The visual universe of Luis Molina-Pantin is made of themes that tend toward aesthetic neutrality. The threads that weave through his discourse are impersonal images, identical in structure and different in content, that reveal a narrative compulsion devised from seriality and repetition. In many cases, his works erase the distinctions between high and low culture. Furthermore, he is a passionate collector and book lover; from the grouping of books he preconceives meanings even before clicking the camera shutter. In his practice, objects are transformed into events outside of the two-dimensional space of visual representation, overcoming the literalness of the register.
The artist works with iconographic references from everyday life that he finds in urban environments. He constructs anti-artistic discourses, stripped of any aesthetic idealization. His proposals are stories without scenes, documentary chronicles absent of events. Such is the case with Chelsea Galleries (2001-2006), a work where Molina-Pantin assumed the role of a paparazzo. He surreptitiously entered into galleries on Manhattan’s west side and photographed shelves stuffed with folders in white labeled black boxes that contain the files on works of contemporary artists. The rigorous disposition of the boxes points to an abstract-geometric reading that allows him to satirize the geometric abstraction of Venezuelan art. Hung on the walls of Henrique Faria (Fine Art), the piece returns to represent representation. It establishes a dialogue with the environment of the exhibition that serves to re-signify its origin. Another piece where the artist examines legitimizing stories of kinetic art is in the public notice GEGO (2019), which he bought on eBay. Following an appropriative strategy, he recovers from this notice a readymade, he pays homage to the German-Venezuelan artist Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt) and, in an eloquent way, parodies a cult signature for collectors.
Molina-Pantin possesses an immeasurable desire to find second-hand objects in markets and shops, a passion that defines his creative method: collecting things with different origins or common characteristics. Placing them together, in many cases, is the source that generates ideas; it is the medium that revitalizes the senses. For example, Untitled ([Alphabet], 2014-2016) features twenty-six books. Each one reproduces a letter of the alphabet and Molina-Pantin employs the repetition of volumes as his aesthetic strategy. Book Return (2021) sums up the world of books in Everything Must Go! A[MOU1] site-specific installation of material that has lost its practical value in contemporary society, it is an archeological piece that only acquires cultural value inside the gallery.
Molina-Pantin similarly uses repetition as narrative stimulus in Timbres de México (Doorbells of Mexico, 2014-2016). These intercoms, made from laborious carving and forging of iron bars, are security devices found throughout Mexico City. The bells’ variety of armatures relates the social status of the homes’ inhabitants and the colors of the walls upon which the bells are fixed reconstruct the “coloration” of Mexican culture.
As a transcultural translator, Molina-Pantin investigates the dynamics of globalization.[1] Not only does he inspect the behavioral patterns of people in places of transit or touristic paradises, he also occupies the dark side of the global economy. This is seen, for example, in Estudio Informal de la Arquitectura Híbrida, Vol. 1, la Narco-Arquitectura y sus Contribuciones a la Comunidad [MOU2] Cali-Bogotá[MOU3] (Informal Study of Hybrid Architecture, Vol. 1, The Narco-Architecture and its Contributions to the Community, Cali-Bogotá[MOU4] , 2004-2005)[2], which considers the wastefulness, the illicit riches, the arms trafficking and the sums of cash represented in the Nar-Deco architecture. This work was made before the moral-aesthetic became popularized in the Netflix Narcos series and before it became a standardized theme in telenovelas and books. These building constructions, classified as eclectic architecture (kitsch), break down the semblance of “good taste”: they are opulent and ostentatious, modeled with multiple and discordant architectonic elements. The estates and thematic parks legitimize the violence and demonstrate how this style and way of life are cemented in power and the illegal. This is the information encrypted within his visual essay.
Through his artistic discourse, Luis Molina-Pantin achieves the transformation of the banal into an event, gives voice to socio-cultural phenomena, proposes expository discourses and creates indexes (of now useful objects) that relate episodes, experiences and ideas from which it is possible to parse the content of the images and negotiate the narrative potential figured in his works.
Sagrario Berti
Translated by Alexandra Schoolman
[1] Since the late 1990s, Molina-Pantin has worked to articulate themes that express the phenomena of globalization: places in transit in Apocalyptic Post-Card (1996); tourism on the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line (2006) or fraud as a transnational crime in Testimonies of Corruption: A Visual Contribution to Venezuela’s Fraudulent Banking History (2017).
[2] This work is a project realized by Molina-Pantin in Colombia thanks to the collaboration of artists Sally Mizrahi y Oscar Muñoz -Lugar a Dudas-, of Ernesto Ordoñez and of the curator María Iovino. In 2007, Ruth Auerbach exhibited this series for the first time at the Sala Mendoza in Caracas; the following year, the work was featured in the 7th Gwanju Biennale curated by Okwui Enwezor and in 2013, it formed part of the International Center for Photography’s Triennial, A Different Kind of Order, organized by Carol Squiers and Christopher Phillips, among others.