In the form of a film-essay, Exergo explores a series of hypothetical relationships between certain paintings from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, and the material circumstances under which the work of past and contemporary artists is developed.
To start, the hypothesis uses certain extra-artistic aspects; peripheral elements or those hidden from them. Subsequent images are revealed by techniques like x-rays or infrared photography, the marks on the back of a canvas, a work's change in authorship, or the correspondence of an artist largely exploited by the art system.
The insertion of a basic and elementary trope of fiction—in the form of an email written by one young woman to another—weaves together the associations between the endotopic and exotopic spheres of certain works from the museum, between the mystification and added value that feeds the art system, and the socio-economic and psycho-social conditions that envelope the lives and professional environments of artists.
