Isabel Aninat presents Fronteras Naturales, by Mateo Maté
From June 13, at the Isabel Aninat Gallery, Mateo Maté presents Fronteras Naturales (Natural Frontiers). For the first time in Chile, the Spanish artist performs an individual exhibition in which the viewer is placed at the center of the dilemma of physical borders and territorial limits, and where geography is at the service of politics when it is established as a natural barrier and an excuse to exercise sovereignty over a certain territoriality.
Constituted by two projects, Zona Restringida (Restricted Zone) and Paisajes Uniformados (Uniformed Landscapes), Fronteras Naturales aims to bring the public closer to the recent works of Mateo Maté, who has been working with cartographies, borders, surveillance and the militarization of our daily life for a long time.
On the one hand, the Zona Restringida reflects on how surveillance and control, under the argument of security, have invaded daily life, permeating a large number of areas with allusions to the war and the need for conquest or militarization. As Maté explains with a certain irony, "we all prepare for a general mobilization. We do not know when or where the conflict will arise, but we have to be prepared”.
On the other hand, Paisajes Uniformados tries to base the thesis of how military camouflage would not exist without the discovery and development of a language and plastic iconography characteristic of pre-impressionism and impressionism. The project strips the landscapes of their basic forms and reinterprets them as the impression of spots and colors as the retina of the human eye perceives them in a first glance. From the same date of that discovery, and showing us that there is no innocuous human invention and with possibilities of being used perversely, the uniforms of the armies of the whole planet radically changed of exposition; they went from being a representative element and of being able to be offensive, although passive weapons. From that moment, through a basic iconography but very sophisticated study, the uniforms happened to imitate the natural environment where the different bodies of the armies were going to be deployed.
Until July 20, Fronteras Naturales can be visited in Isabel Aninat.
