LA HISTORIA SE CONFIESA (HISTORY CONFESSES)

NONO BANDERA. 26 November 2004- 16 January 2005

"History, according to Nono Bandera, is nothing more than a deceptive surface, behind which bubbles a background of perverse and obscene possibilities, always held in the domain of the forbidden", Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego *.

The duplicity of meanings and a comparison of the real and the apparent are the main subjects of La Historia se confiesa, an exhibition in which Nono Bandera (Malaga, 1958) displays his talent for reinterpreting and rereading popular iconography. To this end, and as he has done before, Bandera recovers works found in flea markets by painters relegated to oblivion, to which he provides new meanings while at the same time discovering hidden expressions in the seemingly conventional.

This work of intervention and rereading reaches its maximum expression in the series that gives the exhibition its name. History Confesses gathers together a total of 50 small drawings representing major historical figures such as Solomon, Hernán Cortés, Saint Sebastian, Aesop, Juan Ponce de León and Themistocles... Figures around which a moralist and edifying discourse has traditionally been formed, but on which the artist intervenes to draw a confession from them, so that they end up saying what they do not want to say. In this way, he discovers with much irony interesting subtleties that in the majority of cases appear hidden in the pages of history books. Frequently repressed sexual aspects rise to the surface after the artist has intervened. He concludes that nothing is what it seems and everything is susceptible to reinterpretation.

This work of decontextualization is also apparent in the installation This & That (2003), a series of fold-outs upon which recovered works by other artists have been placed, creating trompe l'oeil that simulate rooms in a bourgeois home. The unusual, the sarcastic and the humorous can once again be found in this work, in which Nono Bandera has introduced sometimes absurd elements that distort the apparent fixed balance of the rooms. The same technique is used by the artist in the series completing the exhibition. Ventanas (Windows, 2004) combines four felt-tip pen and India ink drawings recreating large vantage points over which characters lean out, paradoxically seeming to observe the viewer, as if fiction wanted to participate in reality and once again referring to the duality of space that so intrigues Bandera.

*Exhibition catalogue

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