CONTRA LA INERCIA AGAINST INERTIA - granada cultura

(22) “Greek Cynicism discovers the
animality of the human body and its
gestures as arguments and develops a
pantomime materialism. Diogenes refutes
the language of the philosophers with that
of the clown.” Peter Sloterdijk. Crítica de
la razón cínica. Madrid: Siruela, 2003.
p. 178.
(23) Jesús Hernández. “Paco Pomet,
ganador del primer premio de la Bienal de
Zamora: «El arte verdadero crea sentido,
revela verdades, ilumina, desoculta»”. In
La Opinión de Zamora, September 23rd
2006.
146
without saying a word. 22 He once stated, «True art
creates meaning, reveals truths, illuminates, unhides.»
23 The Goya-like distorsion of the image
created is ultimately nothing more than a sort of
correction that in a way links up with an ancient
strain of satire and moralizing and, through apparent
humour, merely reveals the true deformities or
incongruences of a social model that is, to say the
least, highly perfectible.
VI. IndIVIdual, IdentIty, terrItory, leGacy
I have never seen a greater monster or miracle
in the world than myself.
Montaigne
Memory may seem willing to ally itself with history and culture, to
remember the photograph of good intentions, convention, the family,
so as to make up a clear landscape or scenario. But the actors have
not rehearsed the piece: the theatre is for them and nobody can tell
between the feeling of obligation and will.
Antonio Pomet, A Thousand Sleeping Dogs
The individual in relation to the group and the
surrounding environment that swallows him up
and makes him singular, and difference (and the
awareness of difference) as a disadvantage or cause
for shame in the face of general uniformity. Here
are two of the themes most extensively dealt with
in Pomet’s work. We can see them in the works
with portraits, but most particularly in the group
portraits, a genre with deep roots in painting that
has been rigidly coded and long maintained by the
European bourgeoisie, since at least the 17th century,
as an instrument for the reaffirmation of the
identity of a guild, ideology or class. Photography
propitiated the expansion of the group portrait to
all social classes, but today it continues to fulfil
functions of identity and commemoration. Such
is Pomet’s interest in the genre that he uses it in
several different environments: the family (Custodia,
2007 [p. 117]; El idiota, 2008 [p. 107]; Rehén,
2010), school (El repetidor, 2005; Mandy, 2008),
the military (Pesadilla, 2006 [p. 101]; Capitulación,
2011), the professional (Lighters, 2010 [p. 99]; Los
dibujantes, 2011 [p. 87]), leisure moments (Herr
professor, 2006 [p. 96]; The Club, 2010) and even
in apparently accidental or unclassifiable places
(Andrómeda, 2009). In all these works one or
more individuals stand out from the others, either
because of their deformity, or because we identify
them instantly as belonging to a radically different
context to the one in which they are located, or
because the clothes or some object picks them out
in a comic or surreal fashion. Sometimes even a
gigantic, supernatural accusing hand appears over