In Un espacio nuevo we watch a man in bed. He bears the traces and traumas of a depression, and displays as well other atypical symptoms (which are nevertheless in tune with the experiences he has gone through during his passion). Isolated between the sheets...
“Then they took the body of Jesus and covered it with linen and scents, following the Jewish burial tradition.” (Gospel of Saint John, 19:40)
In this video the artist is naked and isolated within two flexible layers of white sheets, with which he is involved in an intimate game. The sheets divide the screen and both veil and show the body through the white cloth. The fragments of flesh, together with the folds of the sheets, generate images of organic landscapes, in which the sheets, like wondering thoughts, caress the naked body. The beat is a calming force against the abstraction of the inner landscape, evoking a nostalgia for intimacy and its private worlds. Here are metaphoric landscapes that happily coexist with occasional subtle inserts of images of a beach, of the shadows cast by palm trees. We are far away from the worldly noise. These are thoughts suggested by the visual journey through the folds created by the movement of the naked body.
Syntactic breaks derived from the texture of the sheets.
The spectator experiences a sort of liberation after watching the whole, the landscapes. She is then made to consider the fragmented nature of the piece when, approaching the exit, the camera moves backwards through an opening in the sheets. The artist, isolated under the sheets, reminds us of a ghost; or a restless spirit; or a sick man kept from the world; or a foetus, romping while longing for the uterus, for its purity. The act of recording this experience is like an act of personal affirmation. The space of the bed is treated like a hole through which to escape, which is partly claustrophobic, but which nevertheless helps the artist/spirit/sick man/foetus in being with himself, in a self-imposed and calming isolation.
However, this shroud, which holds love and light when it is shared, can become torture when in solitude, because it bears the scent, the traces of the other’s body, her memory. As we have been able to remark in previous pieces by Félix Fernández, the poetic moments in his work stand for social and emotional doubts. We can relate this piece to his video Reversible, as a previous crisis, in which he fights against his own self, and to his following piece Mimeomai, where the artist, after an inner cleansing, becomes one with the wild nature around him.
