This is the first installment of a planned series of seven, each of which will comprise seven one minute pieces and will be focused on relatively homogeneous iconic motifs, based on “found” images -preexistent, appropriated and manipulated in several ways-. The composition of the septenaries is similarly expected to be a “found object”, which is evident in the variety of treatments included and in the heading titles, something like half-abstruse and half-pompous epigraphs. According to Crego’s initial idea, the project is aimed at presenting a sarcastic vision of Western culture out of certain archetypes and iconographic excesses. Already in the first piece of this first septenary can we discern its structuring motif, with a degree of abstraction that fluctuates -up and down- in the six one-minute pieces following it.
The conceptual embryo of this heptalogy lies in a previous work by the artist, a short one minute piece called “Filosofía occidental” (Western Philosophy), of 2000. It comprises a “pixilation” (an accelerated sequence of images taken frame by frame) of erotic images, as if they had been taken from a computer’s cache memory, stolen from an anonymous internet user after having visited various virtual sites of erotic and pornographic content. These licentious iconographies return in the form of a palimpsest, a matrix of successive variations, in OCCIDENTE (1 de 7).
Dictionaries of symbols remind us that the number 7 involves several symbolic and hermetic connotations: seven are the days of the week, the planets, the sounds of the music scale, the colours of the rainbow, the deadly sins, the heavenly hierarchies of the jewish Kabbalah, the legends’ fairies, etc. Thus, although its symbolism is universal and even cosmic, we suspect that Crego has chosen the number deliberately in order to examine certain features and stereotypes pertaining to Western civilization.
Crego’s oeuvre is often characterised by its predetermined structures and its numerical patterns (numbers that refer to calendar and chronometric units: dates, durations, etc.). With this videographic cycle of 7x7 pieces, his work takes a new turn. This first septenary comprises the following parts: “eschatology”, “unevidence”, “laws of physics (1)”, “laws of physics (2)”, “logic”, “metaphysics” and “{untitled}”.
