“Oh admirable thing. You were naked before the eyes of all without feeling shame. It is because you truly carried within you the image of the first Adam, who was naked in paradise without feeling shame...” (Cyril). "…………but today after having been whipped, full of scars caused by you or by others, after having shown your worn-out body and soul, of being observed by the Voyeur, it is already impossible to return to primitive innocence, to the condition of Adam before the fall." The project takes a journey through architectures that are today non-existent but identifiable and have become collective references and myths through painting. The architectures used are those represented in masterpieces of painting. They have been stripped bare and reconstructed (models), from their two-dimensional representation, completing and reinterpreting spaces partially hidden by the objects used to form the pictorial scene. The project makes present a process of temporal transformation (associated with a transformation in its perception and representation) that begins with the real construction of the space, its use through the intentional arrangement of the “props” necessary for pictorial representation, its subsequent abandonment and loss of use value (and appropriation of a sign and symbol value that reaches our days), the physical destruction of the buildings that contain them, the three-dimensional reconstruction of a scale model (diorama), and the photographic (two-dimensional) process of the same. The photographed naked space is perceived as a palimpsest, retaining the traces of one or more superimposed and partially erased writings and inviting a reading of multiple layers that dialogue with each other (and with other photographs) and that invite a rereading of the represented space, its value as a symbol, and its capacity to represent a specific socio-economic, cultural, and political order."- Emilio Pemjean
Emilio Pemjean (Santiago de Chile, 1971) conceives his work from a multidisciplinary framework, connecting architecture, painting, video, and photography. The project he presents at Saisho constructs or reconstructs, through manipulation, remnants of now-nonexistent architectures, designing models and photographing them. Pemjean reflects on time, the present, the absent, and memory. In this case, photography abandons its traditional documentary function, capturing "truth," and introduces doubt about what is seen and naively accepted as real.
