Date: 5 th February to 15 February
Opening: 5 th February at 19:00
Place: Project space Kleiner Salon, Manteuffelstraße 42, 10997 Berlin
Contact email: ana@circularculture.com
Participants: David Catá
Curated by: Ana Sanfrutos
Pain, nostalgia, love and oblivion are concepts that cross the work of David Catá since his first steps in the art world. His photography is pallid, clean and hyper realistic. The illumination, antiseptic like in an operating theatre, is broken by the orange and pink of the skin of his models. In the series, “Déjame Volar”, Catá wanted to cover the skin of the models with a soft layer of dry dandelion’s seed heads which calls in the beholder the physical reaction of wanting to get into the picture and softly blow the soft fluff away from their faces. As we will further see later, Catá has a gift to provoke physical reactions, but this must be taken as a first impulse that drags you into his work and makes us understand the deep and beauty of its symbolism, not as the entirety of the experience. The seeds, glued one by one to the bodies, are used by Catá as a metaphor of how fragile and ephemeral life is, how volatile we are.
From the caress of the dandelion Catá bring us to the crudity of his stitching art, a piece of body art from which we will see photographs, videos and a life performance in the opening day. Catá has reserved this practice for his own skin and he carries through while performing with an almost sacred disposition. Catá sews literally the faces of his loved ones in the palm of his hands. Once the threads are removed, a scar in the top layer of his skin forming these faces remains with him for a time. An exercise of deep introspection, a reflection on how is the mark that the people we care about leaves in ourselves and a metaphor of the pain of forgetting.
“A performatic and symbolic action of lost; the oblivion of a loved one. A ritual action and at the same time contradictory between desire and rejection, dependence and independence in which at the end nothing remains; only the footprints of lived memories. A temporary act attached to oblivion, which aims to its preservation through memorial, corporal and video graphic footprints. These sewn are able to approach to the people they represent, by thinking that once my hand has been marked by an act of affection; by thinking that once my hand has touched their hand.”
David Catá on “A flor de piel” project
David Cata (Viveiro, Spain, 1988)
He studied a B.A. (Fine Arts) in Vigo University (Pontevedra). In 2010 moves to Madrid and graduates in the Internacional Master’s Degree in Photography (Concept and Creation) at Madrid’s EFTI winning the first prize of class. He also studied the intermediate degree in accordion at Viveiro’s Conservatory of Music.
In 2010, he won the first prize of the Ourense’s Diputation of Plastic Arts contest, the first accesit at the Bang 6th Video Art Festival of Barcelona at 2013 and won an acquisition prize for the 13th Isaac Diaz Pardo Fine Arts Contest at 2013.
He’s been selected for national and international calls, such as the “Xuventude Crea 2010”, the “Gritos de Libertad” photography contest, the “Eject” 4th Internacional Video performance Festival of México City, the Ourense’s Diputation Plastic Arts contest 2012 and 2013, the “INCUBARTE” 5th International Independent Arts Festival, the “Convergencias’” Alliançe Francaise of Madrid’s photography contest, the CEC’s Plastic Arts contest, the “((.mov))” In Movement International Videoart Festival of Peru, the 15th Sala El Brocense’s AAPP Contest, the 5th International Video arts Festival of Camaguey, the “Region 0” Video art Festival of New York, among others.
His work has been seen in Mexico, New York, Peru, Cuba, Portugal, Cambodia and Spain.
More information:
www.circularculture.com/work/david-cata-dandelions/
Press cuts on David Catá
www.circularculture.com/blog/2015/01/07/david-cata-press-cuts/
Artist Web:
www.davidcata.com
Curator Web
anasanfrutos.hotglue.me