Kidult magic show. Performance
A pill, a performance
Generation after generation, the desire to flee reality has always manifested itself in art camouflaged in changing forms. Because reality isn't pleasing, because it doesn't do what we expect of it, because it doesn't adapt to suit our demands, because it doesn't make us feel happy (all of the time), because it doesn't furnish us with the necessary hope. And because it often disappoints, worries, frightens, isolates and moulds us, it makes of us what it will. Or it obstructs what we can be, what we believe ourselves to be or what we want to be.
In the face of such contrariness, there are numerous options that present themselves from or through art. To evade reality. Or to flee from it. To get to a point where you think it doesn't exist, even though you know that's impossible. To believe that it is other than the way we perceive it. To help us put up with its cruelty better. To stimulate ourselves so that we carry on thinking. Perhaps in another world. Perhaps a better world.
I don't know why, but Nuria Marques' work revolves around a journey, or rather, a flight, so that what she proposes is an escape from reality. And in her early days, by means of one of the fetishes of contemporary society: drugs, a pill or to be more precise, an anxiolytic. The fact is -without wishing to defend their virtues- who has never tried their effect? And once the pill has been swallowed, who has never felt as if they were leaving this world behind, as if they were happy or about to be so?
A pill can sort out everything. Or at least our happiness. That was what Nuria wanted to make us understand. And to achieve her aim, there's nothing better than an immediate image next to the promises of an anxiolytic. With a fast aesthetic. Above all quick and uncomplicated. For example, the aesthetic of the icons that illustrate life-saving procedures. In case of an accident. A plane accident. Or through a kidult aesthetic: the aesthetic that the artist identifies with that of certain adults. With the aesthetic of adults who still don't realise that they stopped being children some time ago. Or with the aesthetic of adults who remain first and foremost childlike and childish.
By using the immediacy of a fast and effective iconography, Nuria proposes return trips. Colourful lifeboats for each of our stormy days. Escape valves, even if they don't last forever. Because the drawback in her proposal became evident once you'd perused it a while: a pill's effect doesn't last a lifetime. And as it abates, so you return to the way you were before. You see yourself once again as you were. That is to say, unhappy. You comprehend that everything is determined by an expiry date.
By examining the escape valves that sweeten our lives -albeit momentarily- Nuria is now meddling in a different, alternative world. Our world. In other words, the world of humdrum reality. Even though we know that it too deceives us. It is a world in which hope rises up as the solution to our longings. Our desire to be happy.
And it is to hope, illusion, magic, appearing and vanishing that the artist refers in her Kidult Magic Show, a magic show for adults who have not grown up. Or for older children. A spectacle in colour in which the deception is evident. And a false spectacle in which the trick is immediately apparent. But, what does it matter if it's evident when we all know that it's there?
Nuria creates works in which the image is almost everything in order to evade reality or to understand it in another way or to appreciate it in a different manner or to flee from it for a while. Almost but not quite everything -the rest belongs to those who believe that its immediacy is a lie.
Frederic Montornés
Sponsors: Caja Madrid. Obra social
Sponsoring media: El País i Ràdio 4
Collaborate: Schilling