Lokatza eta promesak proposes an investigation into the image through the archive of Maite González (Oiartzun, 1995). The project appeals to the power of observation and the cultivation of an optical disposition directed towards the concrete, which takes into account both the detail and the setting. Without intending to prescribe a single way of looking at things, Lokatza eta promesak treats Maite’s work as an estrangement, a possible vision of the anthropic strangeness of the landscape.
Maite works with the image through painting, collage, photography and video; a careful accumulation that, unintentionally, speaks at the same time about her, about the device itself, about the medium and the place in which she lives. Her particular vision allows us to distinguish three moments: repetition, discrepancy and waiting. In the era of reproducibility and mass production of images, repetition is presented as a resource from which to observe variations, pay attention to difference and compose sequences that allow a certain understanding of what is being seen. Maite understands discrepancy precisely as the feeling of knowing something and yet not having understood everything. Waiting, meanwhile, is an opportunity to confront the limitations of your own understanding, a range of attention that partially bridges the gap with respect to the material that is presented to you. The landscape in Maite’s photography is a place in constant transformation. Observation as an aesthetic experience moves between an analytical gaze and pure contemplation. At that threshold, ordinary things acquire another presence: they move and affect us.
