The expression “to not see it coming” is a classic observation in our most recent history. Countless conflicts and events have occurred throughout the modern age, and on numerous occasions these have been seen to exemplify the idea of historical progress. Our societies were thought to advance—unstoppably—towards a better future, but throughout this process, barbarism ran amok. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries are also a reliable example of this condition and, yet, within our most immediate present, we appear to be unable to see that the troops of irrationality are gathering once again. Perhaps, they never fully left.

Not see it coming is the title of the latest exhibition by Juan Carlos Batista (Tegueste, 1960). The feeling of disappointment at an unfinished past that is repeating itself takes shape through his depictions of the disasters of war. Millares another artist from the Canaries, Manolo Millares, drew a red line between his Francoist present and the native world that had disappeared from his islands, the Inquisition and the Civil War. Batista has taken the baton from this painter and appropriates his work to transform the topography of disaster into digitally distorted images. The appropriation is —in the hands of our artist— a statement of intent that allows him to oscillate between destruction and the construction of a new image that is recreated in premeditated confusion. Fragments of the original work are combined with silhouettes of fighting bulls, balls and weapons. A disembodied portrait of our political and social situation that approaches thematically the complex relationship between an unresolved past and a present that slumbers while contemplating the products of cultural industry. Likewise, the manipulation of two prints by Durero continues the same discursive logic, since the works of art by this German painter, created on paper and Chinese ink, symbolise the meagre position in which Europe finds itself after the latest global political events.

In addition to this graphic work, a series of carved sculptures continues along the same lines as the Lucro y desmán (Profit and Excess) series. These pieces materialise the colonisation effected by any warring conflict over the seized territory. Batista appropriates small and medium sized carvings from Africa and other countries and pursues an interesting conceptual development that highlights the cynicism of the West. Many of these wooden pieces are copies of ancient statues and figurines that were objects of worship, and which, after colonisation, were reduced to mere objects of aesthetic contemplation guarded by museums. Now, as narrated by the series Las estatuas también mueren (Statues also die), these hand-crafted pieces have become a reflection of capitalist production, which requires large-scale manufacturing to meet tourist demand for souvenirs. The final bombshell hits when the artist deconstructs each of these carvings into countless fragments and reassembles them to create a new sculpture. In doing so, he gives these particular objects a new function: to be a work of art.

This ambivalence characterises the exhibition No verlas venir. Batista’s work builds a solid balance of tension that allows him to raise questions about the transmission of history and about the role that art may play in this whole process. The appropriation practised by our artist ultimately becomes a political stance, since he manipulates his present through his alteration of images that portray and construct this world.

Verónica Farizo