Muntadas: The Construction of Fear

May 1 – June 7, 2008

Kent Gallery is pleased to present it’s fifth exhibition of Antoni Muntadas, the fourth (2005) consisting of two historical projects: Emisio/Recepcio 1974 and La Television 1980. The present exhibition entitled The Construction of Fear (2008) includes two recent projects On Translation: Miedo/Jauf (2007) and On Translation: Fear/Miedo (2005) from his ongoing series entitled On Translation begun in 1995 and now comprised of over 40 projects. In the main gallery installation, Muntadas presents a full gallery space dedicated to the subject of fear and how it has been constructed by the media.

The two recent videos will be on view in the second gallery space. On Translation: Miedo/Jauf (2005-2008) (produced in collaboration with Centro Jose Guerrero), begins by approaching fear from a personal point of view, stressing its primitive quality as well as its origins in the socio-political context of the interviewees.

At first glance, Miedo/Jauf would seem to deal with the media treatment of the question of “immigration” on Europe’s southern border guarded by water. The project is fragmentary in nature, by means of a number of interviews and a visual collage of contextual and archival images, quotes, press headlines and film excerpts. The material is approached “as a personal construction”, in an endeavour to “create a metaphor of situations in which translation, interpretation, what is left unsaid and silence all form a part of the narrative” - excerpt Mar Villaespensa, Granada 2008

The second video on view here entitled On Translation: Fear/Miedo (2005) (produced in collaboration with InSite 05 San Diego) was exposed as a television intervention in San Diego and Tijuana. Dealing with the concept of “border”, Muntadas chose to present the transformations exerted on individuals’ lives due to a “system” which links these subjects to overtly political boundaries.

Muntadas has been based in New York since 1971 while working continuously on projects internationally for over 35 years. “Media landscape” is the metaphor that Muntadas has worked with, and his observations on how the conceptual artist works with communication systems that are closely related to social systems.