ENGLISH

“Life Is but a Breath…”

“45 34 87”. Works by Jordi Urbón. College of Quantity Surveyors of Vic.

ANNA PALOMO

Vic. “Life is but a breath…”, sang Carlos Gardel, a phrase Jordi Urbón quotes in the body of work he presents at the College of Quantity Surveyors of Vic. What might appear to be an inscrutable combination of numbers is, once again, a journey through certain elements of life.

The works presented here—three-dimensional, pictorial or photographic—maintain a close connection with the artist’s previous work: white predominates, subtle and ephemeral materials prevail, and evocative discourse takes precedence over narrative discourse…

Chance, as a generator of inexplicable situations, is one of the fundamental elements in Jordi Urbón’s work, and in this exhibition it once again carries considerable weight. The artist’s practice involves breaking human behaviour down into its smallest components and reducing it to its essence. Urbón’s work penetrates the fissures of human biographical reality and reveals the fragility and temporality of every conviction.

Beyond the anthropological, sociological, economic, political or metaphysical considerations that characterise collective behaviour, the artist confronts the essence of the individual as a singular being subjected to an incessant ebb and flow of life. Ineffable deterministic destiny is disrupted by the ravages of chance, and this element succeeds in bringing to the surface everything within the human being in which neither reflection nor sociological knowledge plays a decisive role.

Purity, naivety, innocence and emotions are scarcely desirable attributes for an individual living in a society as competitive as our own, where one must equip oneself with security and self-assertion. Yet these very attributes are constant elements in Urbón’s work: elements that compel impermanence, transition and change; elements upon which the fragility of existence and the certainty that “life is but a breath” are founded.