Gallery text of Transporte transportado
Ramis Barquet Gallery
In 1913, Édouard Estaunié (1862-1942) published the novel Les choses voient (Things see), where he narrates how a group of objects, witnesses of a crime of passion, manages to impose the triumph of the truth. In an age of globalized social injustice, wouldn’t it be more sensible to leave human affairs in charge of the things of Estaunié?
In the same way, in these times of individualism, it is very comical – not to say ironic – to receive lessons in altruism from transport machines.
Here, as always, the law of the strongest prevails, but not in the usual sense, not in the bellicose sense that this rule usually implies: here, the strongest uses his strength to help the weakest to save his own; that of the larger wheels allows the one of the weaker wheels to leave them at rest; those of reactors that roar more and with greater intensity welcome under their wing those smirked who would take weeks or even months – not to say years, in certain cases – to travel the same distance: thanks to the self-denial of those Gullivers of the air, a few hours are enough.
It also seems quite fair that, as a revenge, something similar to a red Lada – whose plates could be read by gendarmes who wander standing handcuffs – gives a ride to a horse, if we think of all the chariots that the ancestors, contemporaries and descendants of the latter have pulled, pull and will probably continue to pull for a long time along the roads of the wide world.
Let us point out to conclude the humility – an attitude that is very scarce in the artistic environment – of which Miguel Monroy shows: did he not give himself whole body, in an older piece, to the act of squeezing citrus fruits?
It is true that the absurdity of life has been well known for a long time and, as Jorge Luís Borges argued, life is just a bad joke so laugh has been said!
Michel Blancsubé
March 2007