"The first puzzles were born in England and were initially used as an educational tool to teach political geography to children. The territory depicted in these puzzles has evolved since then. Surely most of these wooden cutouts have undergone all sorts of displacements and today would no longer fit correctly. The works compiled in the “Territory” project propose an alternative distribution, a subjective reconstruction, but with a randomness similar to that observed in the course of events concerning the territory and its inhabitants. This reconstruction offers us a new scenario, a new vision of the world. Some of the maps used in “Territory”, through their lack of operability, their obsolete condition, tell the story of a world in continuous motion. Behind the chromatic codes and lines lie the anonymous inhabitants of these physical spaces or those displaced during these processes. A representation that, by its very nature, is nothing more than a still image of history, as faithful as it is ephemeral. The maps, rotated, randomly ordered, folded in on themselves, show us another scenography, equally provoked and in continuous transition. These operations on the objects show us their progression towards obsolescence as physical objects, in metamorphosis towards fragments or useless remnants of the past. These territories fold in on themselves and, as objects, have the possibility of changing format depending on whether they are folded or unfolded for viewing, also playing at being territory, mark, or boundary. In many cases, these are objects rescued from oblivion, full of “wounds” caused by time, by contact with our hands, with our places and objects, lines and traces that finally articulate themselves as still lifes, involuntary vanitas that return the real image of their fleeting destiny and the impossibility of escaping this end. Creating different maps, different territories, and varying their final arrangement before the viewer proposes a narrative divergent from the one inherent in these creations, the merely informative one. What is written is altered like a collage that decontextualizes images to generate a new narrative. These associations deliberately obviate concreteness, consciously hiding their representational power. The interplay between what should be shown through its concealment and the account of the same object in its rear view operate by articulating a fragmented narrative, an interference in the proposed discourse. These new limitations on the territory, and these resulting new landscapes, propose a broader reflection, without offering answers, only improving some of the answers. New maps that, like their original references, are also simple lines drawn on paper." -Suso Fandiño
Suso Fandiño's artistic practice is distinguished by a sustained critical gaze towards the mechanisms of art itself and its capacity to construct narrative. His work is not limited to the production of objects but constantly interrogates the systems of representation, legitimation, and circulation of images in the contemporary context.This critical stance is articulated, firstly, through a conscious relationship with the reproduced image, which the artist extracts from its original context to reinsert it into new formal configurations. Secondly, his ability to integrate object, image, and text into compositions that function as open reading devices, where materiality and discourse are simultaneously activated, is noteworthy. Finally, his work is supported by a solid theoretical and historical foundation that allows him to address complex issues with a contained, clear, and accessible formalization, without sacrificing conceptual depth.
