Manuel Franquelo

Place is central to Franquelo. He moved home and studio some dozen years ago from the centre of Madrid. This move changed him and his art, but the transformation was limited, controlled to a considerable degree by the artist himself. His photographs depict an accumulation of everyday life. Shelves often play a dominant position in the structure of his work. He built a crate around the actual parallel planks and shipped them from one studio to the other. He did not remove the side of the crate in its new surroundings, so it appears a little like Clement Greenberg's forbidden window in its decade old setting on an inner wall. And on the shelves are the debris of years of living: plastic cartons and bottles of all descriptions including an empty Hibiki[1] bottle, electrical components, playing cards, books, a liquid measuring jug, pills, wire, marker pens, discs, bills, notes and the motherboard from a computer.

One does feel the engagement with everyday life, but at the same time it is easier to be distracted by the many Spanish artists who trod a similar path before : Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560-1627), even the great Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) or later Luis Meléndez (1715-1780). Morandi hangs over us too. Franquelo may respect the past, but he has no interest in walking the same path. Franquelo has reduced the Romantic notions of art back to the basics. Even the concept of memento mori, that he does admire in still life painting, is stilted. He does not require the skull. If we want to remind ourselves that we are going to die, we can, but the artist is more interested in providing us with life itself.

Submitted by Michael Hoppen Gallery