made. We feel the fact that travelling brings us back to the essence of our condition, indulging ourselves in it deliberately. The travelling is delicate as much for the outbound as for the return journey. However, on the contrary to Icarus burning his wings whilst escaping from exile, Enrique Ramírez’ characters are in a semi-lethargic state of numbness conducive to thought. The essence of Enrique Ramírez’ work revolves around art, sociology and politics. The latter two subjects are approached through real, fictional and mythological facts offering an enriching detour. The journey, the wandering, these aqueous surfaces express a current unease of the individual, of the artist facing the economic crisis, facing political crises which are unresolved to this day. In this way one could say he comes close to German romanticism. Enrique Ramírez’ work is a contestation of political systems wasting human relations.

Info: Michel Rein Gallery, 42 rue de Turenne, Paris, Duration: 7/9-29/10/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, http://michelrein.com