JON GOROSPE - ENVIRONMENTS

It is part of the instinct of our species to move away and to bury the waste we produce. It is a foundational hygienic gesture: we push away from us what, in all likelihood, could sicken us. We send it to a mysterious and opaque space in the hope that there it will disappear. We move the excrement to a parallel reality, a world-drain, a world-sewer from which we expect nothing will come back.

The series that make up Environments are the result of looking not so much at the wastes as the way we move them around from one place to another, expelling them from our most immediate context to integrate them into that area — blind spot — from where they should not come back. Thus, Environments can be understood as a system of beacons that Jon Gorospe put along the route of the wastes to their final exile. Their return, their potential return, can only be imagined as a catastrophe: the nightmare of revulsion. However, one could propose a hypothesis that even if a bit excessive is still possible: that the disaster may not be in front of us but behind us. Gorospe shows us the post-apocalyptic scenario in which we have been living.

From the garbage bag to the landfill, we are before a tenacious process of concealment: there is no transparent garbage bag, container, or truck. In the images that follow we will not see the garbage, the filth, the dregs, but the dark abyss: the opacity hiding them.

BIO

Jon Gorospe holds a BA from the Basque Country’s EASD and the Faculty of Arts in Vilnius, Lithuania. He lives and works in Oslo. His practice is focused on new approaches to the idea of contemporary landscape. Gorospe combines his work as an artist with research into the image from theoretical perspectives. He participates in debates, writes articles and reviews, and collaborates in projects as a curator and photo-editor.

JON GOROSPE - ENVIRONMENTS

It is part of the instinct of our species to move away and to bury the waste we produce. It is a foundational hygienic gesture: we push away from us what, in all likelihood, could sicken us. We send it to a mysterious and opaque space in the hope that there it will disappear. We move the excrement to a parallel reality, a world-drain, a world-sewer from which we expect nothing will come back.

The series that make up Environments are the result of looking not so much at the wastes as the way we move them around from one place to another, expelling them from our most immediate context to integrate them into that area — blind spot — from where they should not come back. Thus, Environments can be understood as a system of beacons that Jon Gorospe put along the route of the wastes to their final exile. Their return, their potential return, can only be imagined as a catastrophe: the nightmare of revulsion. However, one could propose a hypothesis that even if a bit excessive is still possible: that the disaster may not be in front of us but behind us. Gorospe shows us the post-apocalyptic scenario in which we have been living.

From the garbage bag to the landfill, we are before a tenacious process of concealment: there is no transparent garbage bag, container, or truck. In the images that follow we will not see the garbage, the filth, the dregs, but the dark abyss: the opacity hiding them.

BIO

Jon Gorospe holds a BA from the Basque Country’s EASD and the Faculty of Arts in Vilnius, Lithuania. He lives and works in Oslo. His practice is focused on new approaches to the idea of contemporary landscape. Gorospe combines his work as an artist with research into the image from theoretical perspectives. He participates in debates, writes articles and reviews, and collaborates in projects as a curator and photo-editor.