CHEMA LÓPEZ

For the past six years, the Museo ABC and the Fundación Banco Santander have supported Contemporary Art with the programme Conexiones, which allows for the creation of an unparalleled exhibition project, based on the selection of works from its respective collections. Its 14th edition presents the latest work of Chema López (Albacete, 1969), who has ironically asked for newspaper pages and a drawing by Francisco Ugalde from Museo ABC and a contemporary coin collection from Banco Santander Collections.

Illusion and fear reflects on the paradoxical duality of images: on the one hand they are tools to acquire knowledge, on the other they are capable of manipulation and deception.

The starting point relates Ladislao Vajda’s movie El cebo (1958) with E.H. Gombrich’s classical essay Art and Illusion, which was based on conferences that would later be published – at the same time that he movie was filmed and released – between 1957 and 1960. This way, the works in the exhibition make constant allusions to the sociopolitical culture and context of the 1950s.