Pablo Mercado Spanish, b. 1983
Leteo, 2023
Installation composed of water glasses suspended and grouped following the shapes obtained from the fMRI. Each glass has a different amount of water inside but they are suspended in such a way that the water level in each glass is at the beginning of the exhibition forming a perfect horizontal line with the rest. As time passes and the water evaporates, the original horizontal line is broken. The water in the glasses comes from the plot of land where his father was born. In this way Mercado speaks of the impossibility of controlling the details of stored memory, since every time we remember we are modifying that memory. And of the fragile balance that exists between remembering, reconstructing and reinterpreting.
Further images
Recollection, like perception, is a creative process in which the brain tries to construct a coherent picture from the memory traces that can reach the conscious. Our sensory organs select...
Recollection, like perception, is a creative process in which the brain tries to construct a coherent picture from the memory traces that can reach the conscious. Our sensory organs select only a few of the broad spectrum of evaluable signals from the environment. With these fragments a coherent picture of the world is constructed and memorized. When recalling a stored event, the brain completes this partial information and changes it again. To repeat the process of remembering is to restart the whole procedure, which implies a constant destruction and reconstruction.
Memory has evolved not to provide reliable memories, but to provide coherence to our identity and to the image we have of ourselves. We have more or less certain memories to build our self and from it to cooperate with others, all this procedure leads us to the transience of memory and with it of identity. Our own perception of our appearance is pure memory. It is nothing more than a sum of memories of our image that are superimposed on the previous version. We are never the same, therefore the vision is distorted. The installation "Lethe" is the result of a collaboration between Pablo Mercado and Dr. Diana Barroso. It is based on images obtained by fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) of the artist's brain at the moment of recalling a series of memories of his father. For this purpose, images of her father were shown while the magnetic resonance imaging was performed, showing the most active areas of the brain at that moment. With these abstract forms obtained in the fMRI, Mercado has created the three pieces that make up the exhibition.
Memory has evolved not to provide reliable memories, but to provide coherence to our identity and to the image we have of ourselves. We have more or less certain memories to build our self and from it to cooperate with others, all this procedure leads us to the transience of memory and with it of identity. Our own perception of our appearance is pure memory. It is nothing more than a sum of memories of our image that are superimposed on the previous version. We are never the same, therefore the vision is distorted. The installation "Lethe" is the result of a collaboration between Pablo Mercado and Dr. Diana Barroso. It is based on images obtained by fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) of the artist's brain at the moment of recalling a series of memories of his father. For this purpose, images of her father were shown while the magnetic resonance imaging was performed, showing the most active areas of the brain at that moment. With these abstract forms obtained in the fMRI, Mercado has created the three pieces that make up the exhibition.
Provenance
The same river twiceWater is an element that flows. It is metaphorically connected to memory and identity. Heraclitus said: "No man can cross the same river twice, because neither the man nor the water will be the same.
In this series of pieces Mercado draws with water that, when evaporating, leaves residues on the glass. These particles that water leaves behind are a metaphor for the memory of water.
The water used is also the water from the well of the plot of land where his father was born and the images represented are some of those shown to the artist during the fMRI imaging.
