Baril proudly presents the first exhibition by Cristina Garrido (Madrid, 1986). Unfair Show explores the physical and conceptual distance between what we see and its context. Visiting a show entails experiencing a fiction. The exhibition discourse is organized through a disposition of artworks in a space. It is articulated through a relationship – either established or accidental – between the artworks and the viewer. The distance between the images and the contextual reading of the artwork separates what we see from what we believe to see. The framework in which we operate inevitably modifies what we perceive and, at the same time, it distorts our enunciations. To propose an exhibition implies accepting that we speak from a contradictory position. By necessity we play the game whilst criticizing its rules. The idea is not so much about adding one image more but proposing a fair image instead. One that contains a critical reading of what surrounds us, including self-criticism. To do so, Garrido gets involved with painting and she reclaims the presence of the viewer to structure her discourse on the functioning of the system of art. An unfair reading by the viewer would be the best outcome possible.
By way of introduction, at the entrance of the space the artist reproduces as a wall painting a letter of an old employer. The text uses formal language and upholds Garrido’s organizational skills and positive attitude in the labor market. Following suit, we see a series of works that focuses on the contemporary art system. The links between the art system and the general economic system are inseparable, even if the first claims a detachment from the latter. Garrido here spots a useful field to question the power relations that rule us. The letter describes a human being through her work capacity and functionality to fulfill her labor tasks. It asserts Cristina can be a profitable asset for future jobs. The introduction of this personal archival note at the beginning of the show pushes the viewer to establish a remarkable relation between Garrido as a design shop employee and the artist/author of the works in this exhibition. The language and the discourse organization change. However, the distance between the context and individuality originated by these public presentations contains evident analogies. .
Aerial photography does not create space but registers surfaces (Image collection) is a collection of images taken from international curators’ Instagram profiles. They have been grouped according to their thematic equivalence and distributed as a kind of frieze going across the space. All the squared pictures show views taken from airplanes: clouds and plane wings, lights and skies. Documentation of trips, inevitably they are as poetic as trivial. Social networks have turned us all into image producers, but fortunately not all of us are artists. Authorship doesn’t always hide an author but sometimes simply a user of a mobile phone application. This collection of images is placed high in the space, evidencing a distance and, at the same time, it also shows different points of view: ours and theirs. .
Dean McCannell, in his classic essay on tourism, identified in the desire for authenticity the engine that drives millions of people to travel, in order to know different contexts to the ones they belong. However, what these people often find in their drifts is the opposite of what they are looking for: substitutes of authenticity. Something similar occurs in the art system. We see thousands of images every day in social networks, magazines or art fairs where the distributor determines the rules and possibilities. The context tends to be erased and what we see is an infinite surface of a partial experience, fragmented, limited by space, and contaminated by other images with a disorientating an uncertain origin. Cristina Garrido proposes precisely a reflection in a no man’s land between the authentic and its substitute; between what we see and what we believe we are seeing (or recognizing).

Curated by Francesco Giaveri

Courtesy of the artist and BARIL