Reflexión (Passion)

The video Reflexión (Passion) is framed by two aspects of Ignasi Aballí’s work: on the one hand there is his research into light and reflection as pictorial media, and on the other his interest in and attraction towards film as artistic language, with particular reference to the contribution of the Nouvelle Vague. It also references the work of writer Georges Pérec, enabling him to go into the idea of fiction and establish a relationship between film and literature. The video is based around images from Jean-Luc Godard’s Passion (1982), a film dealing with an artist’s difficulties, the frequent failings inherent in the creative process and the relationship between the filmed image and painting, all of which are aspects that have appeared in many previous Ignasi Aballí works. The images from Godard’s film appear as the projection of a reflection of the film, which is to say back to front, as if suggesting alternative rereadings. So the film represents work using found footage, and the reactivation of cinematic texts from the past through reediting and decontextualisation.

Lola Hinojosa