CHARCAL.

CLARA MUÑOZ

The audience in the pond

And mosquitoes puzzled

The work presented by Domingo Díaz Vega means a step forward in the theme developed by the sculptor in the last two years. The belonging of humanity to Nature and the impossibility to stay out of his own laws and of a common and inevitable destiny, in such a way that human phenomenon has his own reflection in what is natural, and vice versa.

Most of the sculptures that compose <<Charcal>> (clouds, dunes, waves, insects, water…) are resolved by a pop iconography that articulates a speech about the artificiality of Nature, and own her to recreate her. Although this sculptor takes of Nature the representation codes, he is conscious that today, all that conforms physical reality can only be shown by taking as a starting point illusion, appearance games, simulations. Like writers of tales, he uses metaphors, songs and allegories to talk to us about the world. Water, as the example of vital cycles and as flowing stream related to life going by in inhabited spaces, has been dealt by this sculptor before.

Domingo Díaz has carried out a work that shows a big concern about aesthetics, in a first sight, almost decorative, in which he accepts spectator implication in the movement and development of the work shown. Inside the room, the work is put in a classical way, but outside, the work deals directly with nature.

Those who want to discover the space and topography of a kind environment will always frequent gardens. Most of this last works has been conceived to be in the garden, where Nature appears tidy, subjugated, selected and surrounded. The garden symbolises the man trying to give Nature a durable and functional sense. The capacity for suggestion that have some specific emplacements to stimulate specific actions, has favoured these sculptures which create an unreal environment. There are giant insects worthy of a horror film, placed in a static landscape. This creates a context juxtaposed with nature and artifice in an interrelated imitation process.

Now, his gaze goes to the habitat of our immediate environment, recovering the land and, in particular, the University gardens that are used as a tour for a walk in the Campus. His pieces contact with the outside world by modifying and restructuring the space where they are. A big, black and oversized spider with long feet walks on the grass. The eternal weaver is situated next to stagnant waters populated by a vile fauna of big and metallic mosquitos, always thirsty for the juice that keeps other bodies alive. The pond reflects the greenish blue of the Universe. The swampy water; the repulsive swamp, presumably foul-smelling and putrid, recreates a landscape installed upon another one and so on, reactivating the creation of a new atmosphere more disturbing.

 

Domingo talks to us about that evident ideological stagnation at the end of a century, cause for concern in different intellectual opinions, and which affects art and thoughts. We can say that this crisis has been with us for the last decades of the millennium. There is no place better than a University to give shape to this bitter metaphor. Nevertheless, the treatment is sarcastic and even denotes an undeniable sense of humor.

Inside the room, decontextualized fragments of this artificial nature, following a course of abstraction similar to the content of the Museums of Natural History. The theatricality built exterior seems to activate something within the people that walk between the sculptural pieces. Inside, however, there is an intimacy that goes with those who meticulously examine the odd vegetables. But there is a problem: at night, those insects come to life and look for their victims between couples that choose the campus to rendezvous.