For José Manuel Ballester, reshaping the mental view of reality by means of craftsmanship does not seem to consist only of the freezing of time through a space in an image; he does not even limit himself to being a notary of the existence of a place. Ballester establishes a visual discourse of a reality, which when frozen, transcends the action which man is producing in it, to establish a metalinguistic discourse on the ways of inhabiting and creating a place. Understanding place as Yin Fu Tuan would propose, as the space where man interacts with other individuals or with a specific space.
These spaces reflected in his photographs acquire the condition of place when, due to their absent presence or explicit presence, people are used as plots, and the condition of establishing a narrative discourse on hyperscale, power, dynamism, change, mutation, sensed movement, as opposed to the inert architectural, urban or infrastructural object.
.../... If art shows us this diversity, the potential of its architecture and urban planning, when Ballester shows it to us, it seems to want to go at breakneck speed, even ahead of Western proposals, in a delirious process of creation of the future.
His view seems to be a clearing in the stressful forest of urban growth, a view which brings past memories with flashes of memories which are yet to come.Heterotopies?
Abstract from the text published in METALOCUS 022 by José Juan Barba.
ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN METALOCUS.-
022 METALOCUS. China | José Manuel Ballester
023 METALOCUS. Espacios Ocultos. Distritocu4tro Gallería. Madrid. España | Hidden Spaces. Distritocu4tro Gallery. Madrid. Spain | José Manuel Ballester
